tl;dr: Processed meat is proven to be detrimental to our health and the environment and therefore should not be promoted in the media.

The World Health organisation places processed meat as a group one carcinogen (carcinogenic to humans). [1] Processed red meat is also linked to a higher risk of diabetes, a study by the Duke- NUS Medical School studied over 63,000 adults for 11 years and proved those consuming more red meat had a higher chance of developing diabetes. [2] Yet when tuning in to your favourite show you can almost guarantee to see an advertisement on Mcdonalds, KFC, Princes, etc, all of which advertise health destroying meats.

In 2002 The Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act was introduced, which saw the end of cigarette adverts on billbords, TV, and radio. This was due to Tobacco’s detrimental impacts on our health, therefore, promoting it was deemed irresponsible and dangerous. If so, why is processed meat, which is in the same Carcinogen class as Tobacco still being promoted so widely?

Not only is processed meat damaging our health. The mass consumption of it is harming the environment. A study by the University of Oxford showed that meat and dairy produces 60% of Greenhouse Gas emissions.[3] Showing the meat that is promoted on a day-to-day basis is destroying our planet too. Yet, there is little information about this in the media, the time that could be spent demonstrating the impact of meat on the environment is taken up by adverts which are advertising the consumption of it.

A study by Biener et al showed the positive impact anti-smoking adverts had upon the younger generation. [4] Anti- processed meat adverts would hopefully have a similar impact. If we begin to educate people on the detrimental impacts of processed meat instead of promoting them, our health and earth could be in a better place.

References:
[1] Agents Classified by the IARC Monographs, Volumes 1–128 – IARC Monographs on the Identification of Carcinogenic Hazards to Humans (who.int)

[2]https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170905134506.htm#:~:text=Higher%20intake%20of%20red%20meat,these%20meats%2C%20new%20research%20shows.

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth#:~:text=The%20new%20analysis%20shows%20that,are%20now%20livestock%20or%20humans.

[4]https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10810730490447084?casa_token=amXPes-fbwwAAAAA%3Auq5ytCYWc6meQxCQQLDO2cx9va_8zE1lGeZQHOhXnApruB7gH0pnfOOW4XLp1ea0LCtrdrvv9fE

Clean eating is a class issue that cannot be solved by banning adverts for processed food.

• The advertisement of processed meat is not the biggest issue if one wants to argue from a point of health.
• Thus removing adverts promoting processed meat but not the product itself would not solve anything.
• Rather than a blanket censor on the promotion of processed foods, efforts could be more beneficial with a focus on education of the impacts of processed foods, and how to determine a food is in fact processed - which surveys show is a major reason why they are consumed.
• Banning adverts will not stop people from buying and consuming processed meat, most notably in circumstances where processed meat is the only kind they can afford.
• The biggest threat to health - obesity and healthy eating specifically - is poverty.
• There are a huge volume of studies documenting this.
• Even when in some circumstances processed options are not necessarily cheaper, issues lie in the stress of poverty and the alleviation of that stress by the convenience and accessibility of processed food.
• ProfessorJudy Swift, a researcher in behaviour and nutrition, writes: “How can you expect people to be planning long-term health initiatives when they have highly stressful, short-term problems and are more concerned about how they’re going to last day-to-day?”
• Anti-obesity measures such as those proposed by Boris Johnson, like banning the advertisement of processed foods, fall short for they focus on personal responsibility rather than attacking the root causes of obesity—poverty and inequality.

There is little to no evidence processed meat products are bad
Take for example a burger you do not simply eat a burger on it own. You have a bun high in processed seed oils, you have sauce full of sugar, you will probably buy a sugary drink to wash it down and follow that up with ice cream. The whole idea is confounded by healthy user bias. A good study that shows this is while observational studies generally show vegetarians and vegans with better health outcomes, the UK Health food Shopper study (0) looked at omnivores and vegetarians that shopped in health food stores. This showed almost no difference in outcomes. Secondly, people are adults, not babies they should be able to make their own informed decisions about their diet without meddling from the government which only really pays attention to lobbyists.
The idea that processed meat is bad stems from the idea that meat is bad which isn't true:

• The study Behavioral Characteristics and Self-reported Health Status Among 2029 Adults Consuming a “Carnivore Diet (1) is an example, of the same type of bad observational study but it shows the opposite as its a diet with no restrictions on meat the only real problem reported was poor exercise performance almost all other metrics improved on this diet.
• Another observational study Associations of fats and carbohydrate intake with cardiovascular disease and mortality in 18 countries from five continents (PURE): a prospective cohort study(2) from the lancelet says that high carbohydrates increase mortality and saturated fat reduced stroke risk.
  *Processed Meat Consumption and the Risk of Cancer: A Critical Evaluation of the Constraints of Current Evidence from Epidemiological Studies (3) This is a meta-analysis of studies about process meat and cancer they identified wide variance in results and based on the overall quality of the studies there's a low amount of actual evidence to support the hypothesis.
• one of the reasons which is highly debated is that saturated fat is bad, mechanistically this doesn't add up since stearic acid and palmitic acid are good for you and mostly found in animal food. The study Saturated Fats and Health: A Reassessment and Proposal for Food-Based Recommendations: JACC State-of-the-Art Review(4) was published in the journal of American Cardiology as recently as 2020. Did a complete review of the science around saturated fat and concluded that they should emphasize that the "health effects of dietary carbohydrate—just like those of saturated fat—depend on the amount, type and quality of carbohydrate, food sources, degree of processing". Bacon that is just meat and salt is not the same as one pumped with additives and artifical preservatives.
• one of the healthiest populations of the world was Polynesians (5) the study Cholesterol, coconuts, and diet on Polynesian atolls: A natural experiment: The Pukapuka and Tokelau Island looked at the heart disease risk amongst these tribes. Their diet was mostly coconut fat and fish they had almost no heart disease or cardiovascular events. This showed that even plant saturated fats high myristic and lauric acid were good for us. There's a follow-up study where they had changed to a western diet high in carbohydrates and seed oils and their health worsened.
• A study on rats called Effect of meat (beef, chicken, and bacon) on rat colon carcinogenesis(6) found that bacon reduced the chance of colorectal cancer due to NaCL
• In regards to junk food advertisement, the study The Effects of Banning Advertising in Junk Food Markets(7) found it didn't work as people would still eat the same things, firms would lower prices or people would opt for different junk food. I will admit this area of research is fairly limited and is mostly aimed at tobacco products.
  Overall i would say we shouldn't be vilifying these foods but more education and research into the additives that are in them carrageenan and metabisulfite, for example, are known carcinogens but salt and liquid smoke are not. I don't believe banning hyper-palatable processed foods will do much. I think meat is the wrong target as its the one part of these foods with nutritional value.

(0)https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12001975/
(1)https://academic.oup.com/cdn/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cdn/nzab133/6415894
(2)https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)32252-3/fulltext
(3)https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/10/3601/htm
(4)https://www.jacc.org/doi/full/10.1016/j.jacc.2020.05.077
(5)https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15927580_Cholesterol_coconuts_and_diet_on_Polynesian_atolls_A_natural_experiment_The_Pukapuka_and_Tokelau_Island_studies
(6)https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10050267/
(7)https://academic.oup.com/restud/article/85/1/396/3108825