Shire Foods, a pie manufacturer, complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about two national press advertisements the British Heart Foundation ran earlier this year.
The advertising, created by Euro RSCG London, was part of a wider campaign by the British Heart Foundation to promote its Heart Week -- an awareness and fundraising event for the charity.
The initiative was aimed at drawing attention to how unhealthy living can lead to heart disease and encouraged people to improve their health by doing things like changing their diets and taking the stairs instead of the escalators.
The BHF said that the pie in the ad was intended to represent processed foods in general and believed it did not imply all pies were unhealthy.
The ad in question, created in a 1930s Soviet propaganda style, pictured two people looking fearfully up at a picture of a floating pie, underlined by the words "Fear the Pie".
Shire said that the ads by the BHF implied that all pies were unhealthy, and argued that pies can, in fact, form part of a healthy balanced diet.
However, the regulator refused to uphold the complaints after ruling that the pie was designed to represent processed foods generally, and that readers would understand its general meaning.
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