UK regulators launch new consultation on food advertising ban

The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) and the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) have issued a consultation on proposed changes to the CAP and BCAP codes to implement upcoming UK restrictions on advertising less healthy food and drink products.

The new restrictions, which will take effect from 5 January 2026, will prohibit adverts for “identifiable” less healthy products from being included in Ofcom-regulated television services and on-demand programme services between 5:30am and 9:00pm. They will also not be allowed to be placed in paid-for space on the internet.

In the UK, a less healthy food or drink product is said to be “identifiable” in advertising if someone could reasonably be expected to be able to identify the advertisement as being linked to that product.

Read more on ‘less healthy’ food advertising restrictions

• Less healthy food ad delay welcomed by food and beverage industry
• CAP update shows complexity of UK ‘less healthy’ food and drink advertising ban
• UK government consults on strengthening soft drinks 'sugar tax'
• Guidance provides some clarity to "less healthy" food advertising ban

Restrictions on advertising less healthy food and drinks were due to come into force in October 2025, but in early July the government said it was postponing their implementation following mounting pressure from advertisers, broadcasters and online platforms that have raised concerns about the clarity of the underlying legislation.

The latest consultation follows two previous consultation exercises related to the restrictions, but the regulators warned earlier this year that confusion over the scope of the legislation would require clarification and new implementation guidance for businesses and advertisers. That confusion primarily concerned parts of the legislation relating to brand advertising and, in particular, whether brand advertising fell out of the scope of the restrictions.

The regulations (4 pages / 189KB) seek to remedy this by including an exemption for “brand advertisements”, which promote a brand without explicitly referring to or featuring a specific product, from the scope of the new advertising restrictions.

The regulators reiterated that further consultation was now needed to offer “stakeholders the opportunity to comment again in full on all aspects of the proposals”. The consultation, which closes on 9 October, is being conducted on behalf of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which is responsible for enforcing the restrictions from 5 January 2026, but has yet to issue definitive guidance on their implementation.

Commenting on the latest consultation, Zoe Betts, a regulatory law expert at Pinsent Masons, said: “Whilst the proposed rules change and implementation guidance contained in the consultation seek to clarify the position, questions still remain. Extremes are always easy to anticipate; it is the middle ground where difficulties often occur.”

Betts said even organisations keen to work within the regulations risked “falling foul of more nuanced interpretations of terms capable of differing understandings”, and hoped the regulator would support organisations to understand the restrictions and how to comply once in force.

In line with the legislation, the consultation proposes excluding from the exemption any advertisements that depict a specific less healthy food or drink product. It also proposes that any advertisement that promotes a brand whose name is of a specific less healthy food or drink product should not be exempt.

However, it says there should be an exception if the product’s full name is either the name or is included in the name of a company, franchise or other commercial entity established before 16 July 2025, and that it held that name immediately before that date. An exemption should also apply if the name relates to a brand of a range of products where that brand was in use, as the brand of that range, for the purposes of marketing, advertising or retail sale immediately before 16 July 2025, and the range held that name immediately before 16 July 2025.

The regulators also propose that there should be no exemption for content which includes a ‘realistic image’ of a food or drink product, which shows the food or drink itself and not only the product’s packaging, and that the food or drink product is visually indistinguishable from a specific less healthy food or drink product. There are also exemptions for small or medium enterprises, where they pay for the advertisement.

For online advertisements, the regulators highlight that paying for advertisements includes providing any consideration – whether monetary or non-monetary – and payment under a sponsorship agreement as a result of which advertisements are placed on the internet.

Guidance is provided in an annex to the consultation and includes examples of imagery and where it would or would not be included in the prohibition exemption. These include guidance on a “realistic image”, which is defined as “a photograph, a video recording, or an image, whether still or moving, and however created or altered, that is so realistic as to make it indistinguishable, for all practical purposes, from a photograph or video recording.” It urges users to “exercise caution over use of realistic forms of product imagery.”