London, UK - Today, the government’s new regulations restricting advertising of less healthy food or drink on TV and online (first announced way back in 2018), take effect. The regulations restrict advertising of products classified as high in fat, salt, or sugar (HFSS) online and before 9pm on TV.

Nesta believes that whilst the regulation has the right intention behind it - and designing rules like these is difficult in a complex food and advertising landscape with unavoidable trade-offs - this win for health is much smaller than it could have been.

For example, the new rules restrict specific HFSS products, but allow all companies to advertise their brand or product ranges - so McDonald’s cannot advertise a specific HFSS burger, but ads featuring the ‘Happy Meal’ range or recognisable Golden Arches brand will still be allowed to play across TV and online. Similarly, Cadbury’s can continue to advertise the ‘Dairy Milk Buttons’ range, just not individual products within that range.

Because the regulations do not cover outdoor advertising, such as billboards, or company-owned channels, such as social media or direct marketing (e.g. text messaging), Nesta also believes there is a risk that advertising of HFSS products will just move to those forms of advertising. The Food Foundation found that advertising spend by food companies in outdoor settings, such as billboards and on public transport, increased by 28% between 2021 and 2024, compared to relatively stagnant spending on TV ads.

Since the UK government announced its plans for the regulations eight years ago, there have been five separate government consultations and four delays to the rollout - with industry pushing back on the implementation timeline twice. The brand and range exemption have been at least in part influenced by industry and trade bodies. Between 2010 and 2023, ministers met with food businesses and their trade associations around 40 times more often than with food NGOs and public-interest organisations.

Nesta has published a new blog today outlining these concerns and the opportunity for the government to use its announced healthy food standard to enforce more effective regulations.

Hugo Harper, director of healthy life at Nesta, said: “Advertising can have a big impact on driving people to choose less healthy food and hundreds of millions of pounds are spent yearly by businesses to advertise unhealthy products that are helping to fuel rising rates of obesity.

“Our research found that more comprehensive restrictions on advertising could be highly impactful, potentially reducing adult obesity by 16% in relative terms and benefiting the Government by as much as £10 billion per year in reduced costs to the NHS and other areas.

“However, the regulations that are coming into force today have some clear loopholes. Brands and product ranges will still be allowed to advertise at any time, and the rules do not cover many types of advertising, including social media advertising, billboards and advertising on public transport. It is hard to see how this policy will have the full desired impact with these loopholes.

“There is clearly room for improvement on the advertising of unhealthy food at times where they are more likely to reach children - for example by requiring a healthy food item to be in any brand-level advertising, or for adverts for product ranges to have to be majority healthy food. Businesses will tend to exploit loopholes in regulations. That’s why an outcomes-based approach, such as the government’s announced healthy food standard - where targets are set and retailers can find their own way to meet them - is likely to have a much better effect on reducing obesity. It’s also likely that changes to advertising would be part of the way retailers would have to achieve those targets.”

Under the new regulations, the definition of less healthy food and drink used to ban adverts about a product relies on it both exceeding the UK Government’s Nutrient Profiling Model (NPM) threshold for being considered ‘less healthy’ and falling within one of thirteen specified food and drink categories. This classification means that many products which are less healthy based on the Government’s NPM, such as chocolate spread, can continue to be advertised because they do not fall within those thirteen specified categories.

Notes to editors:

• For more information on the analysis or to speak to one of the experts involved, please contact Kieran Lowe, Media Manager, on 020 7438 2576 or [email protected]. Spokespeople are available for broadcast interviews.

About Nesta

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