Junk food ads will be banned from TV

[CShine]

LONDON — Advertisements for junk food are to be banned during children's television programs in Britain in an attempt by the government to reduce obesity in the young.

Health Secretary John Reid has decided to take what some call the "nuclear option" of banning companies from targeting children with advertisements for a range from burgers and fries to candy and soft drinks.

Lawmakers in the ruling Labor Party expect an official announcement at their party's annual conference in Brighton in September.

Mr. Reid's plan to restrict television advertising follows the publication of a report by a House of Commons health committee, which warned that obesity among the young is rising sharply.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20040529-114059-7068r.htm

[LifeDuringWartime]

1. not a bad idea

but what are they going to advertise instead?

[sasquatch]

4. Beer Commercials

;)"Come'on lads', let's grab us Guinness!"

[phoebe]

5. pharmaceuticals for one- can't have those kiddies getting too depressed

now that they can't have their "free toy with supersize meal"..

By the way, all that "disposable" income that those pesky children have their tiny greedy hands on has to line someone's pockets.. be interesting to see who steps up..

[KittyWampus]

2. I've Been Toying W/Idea Of Starting A Thread Re: Kids Advertising

as a general topic... is it ethical? desirable?

in some countries it isn't allowed.

Thanks for posting this thread. even if it is Wash. times.

[mulethree]

8. innoculation?

How better to teach children to have great scepticism and resistance to advertizing as adults, than to expose them to it from an early age?

Gee; there isn't anything magical about these marshmallows in my lucky charms.

But; the robot on TV was a lot smarter than this and did all those fancy Kung-Fu moves, this one just stands around.

[Trillo]

3. Obesity and TV advertising

What about other people watching during those hours? Does this reduce advertising subsidy at those times? Does it increase "junk food" commercials during other hours?

Mass Obesity: a warning of "lean" times ahead? Mankind preparing, through some unknown mechanism, for some to survive on their own stored energy?

If so, what does it say of those who would "prevent" it?

[leftistagitator]

7. Our obesity isn't preparing us for anything but cancer and early death

Instead of hunting or preforming manual labor like our ancestors we now do more sedentary work. We also have access to as much food as we want, much of it being high fat and sugar foods that we invented like fried foods, cakes, ice cream, candies, ect... It should be no surprise that a body evolved for long distance running can't handle what we're throwing at it.

[Trillo]

10. Bad diet can create obesity. Exercise is related. I agree.

This proposal does nothing to get people outside in the unhealthful UV radiation and working or exercising. Will it reduce sedentary time spend in front of a CRT tube watching TV, playing e-games, or exploring the Internet?

Will it reduce spending on junk food? Where's the evidence?

I think a more likely way to improve diet is to create enough "wealth" in families with children, that one parent can stay at home, eliminating the latch-key phenomenon; home cooked meals would likely be more common. Healthy food is less expensive than junk food.

With Peak Oil, on the downside of the production curve, since commodity markets "price ahead" and since synthetic fertilizer production is energy dependent, there's likely to be a hyper-inflation in food prices when it occurs. Soils are already depleted of natural nutrients due to the use of chemical fertilizers, crops currently growing in these soils are practically hydroponic. Without synthetic fetilizers food production will vastly decrease. Decreased food supply, coupled with massive increases in the cost of energy, creates theoretical hyperinflation in the food sector.

I believe that scientists have estimated that the natural environment will only support about 500 million people.

CEOs are positioning themselves and their families to be the only ones who will be able to afford food when this occurs.

Morbidly obese people may survive the adjustment period when otherwise food is unaffordable.

[maggrwaggr]

6. maybe the kids shouldn't be sitting on their fat asses watching TV

in the first place.

[crossroads]

12. Good one!

LOL!
:hi:

[democraticgator]

9. absolutely ridiculous

I am so tired of people blaming their problems on others. If you are overweight, it is because you either A) decided to eat too much or B) did not excercise enought to get rid of the excess calories. It is under no circumstances a companys fault for trying to make a profit by selling a food packed with calories. You shouldnt be able to hit yourself in the face with a hammer and then sue the hammer company for making the head of the hammer too hard.

[Cronus Protagonist]

11. Logical Fallacy: Straw man argument

Hammers don't kill in normal use. Fatty foods do.

Click here for fair and balanced yet stunning, insulting, shocking, funny buttons, magnets and stickers

[AP]

14. If the cheapest, easiest to find food is deadly, I'm not sure it's wrong

for the companies manufacturing it to take some responsibility for it.

I think there's a presumption among consumers about all products and not just food that your government looks out for you and that markets are fairl efficient: if the food was THAT bad, it wouldn't be available for purchase.

