Is It Time for Governments to Act on Junk Food?

Junk food is everywhere, to the point where its proliferation has become a defining feature of the modern diet. But with mounting evidence linking it to negative health, one question stands out - are governments doing enough to keep us away from it?

A few years ago I found myself deep in the Amazon jungle, visiting the Karipuna indigenous community for a FoodUnfolded documentary on deforestation. I had a box of chocolate candies with me, and without much thought, I handed one to a kid named Gabriel who was roaming around me and the crew. Gabriel chewed quickly, his eyes lighting up with joy, and then asked for another. I told him no, one was enough for now. I went back to setting up my hammock, thinking nothing of it. When I turned around a couple of minutes later, all the candies were gone. Gabriel had eaten them all. And it wasn’t Gabriel’s fault. He was just a kid doing what any kid would do tempted by a bag of unattended candies within arm's reach.

I knew better than to introduce new foods to indigenous children in a remote community with limited exposure to these types of foods. I berated myself for the mistake - what was I thinking, handing out sugar like that. This made me reflect on something else: would I have felt the same guilt if I had offered those candies to a friend’s child back in Italy? In the Amazon, where the environment still remains largely untouched by junk food, we understand the need to protect that purity. Yet, back home, we’ve accepted unhealthy food as a normal, if not culturally entwined, part of our daily life. But how much better would our children’s food environment be if we treated unhealthy foods with the same seriousness as we do preserving places like the Amazon? And who should be responsible for shaping our food environment?

What do we mean by junk food?

Junk food is usually defined as food that is high in calories but low in nutritional value. It contains high levels of added sugars, unhealthy fats, preservatives and sodium, with little to no beneficial nutrients like vitamins, minerals, and fibre.¹ There’s an open debate about whether ultra-processed food should be considered junk food – we talk about it here. But the short answer is that some ultra-processed foods are undeniably junk foods (think candy and sodas), while others are not (breakfast cereals and wholemeal bread).² Another fundamental feature of junk food is that it has the power to hook us, like that chocolate candy did with Gabriel in Brazil. It leads us to consume more calories than our bodies need and in turn to gain weight, which is the basis for the development of several chronic illnesses, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer.^{3, 4} I would go so far as to suggest that we shouldn’t even consider junk food as “food”: rather as a convenience commodity that we happen to ingest. 

Learn more about the ancient origins of our sugar cravings

Why we can’t rely on companies to protect our health 

In an ideal world, knowing that something we produce has harmful effects would be enough to make us want to improve it or to stop aggressively marketing it. But we don’t live in such a world, and it would be naive to expect junk food producers to prioritise public health over their bottom line. Despite gestures toward corporate social responsibility, the junk food industry’s main focus has remained selling as many crisps and sodas as possible – every year more than the last.⁵ Junk food is sold through aggressive marketing (cartoons, mascots, and influencers). It is usually placed strategically in supermarkets (often at eye level or near checkouts, to encourage impulse buying).⁶ And junk food producers have been focusing on growing new markets in lower income countries among rural populations, where regulation is often weaker, through sophisticated and hyper-localised distribution strategies.⁷ For example, in Mexico, Coca-Cola provides store owners what is needed to run tiendas – informal street vendors or family-run general stores – on the condition that the tiendas stock and promote Coca-Cola drinks.⁸

It seems that when left to their own devices, junk food companies and distributors will not voluntarily reduce the production or marketing of unhealthy products. Thankfully, prioritising public health is a government’s job, and governments have the power to regulate not only what goes into our food, but also how it’s marketed. Still, many governments are failing to do enough, and intense lobbying by segments of the corporate food industry fights hard to keep any profit-harming regulations weak and ineffective.⁹ They’ve done it by funding scientists to argue against regulations, promoting weak self-regulation policies that are poorly implemented and enforced, and even interfering with health advocacy organisations using threats and spyware.^{10, 11} Despite these challenges, some countries have made strides to protect their citizens. Here’s a look at consequential policies that can help build a better food environment.

What governments can do: a closer look

1. Effective taxation

Several countries are using taxes to tackle unhealthy eating habits, and they’re making a difference. For example, in Mexico and South Africa taxes on sugary drinks have cut soda sales by about a third. In the UK, a sugar tax led many soda companies to lower their sugar content significantly: between 2015 and 2019, the percentage of sodas with more than 5g of sugar per 100 mL dropped from 49% to just 15%, and it has been estimated that the tax may have prevented over 5,000 cases of obesity.^{7, 12} Taxes work because they push companies to make a choice. If they decide to keep their products ‘sugary’, the resulting tax increases production costs, leading to higher consumer prices and the potential risk of losing customers. Alternatively, they can reduce the sugar content to avoid the tax and keep prices lower. Following the UK sugar tax, Coca-Cola and Britvic cut the overall sugar in their drinks sold in the UK by 17% and 26%, but their flagship sodas, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, kept the same sugar content. Other companies didn't do as well; Innocent and Red Bull even sold more sugary drinks, with no major changes in their products' sugar levels.¹³ Now, taxes of this kind surely have limitations: focusing on one ingredient only, for example, doesn’t address other aspects of unhealthy diets, such as high fat, salt, and calorie content. They also don’t save us from the industry’s attempts at getting around the tax, for example replacing sugar with dubiously healthier alternatives.¹⁴ Their scope could be broadened to capture junk foods more generally, but it is not going to be easy to make such a tax acceptable to industry. In the European Region, only 10 out of 53 countries had adopted similar taxes by 2020.¹⁵

