Junk Food Advertising and Obesity

Welcome to the latest episode of the ScHARR Communicable Research Podcast and for this episode we are going to explore the topic of junk food advertisements. To discuss this, we are joined by Dr Penny Breeze and Fran Bernhardt.

Penny joined ScHARR as a PhD student and has been working as a health economics modeller ever since. Penny's research interests are in methods for longitudinal data analysis for the use in decision-analytic modelling. Specifically in complex public health decision problems for obesity and diabetes prevention. Penny co-authored a paper which looked at the health, cost and equity impacts of restrictions on the advertisement of what can be best described as junk foods across the transport for London network. This was a health economic modelling study.

We are also joined by Fran Bernhardt who is a Children's Food Campaign Coordinator at Sustain where she specialises in restricting the marketing of unhealthy food to children. Fran advises the Mayor of London's team to write and implement their groundbreaking Healthier Food Advertising Policy across the Transport for London network (AKA "the junk food ad ban"). In addition, she now supports over 100 local authorities across the UK to change their advertising policies, and has successfully implemented 6 new healthier food advertising policies at local government level since the TfL restrictions.