I think that the truth is that the food is pretty deadly and fast food companies have to go to huge lengths to disguise the fact their food is deadly.

I remember when I was ten or eleven, I had a family member whom I knew was a health nut. I vividly remember telling him that I had moved up from the kids meal to the big mac, which I thought was even healthier than the kids meal because it was bigger, and had more vegetables on it. he was the first person to tell me that that Big Macs were incredibly unhealthy. I really had no idea.

I don't blame people for thinking that a lot of that food is healthier than it is.

[minkyboodle]

19. nice strawman

any excuse to turn the thread into a fat bashing one eh?

[PartyPooper]

13. I'm sure the invasion of Burger King, McDonalds, & Kentucky Fried Chicken

in the last several years has had something to do with this increasing obesity in the young.

I don't believe the British were having this youth obesity epidemic before American fast-food companies started opening up shop in the UK.

The British have always had their sweets...but, nothing as fattening and prolific as being offered by today's international junk food companies.

[qwertyMike]

16. I agree

I returned to the UK a few years agoafter quite an absence. I couln't believe the Americanization. US fast food joints were everywhere. Not to mention the clothing.

Obesity was rare before that.

We increasingly live in an MTV/Big Mac world. A sort of plastic homogeneity is sweeping the West and the third world. I heard an Indian intellectual lamenting that more Indian kids knew who Michael Jackson was than Gandhi.

:(:(

[LiberalFighter]

22. Especially with all the free toys included with the kiddy meals

[SoCalDem]

15. The fact that kids are in front of the TV, instead of out riding a bike

or running around playing..is the problem..at least as much as the ads..

If kids sit in school all day, and then flop in front of tv for 3 hours before dinner, it's not hard to see that they get no exercise..

When my generation (boomer) was young, we would practically have to be dragged in the house for dinner..Now you have to lock kids out of the house to keep them from the TV..

and our generation had ONE TV..in the living room, and the kids never got to choose the show.:(

[qwertyMike]

17. Naw - the Internet

[minkyboodle]

18. I've always been against direct marketing to children

This is a good thing IMO.

[Dirk39]

20. Any relation to the neoliberal priviatisation of health care...

in GB?
Now, as THEIR profits are concerned, they start to care...

If only capitalism wouldn't be so boring.
Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[AP]

21. Private health care makes money off of sick people, not healthy people.

The UK is trying to avoid the sick industry we have in the US.

[Dirk39]

23. I guess this is the reason,

the poorest Americans have the best health-care contracts:-)

And Great Britain after two decades of neoliberalism and privatisation has the highest rate of poor people (about 20%) and the worst health-care system in Europe?
Maybe it's just misunderstanding, but I would rather guess private health-care insurance companies make money with NOT paying for health-care?
More than 20.000 people did die in GB the last Winter, 'cause it was a little bit too cold in the neoliberal paradise Thatcher and Blair did create.

Dirk

[AP]

24. After years of Tories, the UK had the higest rate of poor people. Now...

...under Labor, they have the biggest economic gains in wealth in the bottom quintile, and the second highest in the second quintile, they have the increasing salaries across the board, and the have the lowest unemployment rates in years.

The Health care industry needs money to circulate in order to make money. They don't make money by doing nothing. It is parts of the health care industry which is being privatized in the UK, and not the health INSURANCE industry (there has been private insurance for years in the UK, but it's the government that is and will continue to be the INSURER for most people -- what they're doing is building a few more private hospitals.)

So, the government has an interest, as the insurer, to keep heallth care costs low, and they're working against the interests of any element of the industry they privatize, because they're denying them the sick people they need to make money off the government.

As for 20K dying in the UK -- I bet that if that's an accurate statistice, it's much lower than the number during the tory years. It sucks being old in the UK, but it really sucked in the Tory years. Labor has definitely taken steps to protect old people and make old age a much more dignified and less impoverished stage of life.

[Barkley]

25. Banning cigarette TV commercials actually helped company profits

Because it save them money from not having to advertise on TV which is pretty expensive.

Like cigarettes, junk food causes spillover costs to third party (public medical spending to deal with obesity and associated illnesses).

Junk food companies are not paying the "true" production costs. They should be taxed - heavily.

[PeaceProgProsp]

26. They wouldn't invest in TV advertising if it didn't make money.

I believe cigarette companies are now making a great deal of their profits in asia.

Their profits have gone up not because they're saving money from not advertsing in NAmerica and Europe, but because it drove them towards Asia and other countries where there is huge growth and little protection of the consumers from what they do.

They probably would have tried harder to obstruct the advertising laws in NA and Europe if they didn't have Asia to make up the difference.