Advertising of high fat, salt or sugar (HFSS) food and drink during children’s television programmes has been banned in the UK since 2007. The Government has recently announced that they will consult on further advertising restrictions for products high in fat, salt and sugar on TV.
The effects of further restrictions on health outcomes will depend on a number of factors: how exposure to advertising is affected, how firms respond in terms of prices, reformulation and other behaviours, how these changes affect the purchase and consumption decisions that households and individuals make, how all of this varies across individuals and how reductions in consumption affects health outcomes.
In this report we discuss the potential effects of banning all advertising of HFSS food and drink before the watershed and how this will depend on each of the channels mentioned above, highlighting where there is uncertainty about the magnitude of the effects.
Authors
Rachel Griffith
Rachel is Research Director and Professor at the University of Manchester. She was made a Dame for services to economic policy and education in 2021.
Martin O'Connell
Martin, previously Deputy Research Director, is a Research Fellow at IFS and Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin.
Kate Smith
Kate is an IFS Research Fellow and an Assistant Professor at LSE, interested in public finance, industrial organisation and applied microeconomics.
Rebekah Stroud
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