The investigation highlights that Kellogg’s and Greggs have sponsored breakfast clubs in UK schools for the past 20 years reaching thousands of students. It also raises concern over how one ‘policy development’ charity is funded by companies including Coca Cola and McDonalds.

Critics argue that food industry influence in children’s education is problematic in the following ways:

• Widely used schemes allow the food industry to frame the solution to the obesity crisis as one of personal responsibility and deflect attention away from how commercial influences impact choice and behaviour.

• The brand awareness and loyalty raised by exposure to healthier products can contribute to a preference for and consumption of less healthy products in a brand’s portfolio.

• Schemes can position food companies as part of the solution despite there existing a consensus about commercial products having driven the obesity crisis.

• Concerns around whether children are being informed enough about harmful food – messaging which would be detrimental to some food companies.

• Research has shown that when tackling obesity, changing food environments is more effective than measures that aim to educate or change the behaviour of individuals.

Though the food industry has provided advice on healthy eating for children through grants, free educational resources and campaigns for decades, rates of obesity have worsened.

In an open letter addressed to the secretaries of state for health and social care and for education, 38 doctors, researchers, peers, and others have called on the government to end what they are calling ‘stealth marketing’ to children from food companies.

To find out more, you can read the full BMJ investigation here...