“Amitabh Bachchan uncle is my favourite. He has so much knowledge about everything. If he says that this biscuit is an alternative to breakfast, I will have three of them before school,” said a nine-year-old boy Dhruv.
A common factor in all these ads is that the products endorsed have high fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) content, which the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) has recommended to avoid.
Taking to Twitter, Dr Arun Gupta linked a series of research articles providing proof that eating biscuits the actor (Amitabh Bacchan) was endorsing would cause damage to a child’s health.
“Nutrition Advocacy in Public Interest has been monitoring the advertisements and found promotion of UPFs on TV, social media and newspapers is rampant.”
Parents who South First spoke to, expressed concern over such advertisements and said it has become a hard task for them to explain to children that their favourite actor, actress, cricketer, etc. is lying.