Confectionery maker, Cadbury Schweppes, has announced a Get Active! marketing scheme to launch in May whereby tokens can be exchanged for sports equipment.

The initiative - which requires children to collect tokens from the wrappers of brands such as Crunchie, Flake and Fruit & Nut - is in partnership with the Youth Sports Trust charity.

It has also been endorsed by sports minister, Richard Caborn who said: I am delighted that Cadbury is prepared to support this drive to get more young people active by providing equipment and resources for schools.

However, the scheme has run into trenchant criticism from the Food Commission, which says it is absurd and contradictory. It has also called Caborn to task for explicitly endorsing a scheme to get teachers to urge children to eat more fat and sugar.

The commission has calculated that if children consumed all of the 160m promotional bars of chocolate issued, they would have eaten nearly 2m kg of fat and over 36bn calories.

A set of volleyball posts, the most expensive item on offer would, according to the commission, require the consumption of 5,440 chocolate bars containing over 33kg of fat and nearly 1.25m calories.

The promotion has also been criticised by the National Union of Teachers and the British Diabetic Assocation.

In response, Cadburys said the scheme wasn't about children single-handedly collecting sports equipment for their school but more about the wider community clubbing together to use the wrappers from the chocolate they are already eating. Details: www.cadburyschweppes.com