Junk Food Ad Ban Legislation
The government have finalised a new law that will prevent children being exposed to TV adverts for unhealthy food products before the 9pm watershed. The law will come into place from October 2025 and will also include a ban on paid online unhealthy food adverts.
The ban is hoped to reduce children’s excessive exposure to food products high in salt, sugar and fat and help curb the rising rates of childhood obesity and obesity-related diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.
In a statement from the Minister for Public Health and Prevention, Andrew Gwynne MP quoted “this delivers on our Manifesto commitment to implement the junk food advertising restrictions without further delay and in doing so we expect to remove 7.2 billion calories from UK children’s diets per year and reduce the number of children living with obesity by 20,000.”
It should be noted however, that these restrictions will only apply to identifiable products in an advert, meaning a company can still advertise provided they don’t explicitly feature images and videos any of the products classed as unhealthy.
Further legislation details can be found on the government website.
