I’ve been thinking a lot about power in the food system this week, after two days of thought-provoking debates and connections at the Oxford Real Farming Conference, where the question of power showed up in many and varied ways. In this blog, I explore advertising as a major source of power which is preventing progress towards a fairer food system, and how we can overcome it.
The power of advertising
Advertising is a powerful and under-recognised force which exists to manufacture demand for the products of our rapacious and insatiable economic system, which Manda Scott calls “the death cult of predatory capitalism”. Corporate advertising is an essential tool of this system – it is the way in which the products of this system are sold to us.
Advertising is powerful because it is very effective and adept at influencing not just our choices about what to purchase, but our culture, too. Look at the rise in SUV ownership among urban families: this is a completely unnecessary trend driven by advertising, not need, and it is harmful to our health, our safety and our climate.
Now look at food advertising. We are surrounded every day by adverts for the products of industrial agriculture: junk food and ultra-processed foods. The corporations behind this have the financial power to put their brands in front of us every day, capturing our attention with manipulative messages which undermine our ability to make healthier, greener choices.
Even if those choices are more aligned with our values, the persuasive and often unconscious influence of advertising can lead us in the other direction.
Big Food controls the system, and the story
A small number of “mega-corporations” are responsible for the majority of the production and retail of animal-based food. Research by Sustain and partners shows the links between retailers and the largest (and most polluting) agribusinesses.
Mega-corporations control the story about our food as well as the production and sale of it. Recent data we analysed from the University of Liverpool* showed that over half of all food and drink adverts in the city of Liverpool were promoting meat. Almost half (45%) of the meat adverts were for one single brand: McDonald’s. Youth campaign BiteBack similarly found last year that 31% of all food and drink adverts across four cities were for McDonald’s.
The Food Foundation in 2025 found that over one third of all food and drink advertising spend was on “discretionary” food such as confectionary, snacks and soft drinks (that is, food we don’t need), compared to just 2% on fruit and vegetables. Their research has also found that there are more multibuy offers on meat than on fruit and vegetables.
The effect of this imbalance is the promotion and normalisation of the overconsumption of unsustainable, unhealthy food, including industrially farmed and ultra-processed meat and dairy.
Through their domination of the messaging space and our attention, the big food corporations have the power to shape the stories we are told about our food and our relationship to it. This is through appealing to our desire for low cost, convenient food, as well as other narratives such as health, sustainability and nostalgia (we explore these tactics in our guide: The Cows Aren’t Laughing). But it’s also about what the adverts don’t show us. Adverts conceal the real impacts and story behind the products: a public health crisis, animal cruelty on an industrial scale, ecological destruction, human rights abuses and climate breakdown. These messages wouldn’t make for persuasive marketing, of course – so these critical aspects of the food system are erased from the story we’re told.
Where do we go from here?
How do we start to shift power in the food system away from the destructive Big Meat, Dairy and junk food corporations and towards sustainable producers?
This was the question we explored in a panel debate at the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC) last week. Chaired by Andrew Stark from Eating Better, I sat alongside Rob Percival of the Soil Association and Navaratnam Partheeban of the British Veterinary Ethnicity and Diversity Society for an exploration of sources of power in the food system, from colonial to corporate, and how we can overcome them.
Advertising works to increase demand for harmful products (see various sources including Purpose Disruptors; Guardian; Badvertising). This means that there is a huge opportunity to shift demand away from these products by reducing the amount of advertising we are exposed to, particularly for the most harmful products like unhealthy food, or industrially produced meat, dairy, eggs and fish. The ban on advertising for junk food or high fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) across the Transport for London (TfL) network since 2019 has had a significant positive impact on health, so we know that this approach works.
Over two dozen councils in the UK have adopted policies against HFSS advertising due to concerns over the impact on children’s health (Sustain). National government has finally adopted restrictions on the advertising of HFSS foods to children – a step forwards, although the policy has been disappointingly weakened due to the power of industry lobbying.
In Haarlem, in The Netherlands, a ban on meat advertising is due to come into force this year. UK councils could follow suit, building on HFSS advertising bans, and on the steps made by progressive councils who have already adopted low carbon advertising policies too including Sheffield and Edinburgh.
Continuing this trend, and resisting, restricting and ultimately ending advertising for unhealthy and unsustainable food is essential if we are to give people the space to make ethical, healthier choices, shift power towards sustainable, local producers, and create a kinder, fairer food system.
Power in community and common cause
Elsewhere at ORFC, Eating Better and Sustain hosted a workshop on how farmers and NGOs can better collaborate to challenge industrial animal agriculture. Ruth Westcott from Sustain shared the inspiring case of a successful local community campaign to resist a new mega-farm in Norfolk on environmental grounds, which has set a precedent for successful challenges to other mega-farm plans. This was a huge and significant win for the power of collective voice and community action.
Myrtle Gregory from Eating Better reminded us that having the conviction of a vision worth fighting for is hugely powerful itself. The abundance of solutions-focused sessions and energy at this long-running agroecology conference was definitely cause for some optimism, in the face of industry power that can often seem overwhelming.
*The collection of advertising images underpinning this analysis was funded by the NIHR Policy Research Programme (NIHR203434). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.
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