Wednesday, March 06, 2019

The Difficulty of Targetting Junk Food (Advertising)

It's often suggested that the state should ban the advertising of junk food, particularly to children. Saqiq Khan's (long proposed) ban on such advertising on London public transplant recently came into force. (This, of course, comes on top of the recent sugar tax.)

This Spectator article neatly summarises one problem with these proposals though. There is no agreed definition of junk food. What's actually banned is the advertising of food high in fat, sugar, or salt, but this includes (amongst other things) many tinned fruits, cereals, and jams. (Another blow for our post-Brexit economy, based on jam and biscuits.)

A lot of foods people might think of as 'healthy' could fall foul of these restrictions on supposedly 'unhealthy' food. For instance, fruit smoothies are high in sugar.

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