Big food brands dramatically increased their spending on advertising last year, months before new junk food regulations aiming to curb Britain’s obesity crisis are due to come into force, the Observer can reveal.
Food companies spent an extra £420m in 2024, an increase of 26% year on year that coincided with a bumper 12 months for sales of snack foods. Shoppers bought an extra 45.4m packs of chocolate, cakes and crisps from the top-selling brands.
The spending bonanza came as campaigners said food corporations were switching tactics to circumvent the impact of the upcoming regulations, which will bring in a 9pm watershed for TV commercials showing unhealthy food products, and ban them online from October, after five years of delays.
Outdoor posters, audio advertising on podcasts and streaming services such as Spotify, and partnerships with social media influencers are not covered by the regulations.
The increase in spending and the suggestion it may have led to an increase in sales may fuel calls for further restrictions. James McDonald, the director of data, intelligence and forecasting at WARC Media, which monitors ad spend and recorded the 26% increase, said it was “not surprising that we saw sales lift in line with spend”. He added: “I think the timing is interesting, given the introduction of HFSS [foods high in fat, salt or sugar] regulation this year.”
New unpublished data analysed by academics at University College London and the Pan American Health Organization, including Chris van Tulleken, the NHS doctor and broadcaster, and shared with the Observer, found that the junk food ad regulations would only cover less than two-thirds of foods that could be considered unhealthy according to government nutrition guidelines.
Health campaigners say food companies are adopting tactics similar to those used by the tobacco industry in the battle over cigarette advertising, by focusing on brands and logos rather than products. The advertising industry has argued that uncertainty over regulations threatens the sector and said ministers should legislate to exempt brand-only ads from the regulations.
A battleground has opened up over whether the rules should cover adverts that only feature a brand name such as McDonald’s or Cadbury without showing an “identifiable” product.
Allowing brand ads would mean that Cadbury could run its memorable drumming gorilla ad, for example, before the watershed so long as there were no images of chocolate bars.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is about to issue guidelines for advertisers clarifying issues like this, after suggesting that it would examine adverts on a case-by-case basis. Ahead of this crucial decision, both sides have ramped up their messaging.
Archie Norman, the Marks and Spencer chair, told the Financial Times earlier this month that the regulations would “stop people talking about mince pies” and threaten future Christmas ads.
Bite Back 2030, a youth activist group fighting the influence of junk food, surveyed 859 poster sites in Liverpool, Birmingham, Newcastle and Southwark in London and found nearly half were for food and drink. They also found that 44% of all HFSS food ads were in the most deprived areas, while only 4% were in the least deprived.
The government appeared to come down on the side of advertisers last week. Ashley Dalton, a junior health minister, issued a statement saying “pure brand advertising” should not be restricted, and that the government did “not expect the perception or association of a corporate brand with less healthy products to automatically bring an advert into scope of the restrictions”.
Last week an investigation by the BMJ found that local authorities were shelving restrictions on junk-food poster adverts in their areas after warnings from ad companies that they would lose revenue.
“The only foods that are marketed in this country, almost without exception, are high in fat, salt or sugar,” Van Tulleken told the Observer. He said there were “no really functional marketing restrictions” for children on harmful food brands. “And I’m not enormously optimistic that anything that’s going to happen in October will significantly change that, because companies advertise on bus tickets … they have billboards advertising the brand, if not the product, up and down the street,” he added.
Van Tulleken said there was “saturation” of unhealthy food brands across the country. “They’re in every shop, at every convenience store, in every supermarket, at every petrol station. They have complete 360 degree coverage, and the alternatives are inaccessible and unavailable and unaffordable for many, many, many people.”
Curbing advertising on less healthy food products has long been considered a key part of tackling the UK’s obesity crisis.In 1980, only 6% of men and 9% of women were obese, according to the National Heights and Weights Survey, while processed food made up 26% of kitchen groceries and families spent 57% of their food budgets on ingredients, according to research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
By 2022, 28% of adults in England were classed as obese by the NHS, with two-thirds of all calories in UK diets coming from processed or ultra-processed food.
The first government restrictions on ads for less healthy foods arrived in 2007, with some commercials banned during children’s TV shows. In 2018, after mounting evidence that children were still seeing junk food commercials, Theresa May bowed to pressure from campaigners such as Jamie Oliver to introduce a 9pm watershed for ads.
Legislation was eventually passed in 2023 and the Advertising (Less Healthy Food Definitions and Exemptions) Regulations 2024 will come into effect on 1 October, with the aim, like the soft drinks levy, of encouraging food brands to reformulate their products or introduce new ones.
Rob Newman, the director of public affairs at ISBA, which represents brands advertising in the UK, said they were “extremely concerned” about the implications of the new restrictions and said the ASA was “caught on the horns of dilemma”.
“The impact of brand ads being caught … could amount to hundreds of millions of pounds of lost revenue, redirection of spend outside the UK, or the inability to use ad campaigns which have already been prepared on the basis of what was understood to be the legislative position,” Newman said.
Nicki Whiteman, Bite Back 2030’s chief brand officer, said: “The echoes of tobacco are everywhere. Instead of acknowledging and taking accountability for the extraordinary power these companies have over children’s health, what they do instead, just like Big Tobacco did, is look for ways around it.
“Children across the world, all you [need] to do is show them a yellow M and they’ll know exactly what that stands for.”
McDonald’s and Mondelez, which owns Cadbury, declined to comment.
Katharine Jenner, director of the Obesity Health Alliance, said food companies use “sophisticated techniques to keep unhealthy products in the spotlight” and exposure to unhealthy food marketing influences children’s preferences.
“We now appear to be witnessing a final surge in less healthy food advertising before the rules come in, underlining why voluntary approaches have repeatedly failed and will continue to do so,” she said. “These long-delayed restrictions are sensible, proportionate, and evidence-based. Most importantly, they are a crucial step towards protecting children’s health.”
