No need for ban on kids food ads - for now

Back in December 2003, the British government asked the regulator to assess whether increasing levels of food and drink advertising to kids had a major impact on children's health. The six-month investigation took the form of more than 2,000 interviews with children, parents, teachers and nutritionists to explore why children choose the food they do, how food promotion influences this, and the key messages children take from television advertising.

In addition, Ofcom asked an independent expert - Professor Sonia Livingstone of the London School of Economics - to conduct a full review of relevant academic research, and analysed data from other studies, including details of family eating habits drawn from a panel of 11,000 people, including more than 2,000 children.

The watchdog also analysed audience research data to assess children's television viewing habits, and analysed data on the food advertising market, including the size of the market, advertising spending and details of the range of creative approaches used in television advertising of food products.

While Ofcom's research showed that television advertising does indeed have a modest direct effect on children's food consumption, but that the significance of this is small when compared to other factors potentially linked to childhood obesity such as exercise, trends in family eating habits inside and outside the home, parents' demographics, school policy, public understanding of nutrition, food labelling and other forms of food promotion.

"On that basis, Ofcom has concluded that a total ban on such advertising would be both ineffective and disproportionate in its wider impact,"​ the regulator said in a statement, citing a number of reasons.

Firstly, some 70 per cent of children's viewing takes place outside of children's airtime, traditionally defined as the after-school slot on weekdays, Saturday mornings and throughout the day on dedicated children's channels on cable and satellite, meaning that any ban would affect only 30 per cent of children's viewing occasions.

It added that other countries had banned aspects of television advertising to children but that there was only limited data available as to the efficacy of this approach - and that what data there was either unclear or contested.

The watchdog also pointed out that defining exactly which foods were 'bad' and should therefore be banned was still a matter for much heated debate - and that he only way a ban would be in any way effective would be if it included every single type of food and drink product, regardless as to their nutritional value or potentially positive contribution to health.

Instead, the agency suggests, a community approach is needed to tackling childhood obesity. The TV advertising watchdog said it would continue to work with the Department of Health and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in their analysis of childhood obesity, and that it would reassess the need for a ban on some kinds of food advertising to children once the FSA had completed its nutritional profiling of all food products later this year - since this at least would allow some separation of 'good' foods from 'bad'.

It also announced plans for a public consultation in the autumn which would assess the wider reaction to a proposed ban. Based on its own research, Ofcom suggests that most parents do not support an outright ban on television advertising but instead want better information about the nutritional content of the products being advertised.

However, most would also like adverts directed at young children to be less attractive, for example by avoiding the use of cartoon characters.

The full Ofcom report can be found on the watchdog's website​.