Good morning. The television and online advertising landscape changed yesterday, as regulations came into force across the UK limiting the amount of “less healthy” food and drink products that can be shown during the daytime and online, in an attempt to reduce obesity in the UK.
For today’s newsletter I spoke to William Roberts, chief executive of the Royal Society for Public Health, about restricting advertising on these types of food – a policy aimed at reducing children’s exposure to junk food marketing – what the ban means for the snack industry, and whether this type of government intervention can have a positive impact. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
Venezuela | The deposed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro pleaded not guilty to drugs, weapons and narco-terrorism charges on Monday, two days after his shock capture by US special forces.
UK politics | Keir Starmer has publicly backed the Danish prime minister after she demanded Donald Trump stop threats to forcibly take over Greenland.
Immigration | Eighty “one in, one out” asylum seekers have accused the UK of degrading treatment leading to “severe psychological harm”.
France | A Paris court has convicted 10 people of online harassment over false social media claims that France’s first lady, Brigitte Macron, was a man.
US politics | Kamala Harris’s running mate during the 2024 US elections, Tim Walz, will not run for a third term as Minnesota governor.
In depth: Does restricting junk food advertising actually work?
The ban introduced yesterday will change the way “less healthy” food appears on our TV screens and internet, and while it does feel unlikely that people are going to feel nostalgic about adverts for Turkey Twizzlers and the like in the way people still romanticise Leonard Rossiter spilling Cinzano on Joan Collins, it marks a significant step.
“We want people to be healthier and happier, and to do that you have to make being healthy as easy as possible,” William Roberts tells me. “At the moment it’s really easy not to be healthy – and this kind of ban helps create the conditions where people can make healthier choices more easily.”
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Is obesity still a growing problem in the UK?
Despite obesity being treated as a public health issue for some time now in the UK, it remains a problem, with obesity continuing to rise among children. Roberts says about 27% of children are now either overweight or living with obesity, with children leaving school “five times more likely to develop diet-related conditions” if they are obese. “We have the third-highest rate of people living with obesity in Europe,” he says.
“The old idea that people are choosing this and it’s their fault just isn’t true,” he says. “Depending on who you are, how much money you have and what options are available to you, you have very different opportunities to make healthy choices.”
Roberts says the intention is to target products that “are highly calorific, but not necessarily particularly good for you”.
“It’s not about stopping people having access to those things,” he says. “It’s about reducing the likelihood of them wanting to choose those things… We know that those very high calorie, high sugar products are incredibly cheap and very heavily advertised.”
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What does the new advertising ban entail?
The ban covers television advertising for high fat, salt and sugar products up to the 9pm watershed, as well as paid-for online advertising at all times. “Online advertising is a bit of a wild west compared with television or print,” Roberts says, “so this is about reducing exposure on screen and online, particularly for children.”
The list of products potentially affected is wide-ranging, with government guidelines listing cereal bars, cakes, pastries, juice drinks, ice-cream, crisps, snacks and many more packaged foods and drinks as within scope.
Products are assessed on “A” nutrients (energy, saturated fat, total sugar and sodium) and “C” nutrients (fruit, vegetables and nut content, fibre and protein). The score for “C” nutrients is subtracted from the “A” nutrients score to give a final assessment. Of course, how that online component shakes down in a world of TikTok and Instagram influencers remains to be seen.
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Do we have any evidence that advertising bans work?
Roberts cites the junk food ban on Transport for London, introduced as a response to the capital having one of the highest child obesity rates in Europe, with children from more deprived areas disproportionately affected. Introduced in 2019 by the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, a study showed that 10 months later, reductions were seen in the consumption of fat, saturated fat, and sugar content.
“We know people do respond really well to these kinds of interventions,” Roberts says. “In London we saw a significant reduction in calorie intake – this isn’t a marginal effect.”
It is also, he says, potentially a popular policy with voters. “If you look at polling, this has broad support among all political voters. People support greater restrictions on the advertising of products to children.”
He points out that other regulatory changes around things like road safety, smoking and alcohol which appeared quite radical at the time are now considered commonplace. In the 1970s, for example, both the RAC and the police told the government they were against the compulsory wearing of seatbelts in cars.
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How has the industry responded to the proposal?
