Greasy fried restaurant food including onion ring burger and French fried chicken hot dogs … [+]
The UK government says it will ban junk food advertisements online and on television before 9pm in a bid to tackle obesity.
Health Minister Andrew Gwynne told MPs The new rules would come into effect on Thursday from October next year.
They are designed to prevent children from seeing commercials and other advertisements for foods high in fat, salt and sugar.
“These restrictions will help protect children from advertising for less healthy food and drinks, which the evidence shows influences their food preferences from an early age,” Gwynne said.
Childhood obesity is a major public health problem in Britain More than a fifth of British children aged 4 to 5 were overweight between 2022 and 2023, official figures show. That share grew to about 37% for children aged 10 to 11.
Gwynne’s announcement when the government a damning report in the state of the country’s public health system, the National Health Service, by surgeon Lord Ara Darzi.
Darzi said the NHS was in “serious trouble” as it tries to care for an increasingly sick population with already massively overstretched resources.
The NHS has seen waiting times for urgent, urgent and elective care increase since the pandemic. Darzi said a decade of austerity and a lack of investment in healthcare has left the country vulnerable heading into COVID-19. Meanwhile, rising inequality has widened the health gap between the richest and the poorest.
Public health strategies that can prevent people from getting sick in the first place are seen as key to helping the country cope with the growing burden of disease that is expected to rise as the growing population ages.
“The country wants our broken NHS fixed,” Gwynne told MPs on Thursday. “This requires a prevention revolution, tackling the causes of preventable diseases and reducing demand for healthcare services. One of these pressures is the childhood obesity crisis, which is causing children to lead unhealthy lives and putting even greater pressure on the NHS.”
Some local areas are taking further steps to prevent children from seeing junk food ads. Last week, Liverpool city councilors announced they would consider banning the promotions in public places such as billboards.
Other areas, such as the City of York, have already taken similar steps. In 2019, London’s transport network banned junk food advertisements. But they can still be found in many other public spaces in the city.
The ban on junk food advertising was originally proposed by Britain’s previous Conservative-led government. It is one of two high-profile public health policies that the country’s new Labor government has pledged to continue.
Officials have also pledged to implement a first-of-its-kind smoking ban that would make it illegal to sell cigarettes and other tobacco products to anyone born before or after 2009.
The law, first proposed by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, would not criminalize smoking itself.
It mirrored legislation enacted in 2022 by Jacinda Ardern’s Labor government in New Zealand. But an upcoming national-led coalition government the rules have been deleted last year before they could come into effect.