- Growing food together
- Calling for hospital food standards
- Campaigning for bees, forage and a pesticide free city
- 2,012 new food growing spaces by the end of 2012
- For better school food, and food skills, and protecting children from junk food marketing
- An informal network of London restaurants and catering businesses that care about sustainability
- Evidence of the contribution of food and farming to climate change
- Find or set up a Food Co-op in your area
- Helping producers, consumers, retailers and caterers provide healthy and sustainable food
- Inspired by the London 2012 Food Vision, the campaign for healthy and sustainable food in catering
- Sustainable food news in London
- Working for sustainable food at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games
- For bread made with natural ingredients
- Challenging businesses and citizens to make London the world's first Sustainable Fish City
- Practical advice for anyone interested in buying and using more sustainable food
download
Download a PDF version of The 21st century gingerbread house - how companies are marketing junk food to children online
resources
Visit the Children’s Food Campaign homepage, or follow the links below to view pages from this site section
This joint report from the Children’s Food Campaign (CFC) and the British Heart Foundation (BHF) reveals the manipulative tactics junk food manufacturers use to hook children while they play online and entice them to eat foods loaded with fat, salt and sugar.
The report assesses how junk food manufacturers bombard kids online in a bid to push these unhealthy products. The CFC and BHF are calling for consistent advertising regulations across all forms of media to protect children and their future health.
All the brands featured in the report are products which are high in fat, salt or sugar (HFSS). Advertisements for these products can’t be shown during children’s television programmes because they fail the Food Standards Agency and Ofcom nutrient profiling test. Yet due to a loophole in advertising regulations, companies are allowed to market these products and brands freely via the internet.
The key online tactics of food manufacturers include:
- Bespoke websites which appeal to children through the use of language intended for, spoken by or directly to children.
- Brand characters, cartoons and animations which are enormously popular with children.
- Free gifts including apps, downloads, ringtones and games of appeal to children.
- The use of social networking sites as a way to encourage children to share the brand with their friends.
Contents
Introduction
What’s the problem?
The advertising rules
What we did
What we found
The Tactics
- Krave - krave.com
- Cheestrings - cheestrings.co.uk
- Nesquick - nesquick.co.uk
- Sugar Puffs - honeymonster.co.uk
- Capri-Sun - capri-sun.co.uk
- Rowntree - rowntrees.co.uk
- Chupa Chups - chupachups.com
- Cadburys Buttons - buttonsfurrytales.com
What needs to happen
Registered charity (no.