Roberts tells me reaction from the industry has been a “mixed bag”, pointing out that an advertising ban isn’t just a means to an end in itself. “There are companies within the industry who’ve done some really good stuff on this,” he says, “and we know that just the suggestion… will lead [organisations] to think about things like reformulation or changing the products they sell to make them healthier.”
Food manufacturers are there to make money and grow their businesses and markets, and Roberts says “obviously the industry is going to have issues with something that reduces the number of people purchasing it”.
“They want clarity and certainty. They don’t want things that change regularly. Once you know something’s happening and it’s going to happen, you can respond to that and you can put changes in place.
“Food is different from something like tobacco – we need food to live,” he says. “So you have to take industry with you, but also encourage them to do the right thing.”
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Could the ban have gone further?
You can always go further, Roberts says. “There’s a balance in this,” he explains, stressing that moves towards the ban were started under the previous Conservative government and that there is cross-party support for the measure.
“It’s a good start, and it shouldn’t be seen on its own,” he says, mentioning the extension of the soft drinks sugar levy to milkshakes, and moves to restrict access to energy drinks to children.
“You’ve got to think how do you support people to tackle obesity? You start somewhere, and then you can move along that spectrum if you start to see the benefits happening, and you build from there.”
“The challenge here,” he says, “is about how you both do something that’s going to support children to be healthy and fit and to live their best life and to be able to be really brilliant grownups when they get there, but also to push industry to go there too.”
What else we’ve been reading
The BBC’s Look and Read taught my generation in the 1970s about rare bird theft. Phoebe Weston brings a very 2026 update as the illegal trade in British birds is driven by the Middle East’s demand for elite falcons. Martin Belam
Damian Carrington explores new research that reveals how much politicians underestimate public support for climate action – galvanising reading for those of us trapped in a “spiral of silence”, mistakenly believing we’re alone in wanting change. Lucinda Everett, newsletters team
Nick Chen speaks to Ben Whishaw for Dazed about his eponymous turn in Peter Hujar’s Day, which I watched last week and is quite unlike any other film I’ve ever seen. Martin
As someone who spent many a childhood afternoon playing Prince of Persia, I loved reading about how it was made – especially the story of designer Jordan Mechner videotaping his brother running, jumping and climbing around a car park. Lucinda
I would never call myself a jazz aficionado, but this profile by Hugh Morris of Jessica Williams and the magic words “prepared piano” has me digging through her back catalogue. Martin
Sport
Football | Manchester United are yet to decide whether to appoint a permanent head coach for the remainder of the season or to do so in the summer, after the sacking of Ruben Amorim.
Cricket | England captain Ben Stokes is unlikely to face reprimand for his Ashes spat with Marnus Labuschagne.
Football | The striker Callum Wilson is in talks to leave West Ham just five months after joining as morale at the relegation threatened clubs hits a low.
The front pages
“Maduro says he is ‘prisoner of war’ and denies all charges in US court” is the Guardian splash. The Telegraph leads on Nicolás Maduro with “I’m a prisoner of war”, the Times runs “Defiant Maduro tells US court: I’m a prisoner of war” and the Mirror has “Mad men”. “Investors profit as Maduro faces court” is the FT take, while the Mail says “Greenland raid will finish Nato, Trump is warned”. “Over-70s face driving ban for failing new eyesight tests” is top story at the i paper. The Sun goes with “When your trophies are nil and you’ve cost 30 mil… That’s Amorim”.
Today in Focus
Can a youth club revival help the ‘anxious generation’?
What is the UK government planning for young people? Emma Warren reports.
Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
When he turned 50, long-distance runner and author Adharanand Finn concocted “a mad plan” to run around the entire island of Ireland. “Some might have said I was having a mid-life crisis, but I preferred to envisage it as a sort of pilgrimage – a journey in search of meaning and connection. And the obvious place to traverse, for me, was the land of my ancestors.”
Over 10 weeks, he ran 1,400 miles, with his wife and 15-year-old son following in a motorhome. He was blown away by Ireland’s scenery, but even more so by its people: the hardware shop owner who found him a fuse for his motorhome long after closing time; the musicians filling the pubs on “trad session” nights, “playing their fiddles, guitars and accordions, chatting among themselves between songs”; the many people who came out to run with him.
“There were times of struggle, and moments of transcendence,” says Finn, “but most of all I came away feeling that I had been taken in and looked after by Ireland.”
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