Newly-released statistics have shown that fast food producers are spending record amounts on marketing, despite the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.

With food prices soaring, fast food giants have chosen to break the bank with their marketing activity as opposed to dialling it back in the face of global economic pressures.

Non-profit Bite Back has revealed that the top ten spenders poured 75% more money into their social media and digital advertising in 2022 than they did in the previous year.

US chain McDonald’s registered the largest increase, with their advertising spend rising by 300%, whilst rivals KFC and UbearEats saw theirs rise by 224% and 199% respectively.

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Released to coincide with Bite Back’s ‘Enticing, Effective and Everywhere: How Brands are Keeping Unhealthy Food and Drink in the Spotlight with Digital Marketing to Young People’ report, the figures are a damning indictment of the role large fast food firms are playing in the rising rates of childhood obesity in the UK.

Bite Back also revealed that young people see more fast food ads than any other type of advertising, and is calling on Westminster to press ahead with its proposed HFSS advertising ban as a result.

The NGO is also calling on the fast food companies themselves to take positive action by shifting their marketing spend onto healthier options.

“We see junk food adverts plastered on bus shelters, on the back of bus tickets and on billboards around the city,” Bite Back Birmingham member, Yumna Hussein said.

“These manipulative marketing tactics must stop. Companies must use their power to design a system that’s rigged in favour of our health.”