Communications Code in response to public concern about the infl uence of ‘ junk food ’ advertising on children’s obesity levels and pressure for more restrictive regulation of this advertising. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the effi cacy of the Code and the capacity of self-regulation to protect children’s interests in relation to food advertising. The article analyses the Code with regard to characteristics and conditions considered necessary for, or typical of, effective self-regulation. The article identifi es a number of defi ciencies in the Code and self-regulatory scheme, and concludes that self-regulation is unsuitable for protecting children from harmful effects of food advertising, due mainly to advertisers ’ overriding commercial interest in using advertising practices that are effective for encouraging children to consume unhealthy food. I

Unlawful advertising in the spotlight: complaints as a control mechanism Using quantitative analysis, complaints received by the Observatorio de la Imagen de las Mujeres (Monitoring Centre for the Portrayal of Women) during the period of 1999-2009 have been studied. This is with the objective of understanding the evolution of content that has been classified as unlawful advertising in the framework of article 3 of the General Advertising Law, 10 reports have been examined. The results show that in the Spanish advertising domain, the use of the female stereotype as an object is no longer a recurring element; however, sexism maintains its presence through other criteria that also trigger complaints.

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