After years of wrangling, from this week new rules shield children in the UK from junk food advertisements. Those featuring processed food and drink products in 13 categories – including soft drinks with added sugar, crisps, chocolate and sweets – are now banned online, and can only be shown on broadcast TV after 9pm. In a month already strongly associated with the giving up of bad habits and turning over of new leaves, restraint on the part of advertisers has been made compulsory.
Rising childhood obesity is the reason. Our exclusive report last week, on calls by doctors for children’s blood pressure testing, hammered home the dangers of obesity and the case for preventing it. The longer-term trend, both nationally and internationally, is widely recognised as alarming. Since the national child measurement programme was launched 20 years ago, the proportion of primary‑age children in England who are obese has risen from 17.5% to 22.1% (although since 2020-21, when a record proportion of children were obese or overweight, there has been some improvement).
Obesity deepens inequality, with the prevalence of childhood obesity in the most deprived areas around twice as high as in the wealthiest ones. The worse health associated with poor diet and excess weight, including type 2 diabetes and the risk of stroke, is thus added to other hardships. This concentration of obesity, and particularly its most severe forms, in the most deprived neighbourhoods is one reason why the new restrictions on advertising should be welcomed. As with gambling, smoking and other harmful consumer goods, the uneven impact of unhealthy processed foods, and the risks they present to already-vulnerable households, is arguably the single most damaging thing about them.
While adults can be expected, in a liberal society, to take a share of responsibility for their choices – just as businesses run by adults should be expected to take responsibility for theirs – the same is not true of children, who in many cases do not have the information, let alone the maturity, to make decisions about how much fat, sugar and salt to eat. For a Labour government, narrowing the gaps that restrict the life chances of disadvantaged children must always be a priority.
Public debate about obesity has become dominated by new weight-loss drugs to a remarkable extent. But in the UK they have been offered only to a tiny minority of severely obese children – making it all the more essential that prevention and public health work around food are not disregarded. While the jabs’ long-term effects remain unknown, the importance of a healthy lifestyle is in any case not reducible to body weight but encompasses exercise and nutrition. In a wealthy country such as the UK, every child should have the chance to acquire such habits.
Charities including Sustain have strongly criticised concessions granted on the back of industry lobbying, including a decision that brand advertising will still be allowed as long as products aren’t displayed. They are right to be wary. Ominously, last year was a bumper year for sales of snack foods, and spending on billboard and poster sites, where rules are less strict, is already up. But while the new rules will not end childhood obesity – and should have been in place sooner – as with other half measures, they are much better than none at all.
