A consultation has been launched on how new guidelines defining “less healthy” food and drink products will be applied to the recently enacted restrictions on advertising such products.

We have already commented at length on the arduous process by which the Advertising (Less Healthy Food Definitions and Exemptions) Regulations finally came into force at the beginning of this year, imposing the following restrictions on businesses with more than 250 employees:

• A total ban of paid-for online advertising of less healthy food and drink products (which also applies to advertising appearing on non-Ofcom regulated on-demand programme services (ODPS)); and
• A restriction on advertising less healthy food and drink products on Ofcom-regulated TV and ODPS (including Ofcom-regulated IPTV services) between 5.30am and 9pm.

We also published our Less Healthy Food Compliance Tool (here) to help organisations determine whether their ads would likely be caught be the new rules.

Just as the new rules were beginning to bed in, and the Advertising Standards Authority started to issue rulings on their application, the Government has announced yet a further shake-up.

As the government consultation document explains, the current advertising restrictions are underpinned by what is called the ‘nutrient profiling model’ (‘NPM’) from 2004-5. This model essentially determines which foods fall into the category of ‘less healthy’ by taking into account their nutritional value and assigning them a score. However, now over 20 years old, the NPM is out-of-date, and fails to account for revisions to dietary recommendations in recent years, particularly relating to added sugars and dietary fibre. Therefore, a new NPM – NPM 2018 – has been published to replace the earlier model.

The result of the new NPM is that a greater range of foods will be deemed ‘less healthy’ for the purposes of the restrictions on advertising, including some desserts, yoghurts, and breakfast cereals.

In its consultation, the Government recognises the effect this will have on businesses who have already reformulated products to meet the existing NPM and are finally coming to terms with the advertising restrictions. Therefore, it invites views on a proposed 12-month implementation period to allow businesses time to adapt to the NPM 2018. It also asks about wider operational challenges that businesses might experience when implementing the new NPM, and what can be done so that future revisions can be applied without causing too much disruption to industry.

The consultation closes on 17 June 2026, and can be read in full here.