Posted on 04/19/2002 8:20:43 AM PDT by Starmaker
All those Cassandras who warned that banning the advertising character Joe Camel from billboards and magazines (such advertising of perfectly legal products having been banished from TV decades before) would only be "the cartoon character's nose under the tent," are now officially authorized to say, "I told you so."
Businesses spend an estimated $13 billion a year marketing food and drinks to U.S. children and their parents, according to Food Politics, a new book by Marion Nestle, chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University. That's an increase of $5 billion in the last decade. And "Often, the stuff they're selling is not the perfect nourishment for growing minds and bodies," gasps Emilia Askari of the Detroit Free Press, in a lengthy "something-must-be-done" essay circulated this week to other members and subscribers of the Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Service.
Type 2 diabetes, previously considered an adult-onset disease, has increased drastically among youth nationwide, we are now advised. About 14 percent of U.S. children and youth are too heavy, "and chunky kids can face social discrimination that leads to poor self-esteem and depression, according to the surgeon general."
Oh, will the litany of horrors never end?
"Many experts — and some legislators and parents — are beginning to speak out against the marketing of low-nutrition food to children," Ms. Askari reports. "If the courts and government can outlaw the selling of cancer-causing cigarettes to kids, they ask, why not limit the hawking of obesity-inducing food as well? Is Joe Camel really so different from Ronald McDonald?"
As humorist Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.
"It won't be easy, because the broadcasters and the food companies have a lot of influence," warns Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit outfit (naturally) in Washington, D.C. "But it's important. Unhealthy eating habits, along with inactivity, kill as many people as tobacco does."
Heavens, whatever shall be done?
The anti-obesity activists' first target is to "get advertising and vending machines out of schools," we are informed. But it won't stop there. They next hope to ban food advertising during programming "aimed at young children, such as cartoons." If the ads cannot be banned, then, Wootan suggests, media should be forced to carry ads for fruits, grains and other healthy alternatives along with ads for less-nutritious processed food.
Finally, "some even talk of bringing a class action against food companies, similar to the successful lawsuits in recent years by cancer patients against tobacco companies."
Oh good: the trial lawyers.
About half of all advertising aimed at kids is for food, Ms. Wootan announces, with a "that-proves-it" tone. Yet to what other potential advertisers would she prefer the television networks attempt to sell time on Saturday morning — purveyors of chainsaws, firearms, lingerie and sexual aids?
Steve Grover of the National Restaurant Association calmly responds that many schools have stopped requiring physical education and nutrition training. "We don't teach people to make good food choices. Then when they don't, we blame the food."
Even author Nestle of NYU acknowledges that societal shifts like the reduction in opportunities for physical play contribute to childhood weight problems. Yet such "activists" respond not primarily by recommending more parental oversight and participation in healthy exercise with their children, but rather by calling on government to censor television advertising, on the assumption that absentee parents will continue to use this service as cheap, long-term day care.
Meantime, writers like Ms. Askari seem curiously unable to locate any of the many economic "experts" who might explain the very palpable benefits of advertising — above and beyond the fact there's that little Constitutional guarantee of the freedom of speech to be dealt with.
The number of new products which have revolutionized American life in the past century are almost beyond count. And make no mistake, many of those products had to break through considerable prejudice that even allowing their mention in public was somehow "in bad taste."
Many of these products could never have repaid the investment necessary to make them widely available at low cost if their advertising had continued to be effectively banned.
Meantime, the hundreds of millions of dollars outfits like McDonald's have invested in their brand names give them a vested interest in maintaining high and consistent quality.
Yes, much of what gets advertised is crap. But when the public refuses to buy any particular line of crap, advertising dollars tend to dry up in a hurry. (Ask the folks who spent millions developing the "smokeless cigarette," or "New Coke.")
At bottom, these do-gooders hate the fact that American consumers are allowed to buy what they like, instead of what the experts contend is "good for them." Instead of listing the growth of advertising dollars as though it's prima facie evidence of evil intent, the activists might want to go back and review the general level of nutrition and quality of consumer goods enjoyed by societies that have banned "wasteful" advertising by "self-serving marketers" ... like the Soviet Union.
Ms. Askari refers to the highly-advertised foods in question as "low-nutrition." In fact, the reason so many Americans are obese is not because they're being peddled worthless, adulterated, and non-nutritious foods, but rather that they're eating "too much of a good thing." Calories are, after all, nothing but a measurement of a food's energy content.
What we have here is a clear-cut example of a bunch of firemen racing about looking for something else to hose down, because they've pretty much run out of real fires. So they turn to blaming another industry that's enjoying huge profits both because their natural bent is anti-capitalist and anti-free-market, and because they see there another set of pockets deep enough to be worth going after.
"Bad eating habits cost lives"? Yes, statistically ... and eventually. But so do motorcycling and football and driving your car without a helmet. Will they next ...
Whoops. Forget I said that.
Remember, anytime you hear somebody use the phrase "public health," rest assured the trial lawyers and politicians are right around the corner. When the county I live in voted to sue gun manufacturers, for example, they cited "public health."
BUMP
Ronald Mcdonald always gave me the creeps.
He was never as creepy as that “Burger King” pedophile they trotted out in the seventies. That guy was scary.
And the scariest of all is eating at KFC where they have pictures of The Colonel on the utensils! I don’t like eating food with the creepy image of some dead southern plantation owner on my fork.
(((shudder))) Square dancing is good, as long as the class is co-ed!
Nope. I remain consistantly conservative with my position on abolishing the Department of Education, getting fedgov fingers out of our schools, and returning control to the state or, preferably, local communities. I simply do not go along with the simple-minded extremism of abolishing public schools altogether. That's asinine.
I once received a figure of the Burger King in said restaurant's equivalent of a Happy Meal. Camp mustache, sunburnt face, definately a perv of some sort.
Too big, I'm afraid.
Of course you side with the statists. Totalitarians, like clowns, are more frightening than funny.
IMHO, libertarian philosophy has eroded traditional conservative values.
97.7% statists, 0.3% Libertarian.
Make that 99.7% statists, 0.3% Libertarians.
Thank you Russell Kirk.
Hmmmm... So now I'm a totalitarian statist because I think meals for schoolchildren should be nutritious rather than commercialized junk-food?
Well, I'd suppose you'd also disagree with my radical opinion that swimming should be a high-school graduation requirement (with exemptions for those who have misfortunate physical limitations).
One of the hallmarks of socialism is that it seeks to regulate every facet of life (for the "common good," of course)" so no surprise here.
Although I think that fast food has contributed greatly to increasing American obesity, a more important culprit may be the low fat craze, which causes people to consume large quantities of starch, which converts into sugar, then fat.
Hey, I thought it was a brilliant move.
Yes, those evil libertarians are just plain evil for trying to put the reponsibility for people not becoming dumbed down back on the people themselves instead of on the government.
The menu changes in response to market pressures. They have to provide what the customer wants just to preserve their market share, but the customer doesn't usually say what he wants, he just buys when he is offered what he wants. The worst business practice is to put a kid on the register who doesn't know the new menu and who thinks the customer is retarded for asking for one of the new items.
Yep. If you want your kid to pig-out on Big Macs and jelly beans, stuff 'em in a brown bag in the morning. The school should have more nutritious meals available if you want your kid to go through the cafeteria line.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.