The Guardian carries a story on the attempts by the British telecommunications regulator, Ofcom, to ban the advertising of junk food to children. How do they administer the ban?

if the proportion of the audience under 16 is more than 20% higher than the proportion of under-16s in the UK population as a whole, the programme is defined as one which attracts a significantly higher than average proportion of viewers in that age group.

And for such programmes, the advertising of foods high in fat, sugar, and salt (HFSS) is prohibited. It's a smart move. For every $1 spent on promoting healthy food, $500 is spent on junk food - and the desirability of junk food explains, in no small part, the increasing rates of childhood obesity, as Marion Nestle has argued in the New England Journal of Medicine. ... read more »

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Posted on 28 November, 2006 - 05:52