Saturday 9 September 2023

Blessed be the artisan cheese-makers

Yet another company has been caught out by Transport for London's ban on 'junk food' advertising. An advert for a play was banned in July because it depicted a wedding cake and regular readers will fondly recall the Farmdrop episode
 
This time it's something called Cheese Geek, as City AM reports...

TfL said the cheese ads – which were to be part of a campaign run by Workspace, the office provider and consultancy – could not go on the network because TfL uses “the Food Standards Agency’s model to define foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt.”

 
Seemingly unaware that cheese is high in salt and very high in fat, Cheese Geek are nonplussed.

The founder of Cheese Geek, Edward Hancock, said the ban was “crazy” and said he couldn’t understand why fizzy drink ads were allowed on the network but not artisan cheeses.

 
Fizzy drink adverts are not allowed if the drink is high in sugar. A cheese advert would be allowed if it wasn't high in salt and fat. Them's the rules, chief. If we must have such rules - and we shouldn't - they have to be based on nutritional thresholds. You can't exempt food just because posh people eat it, as much as that seems to pain former health secretary Edwina Currie.


(The City AM report includes a quote from yours truly.)

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