2. Clear and honest labelling

Consumers can make healthier choices when they have access to clear and accurate information about what they’re eating. Labels that grade food from A to F on healthiness, based on sugar, salt, saturated fat, nutrients, and calorie content, have been effective. Nutri-Score is Europe’s most popular health labelling system of this kind. It’s used by seven EU countries and is being proposed as the new norm to standardise food labels across the European Union. However, it has come under fire for unfairly grading certain products and oversimplifying nutrition. For example, a sugar-free and calorie-free energy drink with the maximum content of caffeine and taurine allowed by law might receive a B grade, despite potential risks like cardiac arrhythmia and heart failure from excessive consumption.¹⁶ But Parmesan might receive a really bad grade because of its high levels of saturated fat and salt, even though a small amount won’t significantly impact health. Despite these issues, a refined Nutri-Score, perhaps linked to consumption frequency and quantities, could help us make informed decisions – not necessarily to ban any foods from our diets, but to understand which foods and commodities should be consumed in moderation for better health.

The Nutri-Score has come under fire for unfairly grading certain products and oversimplifying nutrition.

3. Restricting marketing to children

Children are particularly vulnerable to marketing tactics, and the eating habits we establish during childhood often persist into adulthood.¹⁷ To respond to this challenge, countries like Chile and Colombia have introduced strict regulations on junk food advertising targeting kids. They’ve banned cartoon characters on unhealthy food packaging and added stop sign labels to foods high in fat, salt, and sugar content.⁷ Since these measures were introduced in 2016, Chile has seen positive changes: products are being made with healthier ingredients, unhealthy foods are selling less, and children’s eating habits are improving. A study from the University of North Carolina, the University of Chile, and the Mexican Institute for Public Health, found that Chilean children cut their sugar intake by more than 10% after the law was enacted.¹⁸ However, public health researchers have acknowledged that Chile’s ambitions have failed to include some ultra-processed foods, so broader restrictions on junk food advertising could be a key step in shifting public consumption patterns.¹⁹ But it would have to be done right, in a way that includes the worst ultra-processed foods, not as a blanket approach that targets all of them. 

At the moment, there is no risk that the EU is being unfair to the industry, rather the opposite: there are no binding EU-wide rules that rein in food marketing to children. The only safeguard is a voluntary initiative by major food companies, called the ‘EU Pledge’.²⁰ But a study found that this voluntary approach is too weak and permissive to prevent obesity effectively.²¹ Dr. Kremlin Wickramasinghe from the World Health Organisation (WHO) pointed out that many brands still promote unhealthy products to children in Europe, and self-regulation isn’t enough to protect them.²¹ For this reason, in 2022 the WHO developed a set of nutritional criteria to guide governments in creating stronger policies to shield children from harmful food marketing.²²

4. Making schools junk food free zones

Besides advertising, schools play a crucial role in fighting childhood obesity. Back in 2005, France took a bold step by banning vending machines that sold junk food and sugary drinks in schools. This move faced strong opposition from the country’s largest vending machine distributor, who argued that education, not a ban, was the answer.²³ But was the ban really a bad idea? According to a 2018 study, not at all. The study concluded that the ban led to a 10g reduction in sugar intakes from morning snacks at school and significantly fewer snack breaks. The study also suggested that while bans can help control unhealthy behaviour in regulated environments, they’re not a complete solution. In other words, yes, children still need to learn healthy habits outside of school.²⁴ But while more education is essential, it’s a bit too convenient for those with ties to the junk food industry to push only for education. In this case too, the EU is far from being unfair to industry: currently there’s no EU-wide ban or reduction policy on junk food in schools.

In 2005, Celebrity Chef Jamie Oliver successfully campaigned for healthier school dinners in the UK, leading to many junk foods being banned, limitations on fried foods being introduced and the banning of fizzy drinks. Photos via Getty Images. 

5. Improving food environments

If banning is not considered a desirable avenue by our governments, we could ask for them to at least nudge us in the right direction. ‘Nudging’, a strategy that subtly influences behaviour without restricting choices, has shown promise in promoting healthier eating habits. A study conducted at train station snack shops in the Netherlands found that simply repositioning healthy snacks like fruits and muesli bars near cash registers significantly increased their sales. The effect remained strong even when customers were informed about the nudge.²⁵ England has recognised the power of such interventions, implementing restrictions on unhealthy food at checkouts in 2022 to reduce junk food purchases. Similar rules have also been applied in the digital sphere, banning sales links to unhealthy foods on places such as homepages, or at checkout payment pages.²⁶ A year after the new regulation kicked in, a study found that retailers, manufacturers, consumers, enforcement officers, and health representatives across England’s food system all supported the legislation.²⁷

6. Funding independent research

Last but not least, our governments can (and should) invest in independent research on the long term health effects of junk food consumption and on the effectiveness of various policies. We need a solid base of independently sourced evidence that governments can use to develop well-informed policies. Ideally, policies that don’t prioritise the short term interests of a small handful of powerful industry groups over the broader public and long term future of the industries they regulate. But effective policy-making requires reliable data, and a lot of research on food and nutrition is still funded by the very industry it seeks to regulate – with industry manifestos often passing as reputable studies to the untrained eye. If you’re interested to learn more about the ways lobby groups can skew science in favour of their own goals, I suggest reading our investigation into the tactics used by major EU lobby groups conducted earlier this year.

Our role is holding governments accountable

While we can understand that choosing to eat junk food is a personal decision, that decision is heavily influenced by the environment around us. We need to remember that, as citizens, we have the power to question and change the spaces we live in. If our surroundings are making it harder for us to make healthy choices, we should speak up and push for better regulations. The real question isn’t whether governments should act, but whether they will - chances are higher if we ask for it.