Crackdown on online junk food advertising aimed at children say MPs The Sustainable Food report follows an inquiry by House of Common's Environmental Audit Committee into the country's food supply system. It highlighted research that found 75% of websites featuring products high in fat, salt or sugar had links to social networking sites that were designed to "appeal to children through the use of language intended for, spoken by or directed to children." Joan Walley, Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent North and chairman of the committee, said: "In the early years, it is really important that people develop good attitudes to food. There is now constant advertising on social networking sites and online that is promoting all the wrong messages. It completely undermines other advances that are being made to make people look at the true price of food, not just in terms of cost, but also the health aspects. We believe there is scope for the Advertising Standards Authority to use its non-broadcast code to look at healthy and non-healthy food. A study by the British Heart Foundation and the Children's Food Campaign warned that children are being "swamped" with unhealthy food messages online from companies including Kellogg's, Nestle, Rowntree and Cadbury which have set up websites with games, cartoon characters and videos aimed at children. Major firms such as Pepsi and Coke have also shifted their marketing strategies to focus on social media campaigns. This month Pepsi launched it's own pop-culture social media site called Pepsi Pulse as part of a global marketing campaign featuring a member of the US pop band the Jonas Brothers, whose fans are predominantly young teenage girls. The Environmental Audit Committee's report also calls for improved labelling of food to help consumers make better choices about where their food has come from, how far it has travelled and how sustainable it is. The report also warned that there was still insufficient evidence to determine whether genetically modified food produce can play a role in improving the supply of food and that tackling issues like food waste may have a more appreciable effect. Mrs Walley added: "We want our report to trigger a well informed long term debate about how we can ensure the security of our food supply, ensure that people get the food they enjoy eating but also food that is not going to run up huge health costs. At the same time labelling can be improved to be simple and consistent to allow people to make informed choices. That is not available at the moment. Mark Driscoll, head of the one planet food programme at WWF-UK, said: "The UK Government needs to demonstrate international leadership on this and put the issue at the heart of its agenda. A food system in which globally 1.5 billion are overweight or obese while another billion people suffer from malnutrition and hunger and at least 30% of all food grown across the globe is wasted, is clearly broken.