Caramel wafers and marshmallow teacakes are being provided to the makers of the ITV programme free of charge in return for regular exposure on the show, which attracts audiences of up to 10m.
The snacks are displayed in the village shop of the fictional Yorkshire town.
Although Cadbury spends £10m a year to be the official sponsor of Coronation Street, the rival soap, Tunnock’s clinched its deal with Emmerdale by handing over free boxes of its famous wafer biscuits.
“My sales manager Jim Henderson is an excellent wheedler,” said Boyd Tunnock, managing director of the 115-year-old firm. “He approached the people at Emmerdale with some free boxes of caramel wafers and we have built up a good relationship.
“No money changes hands but Tunnock’s products do get quite a good show in episodes of Emmerdale. We even had a branded Tunnock’s van appear in an episode.
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“Being involved with such a popular show is great for raising our profile.”
However, the deal has been criticised by some health campaigners.
Dr David Haslam, clinical director of the National Obesity Forum, said he was concerned that promoting sugary snacks on television encouraged unhealthy eating.
“Some people might claim this is harmless, but we are in the middle of an obesity epidemic in this country,” he said. “The risks posed to our children by obesity are absolutely staggering and this type of stealthy advertising does not help at all. To see it creeping into shows like Emmerdale which is hugely popular with children and young people is disappointing.”
A spokeswoman for Emmerdale said the use of real-life products was common to most soap operas. “In the shop on screen we have to show a wide range of real products and Tunnock’s products are among them,” she said. “There is no kind of sponsorship and there is no financial involvement.”
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Ofcom, the communications regulator, confirmed that the agreement does not break any of its rules.
“There is an outright ban on the inclusion of, or reference to, a product or a service within a programme in return for payments or other valuable considerations,” said a spokesman. “However, the placing of props on sets for the sake of realism is fine if no money changes hands and there is no evidence that they are being given undue prominence.”
Last year The Sunday Times revealed that companies were paying up to £40,000 to advertise their products on BBC programmes. The corporation launched an investigation after it emerged that eight different brands were shown in a series of the hit show Spooks, that a Sony PlayStation game appeared on A Question of Sport and that Robert Lindsay drank from a bottle of Sol beer in the sit-com My Family.
Tunnock’s, which last year recorded pre-tax profits of £2.1m, was founded in 1890 by Thomas Tunnock.