Ads for plain porridge oats have not been banned

Some news outlets covering the government’s new junk food advertising ban, which formally took effect on Monday, reported that ads for “porridge oats” would be banned.

This is potentially misleading. In fact—as we explained in 2024—ads for plain porridge oats aren’t restricted under the new rules.

For example, a Daily Mail article said: “Products often regarded as everyday staples are also caught by the restrictions, including all types of sandwiches, pretzels and foods 'predominantly found in the breakfast cereal aisle', a category that includes porridge oats and muesli.” The headline of the same piece also said that “porridge” was “included” in the crackdown.

An article in the Guardian made a similar claim, saying: “Under the rules, adverts for items often perceived as healthy are restricted, such as ‘sandwiches of any kind’, pretzels and “all products predominantly found in the breakfast cereal aisle”, which includes porridge oats and muesli.”

But after Full Fact got in touch, both the Daily Mail and the Guardian articles have been amended, to make the scope of the ban clearer.

While it’s true that breakfast cereal, including porridge, is one of the food categories within the scope of the legislation, not all these foods will have their ads restricted. That depends on whether they would also be classified as “less healthy” according to their score in a nutritional test.

For plain porridge oats, that won’t be a problem. When we calculated its score for our previous article, one brand of ordinary porridge received -5, well below the threshold of 4 that would make it unhealthy. Some porridge products might contain enough added sugar and salt to reach this level, however.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) specifically explained this point in a blog in December 2024. Some other reports did note that plain porridge products wouldn’t be banned.

How many children really are overweight?

We also saw another common but questionable claim repeated in some articles reporting this story, which comes from the government itself. In its own statement announcing the new law, the DHSC said: “At the start of primary school, 22.1% of children in England are living with overweight or obesity and this rises to 35.8% by the time they leave.”

In fact, as we explained in detail in another recent article, this figure is based on a broader definition of obesity than the one that doctors use to assess individual patients, and includes tens of thousands of children who aren’t clinically obese.

The figures used by the government come from 2023/24 (not 2024/25, which is the latest year available), and include children who met the thresholds for being “at risk” of clinical overweight or obesity, as well as those who were actually clinically obese or overweight.

Significantly fewer were actually clinically obese or overweight. This means another Mail article, which correctly said that plain oats wouldn’t be affected by the ban, was wrong to say that “NHS figures show that almost one in 10 reception-aged children are now considered clinically obese” (emphasis our own). In fact it’s more like one in 15.

The DHSC told us that it stands behind its use of child obesity data, and said: “This department has prioritised population monitoring thresholds for child overweight and obesity since the early 2000s. The thresholds capture children at high risk of overweight or obesity and supports the development of policies and services to promote healthy growth for all children and early intervention where needed.”

We have also raised the way the government reports its childhood obesity data with the Office for Statistics Regulation.