15-year-old Anidinnu, a Bite Back youth campaigner from Bedford who recently attended a council policy meeting, said: “This decision is proof that young people’s voices are being heard. The councillors and decision-makers in Bedford have made the right call to protect my generation. Junk food advertising targets us every day — but this shows that protecting our health is finally being taken seriously.
“When you live here, you see it every day — fast food ads everywhere. On the way to school, at the bus stop, outside the shop. It’s like big food companies have a louder voice than our communities do. That’s why I joined Bite Back — because we’re flipping the script. We’re showing that young people aren’t just targets, we’re the ones fighting back.”
Bite Back has long campaigned for the removal of high fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) advertising from public spaces, citing its direct link to health-related illness. Right now, over a third of 10/11-year-olds leave primary school at risk of food related ill health in their future, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease — in part due to a constant exposure to unhealthy food marketing.
The Bedford Council policy arrives just weeks after Bite Back - backed by Impact on Urban Health - secured billboards across London to block junk food adverts. The charity placed 365 billboards - one for each day of the year - in high-traffic areas across the capital’s Lambeth and Southwark boroughs, including London Bridge Station, with one clear message: “We’ve bought this ad space so the junk food giants couldn’t – we’re giving kids a commercial break.”
While Bedford’s move is bold, Bite Back highlights that local councils cannot act alone. The government must introduce national regulations to protect children on all forms of outdoor advertising — including private spaces not controlled by councils. London’s Transport for London (TfL) policy has already demonstrated that such policies can succeed with no loss to advertising revenue. Bite Back pointed to TfL’s experience as proof that healthier advertising environments are possible without financial trade-offs.
New research from Bite Back and the University of Liverpool further underscores this need. The study, which analysed 859 ads in London, Liverpool, Birmingham and Newcastle, found that 57% of food and drink ads were for HFSS products, and these were more common in deprived areas — compounding inequality.
Following the Mayor of London’s HFSS advertising ban on the TfL network in 2019, Southwark introduced its own local policy. As a result, it now has the lowest rate of unhealthy food advertising among the cities studied, with just 38% of food adverts promoting HFSS products, compared to 77% in Newcastle.
Additionally, Bite Back’s analysis of ad spend data showed that in 2024, food and drink companies spent over £400 million on street advertising. The top 10 spenders included McDonald’s, PepsiCo, KFC, Coca-Cola, Mars, Mondelez and Red Bull.2
The full report, with the policy recommendations can be found here.