The Bishop of St Albans has warned that Britain's consumer culture could produce "a nation of fat and greedy children with thin and starving souls".

Speaking in a House of Lords debate the bishop, the Rt Rev Christopher Herbert, said "his heart sank" when he learnt how much advertising was directed at children and how much of it promoted foods higher in sugar, salt and fat.

He asked why parents in Britain did not have the moral courage to protect children from exploitative and commercial pressure.

He said a child was likely to see between six and 11 adverts every hour for foods high in sugar, salt and fat.

In the debate last Wednesday on direct marketing to children, the bishop said that he had also read that after school 60 per cent of children regularly ate crisps, 40 per cent ate biscuits and 30 per cent ate chocolate.

He argued that consumerism has developed such a stranglehold on our society that even the youngest child can be exploited as a consumer.

He said: "The youngest child is no longer a miracle, a gift or a source of wonder but is simply regarded as a consumer.

"I find that morally degrading, because it assumes that the child is nothing more than a manipulatable and voracious computerised dustbin."

He said: "Why are we so spiritually bereft as a nation that one third of parents provide a television set in the bedroom for the under-threes? I find that hauntingly sad."

The bishop said that without protection from commercialism the spiritual needs of children will be unable to flourish.

He said: "The debate relates to what we as a society think childhood is for. I would argue that childhood is a place in which things of the spirit must be given room to grow."

He cited Sweden as an example, which recognises the need for children to have "safe zones" in which they are protected from commercial influences.

St Albans MP Kerry Pollard, who has campaigned against too much salt in food, said: "Advertisers have to be much more responsible about what they are doing. I would even go as far as to say that some foods should come with a health warning, like cigarettes."

Mr Pollard, who took school children to the House of Commons to hear celebrity chef Anton Edelmann talk about the dangers of eating a high salt diet, said that if some adverts were not shown on television it would help stop children asking for unhealthy foods.

He said there was a growing fear among health organisations that today's generation of children could die before their parents because they eat too much salt, sugar and saturated fats. He added: "What I think we must also do is improve labelling so parents can see exactly what they are buying."