The Children's Food Campaign is rallying support for Food Products (Marketing to Children) Bill, which calls for a 9pm watershed restriction on junk food adverts, in a retaliation to the government’s plans not to impose the ban in its new anti-obesity strategy tomorrow.
The Children's Food Campaign, which aims to improve children's health and wellbeing through better food and protecting children from junk food marketing, has said that until the government accepts the need to put the physical health of children ahead of the economic health of industry, the obesity crisis will not be tackled.
The abandoned plans to impose a pre-9pm ban on adverts for high fat, sugar and salt food is said to be safeguarding more than £200 million a year in TV advertising revenue. Many believed that the new obesity challenge, to be launched tomorrow by the health secretary, Alan Johnson, would dramatically extend the TV restrictions Ofcom brought in last year.
“It is clear that some in government, like Ed Balls, do recognise that the scale of the obesity crisis demands urgent action,” Richard Watts, Children’s Food Campaign co-ordinator. “However, if it is true that the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) has won a battle within Whitehall to keep tougher rules on junk food marketing out of the obesity strategy, it leaves a very large hole indeed.
“Simply bringing forward an Ofcom review of their current advertising rules will not help children one iota. Ofcom were responsible for the current fudged rules, which do not cover the majority of the programmes children watch most.”
More than 50 organisations have written to MPs calling on them to protect children from junk food advertising and marketing. Organisations that have signed the letter include the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, The Prince's Trust, Diabetes UK, the National Union of Teachers and the National Obesity Forum.
A total 82 per cent of parents support stricter controls on junk food and drink advertising that targets children, according to a recent BHF Food4Thought survey. The survey also found 64 per cent of parents are concerned that junk food and drink advertising affects their child's food choices.
