Junk food ad bans alone won’t fix Canada’s obesity problem

It’s a start.

That’s Elise Pauzé’s take on Health Canada’s proposed plans to curb advertising of unhealthy food to children.

“I view these as a first step in what hopefully would be more comprehensive rules in the future,” says the registered dietitian and PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa.

More than 90 per cent of food and beverage product ads viewed by Canadian kids and teens online are for junk food. In its policy update last year, Health Canada said it planned to amend the Food and Drug Regulations to limit the marketing of foods that contribute to excess intakes of sodium, sugars and saturated fat. The target population is children under 13 and the scope of restrictions is for television and digital media that are “primarily directed at children.”  

But it’s unclear whether the long-promised guidelines will be issued before the next election. Despite the health minister getting their marching orders on this and pledges to have things in place by this spring, Health Canada now says there is no set timeline on marketing restrictions to kids.

Canada isn’t alone in kicking this issue down the road. During the pandemic, Britain also pledged a whole raft of legislation aimed at reducing obesity, including prohibitions on junk food marketing, only to delay them indefinitely following pressure from the food industry. In the last thirty years, the UK has announced 14 government obesity strategies — nearly 700 policies — the vast majority going more or less nowhere.

But this is a problem that requires fixing. Along with most other countries, Canada’s collective alarming weight gain over the last three decades is one of the nation’s biggest health crisis. Obesity increases the risk for several chronic diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Almost two in three adults and one in three children and youth are overweight or living with obesity. The costs associated with this complex disease are estimated at about $23 billion a year — close to Canada’s entire annual military budget of $27 billion.

Many blame the obsogenic environment we created — and our reliance on ultra-processed food and beverages. Unless governments come to grips with this problem, experts estimate more than half of the global population will be overweight or obese within 12 years, at a cost of $4 trillion.

Australia, Norway, Chile, and a host of other jurisdictions have either passed legislation on ad bans or are in the process of doing so as a way to tackle their own health and budget emergencies. The World Health Organization has called on governments to establish strong and comprehensive prohibitions as a way to help reverse this trend.

Meanwhile, in Canada a private member’s bill on limiting marketing to kids, Bill C-252 is making its way through Parliament. Whether it dies on the Senate floor like its predecessor, Bill S-228, is a matter of speculation. For its part, Health Canada says it has the authority to implement regulations and “is not dependent on the legislative process.”

Some observers say Canada’s proposed rules on ad bans simply don’t go far enough to make a difference. They provide too much wiggle room by specifying age, types of junk food, and the sort of media used.

“Part of the challenge is that advertising has become so embedded that we have lost sight about the harm to society,” says Jacob Shelley, co-director of the Health Ethics, Law & Policy Lab at Western University.

“We just accept it as a norm.”

Because advertising is omnipresent, any regulations need to be broader.

“The truth is that we need a ban on all advertising to children, period,” Shelley says.

“Without a comprehensive ban, it will have minimal positive long-term effects.”

However, the big question is: do marketing bans actually work?

Critics say jurisdictions that have implemented them aren’t seeing a huge drop in childhood obesity, and passing new regulations would only make life difficult for food companies.

Ban proponents argue that advertising is very effective — the food industry wouldn’t fight so hard if it weren’t. That said, cutting obesity rates isn’t the primary goal of these bans — improving dietary patterns is.

Most experts agree that ad bans alone aren’t sufficient. Other measures, like soda taxes or mandatory product reformulation, should also form part of the legislative arsenal.

“I don’t think any one intervention can do much. You need a lot of them all at once,” says Marion Nestle, author and professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health, emerita, at New York University.

“The research on specific interventions, no matter what they are, pretty much shows the same thing. They work to some extent in reducing purchases or changing attitudes, but do not affect obesity rates.”

In the few jurisdictions that have put ad bans in place, it’s simply too early to tell, and there are too few quality studies to measure their efficacy.

“Changes don’t happen overnight,” says Pauzé, who has extensively researched marketing to kids in Canada.

“Shifts in dietary behaviours and weight outcomes will take time to materialize and require other policies that support healthier eating patterns.”

Despite the lack of regulations, Canada has not entirely stood still on this issue. Over the last decade, the federal government has rolled out a new food guide and banned trans fats in all foods as part of its healthy eating strategy.

As of January 2026, all products that are high in sodium, sugar, or saturated fat will have to show that on a black-and-white symbol.

 “Canada is a leader in front of package labelling,” says Laura Weinrib, a partner at Blakes in Toronto specializing in marketing legislation.

Since the 1980s, Quebec’s Consumer Protection Act has barred all advertising to children under 13. The legislation wasn’t designed to curb junk food marketing, however, so it is difficult to measure the effect. What is true, proponents say, is that kids in the province are among the least obese in Canada, and vegetable consumption is higher than in other parts.

Polls have shown that junk food bans are popular with the public — which may explain why Ad Standards, Canada’s industry-regulated advertising organization, introduced a voluntary code last year.

The extent to which the code differs from Health Canada’s draft rules is debatable.

"The nutrition criteria of Ad Standards is more permissive for a few product categories, and also leave the door open for more exceptions in the future," Pauzé says.

Of course, the biggest difference is enforcement, as there are no penalties for noncompliance with the voluntary code.

Even if Health Canada’s draft rules are implemented, they won’t necessarily have a massive effect on food and beverage producers.

“For many of my clients, I don’t think it will represent a big shift,” Weinrib says.