Nestlé boss attacks ban on sweet ads

The head of confection and foodservice giant Nestlé has spoken out against the UK’s plans to ban ads for chocolate and junk food.

Nestlé chief executive and chairman, Peter Brabeck, believes a ban on advertising is unjust, especially when the “negative effects” of video games have not been tackled.

Brabeck said: “Here we are talking about prohibiting advertising to children when at the same time we are giving them computer games that lead to violence, which is incredible.”

The ban, which was introduced by media regulator Ofcom to encourage healthy eating among children, comes into force this year and has already attracted criticism.

Braback argued that in countries where the ban was already in place, childhood obesity rates were no lower, suggesting these methods of banning advertising would not work anyway.

However the British Medical Association supports plans to reign in junk food and has called on food manufacturers to adopt traffic-light food-labelling to help the fight against obesity.

The system involves marking products red, amber or green dependent on the salt, sugar and fat content. The supermarket chain Tesco is against the new scheme, calling it too simplistic.

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By Jessica Harvey

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