Tuesday 22nd April 2008

Truro & St Austell MP Matthew Taylor is calling on the Government to pass laws preventing adverts aimed at children which encourage eating unhealthy junk foods.

Mr. Taylor has pledged his support for The Children’s Food Campaign, which campaigns to improve the diets and health of the nation’s children. A third of children in the UK are overweight or obese, which can lead to the early onset of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Mr. Taylor is backing the Campaign’s call for a 9pm watershed for junk food advertising on television. The MP also wants the Government to regulate non-broadcast methods of marketing more strictly, including sponsorship, text messing, and the internet.

Commenting, he said:

"In the last few years the impact of junk food on the health of our children has finally appeared on the public agenda. As a father of two young sons I am deeply concerned about the way in which advertisers spend vast amounts of time and money encouraging our children to eat unhealthily, undoing the good work that many parents do teaching their children to eat well.”

The Campaign is run by Sustain, the charity alliance for better food and farming, in partnership with the British Heart Foundation  They are advocating that foods classed as ‘less healthy’ by the Food Standards Agency are subject to Trading Standards regulations requiring that food manufacturers and advertisers must not act to promote unhealthy food to children.    

Mr Taylor added:

“One in three British children are now seriously overweight or obese, and it’s high time the Government stepped in to make manufacturers and advertisers behave responsibly.”