Key Summary
- Junk food ads restricted on TV before 9pm and banned online to protect children
- Aim is healthier habits, cutting billions of calories and reducing childhood obesity
- Backed by health experts, with wider action on sugar, tooth decay and food choices
As a measure to tackle childhood obesity, the government has imposed curbs on television and online junk food advertisements.
The advertisements for less healthy food and drinks, including soft drinks, chocolates and sweets, pizzas and ice creams, will be banned on television before 9 pm, and online at all times.
The ban targets the timings when children and young people are most likely to watch television.
Studies show that 22.1 percent children in England are obese when they start primary school, and it reaches 35.8 percent by the time they leave school.
Large number of children between 5 to 9 years in the UK also get admitted to the hospitals due to tooth decay.
The government hopes that the new measure would help change the food preferences of children and it expects that it would annually remove nearly 7.2 billion calories from children’s diets.
It can potentially decrease the number of children suffering from obesity by 20,000 while delivering around £2 billion in health benefits over time.
The government said it is in ‘everyone’s interest’ that parents and children can make healthy choices and thanked food and drink companies for imposing these restrictions voluntary in October, months ahead of them taking legal effect on Monday (5).
Earlier interventions, such as the Soft Drinks Industry Levy have resulted in businesses reformulating to make products healthier.
The Soft Drinks Levy will soon be extended to many more products, including sugary milk-based drinks, high-caffeine energy drinks to children under 16.
The government had earlier introduced the Healthy Food Standard to make the average shopping basket of goods healthier, and local authorities will be empowered to stop fast food shops setting up outside schools.
According to Colette Marshall, chief executive at the Diabetes UK, consumption of junk food leads to obesity and type 2 diabetes among the youngsters.
This also puts them at a high risk of kidney and heart diseases.
Obesity and overweight can cause at least 13 different types of cancers as well, states senior policy manager at Cancer Research UK, Malcolm Clark.
Other actions by the government to maintain an improved lifestyle among the public also include supervised toothbrushing for three to five-year-olds in deprived communities.
“By restricting adverts for junk food before 9pm and banning paid adverts online, we can remove excessive exposure to unhealthy foods - making the healthy choice the easy choice for parents and children,” commented Minister for Health, Ashley Dalton.
Katharine Jenner, executive director at Obesity Health Alliance, added, “This is a welcome and long-awaited step towards better protecting children from unhealthy food and drink advertising that can harm their health and wellbeing.”
