Junk food advertising could be banned across the entire Transport for London
67 replies, posted
Sadiq Khan has probably never had a KFC bucket
Those tests were flawed, read the article I posted above. The argument that food activates the same pathways as drugs is straight up fear mongering. That same pathways also activates when you play music, watch a good movie, play video games or do anything you enjoy at all. That does constitute as an addiction.
I read it after you posted it
It does show some evidence that it isn't, but it doesn't rule it out conclusively.
That being said, I don't see why there shouldn't be a ban on ads selling foods that are high in sugar, fat, and salt. The US basically subsidizes those foods, so it doesn't need to double down on them. We can't run tests on people, so as far as I know, we can never conclusively prove that it does have the same effects or doesn't. I can't claim it's addictive definitively, and as I stated I think poverty is the largest contributing factor to obesity, and I do really think advertising works. There's a reason companies are so heavily invested into it. Either it's a multi billion dollar enterprise, or a multi billion dollar scam. I believe it works though, and is incredibly effective. The foods that many of these companies make are extremely effective at hitting the core components of what makes food the most "tasty" and in the west we by and large have eschewed traditional logic regarding feeding children(Children after being weaned just started eating whatever food parents ate traditionally, there was no special baby food prior to the invention of it) baby foods that don't prepare them for the actuality of a healthy diet. I think it all plays a role and there's no reason to be against banning ads for shitty food.
What exactly do you define as "regular food", though?
If you have bad genetics and you tend to gain weight easier then that's all the more reason to fucking watch your diet and go easy on anything that can induce heavy weight loss.
Sell them both a cheeseburger and a pack of smokes as a bundle. It'll curb the obesity problem at least.
The problem with these things is that the food itself isn't necessarily unhealthy, it's the frequent/semi-frequent consumption that really screws you.
Some foods probably are psychoactive to an extent. I've definitely had a few bowls of highly spiced soup that have given a head change, beyond the normal change in mental state associated with a large meal. Many herbs and spices contain psychoactive compounds like Myristicin, which although typically discussed as having noticable effects in large doses probably have some noticable effect in low doses.
It's silly to deny that high fat high sugar foods are not addictive. Comparisons to heroin are extreme but not explicitly wrong. Consider the public health burden both have and recognize that both are affecting similar reward pathways.
It's extreme rhetoric and yes, factually wrong when you look at it with any scrutiny. It only serves to show the person isn't arguing in good faith, but just to push their own narrative.
I've considered it, and they are still not even remotely close. As for reward pathways, anything that makes you feel good affects this pathway in some degree. So if you like steamed vegetables, they will affect this pathway. Doesn't make steamed vegetables an addictive substance. If this is all we're boiling it down to, we're grasping at straws that don't need to be grasped at. There are plenty of legit ways to show that refined sugar is not the best choice.
Did you really just call people who eat junk food "abusers" and say they "use" several times a day? Holy hyperbolic rhetoric....
Not fast food, low sugar, plenty of vegetables and fruit, etc
Easier said then done considering most stuff, even bread, is loaded with sugar, and the diet food industry sells shit that is often just as bad or worse for you than the non-diet alternative, fast food is visibly bad for you, it's all the hidden fast food that's the real problem, to maintain a proper diet these days (particularly if you're predisposed to weight gain) you have to be very selective which can be time consuming, it's no wonder we have an obesity epidemic when it's quicker and often significantly cheaper to consume junk.
Have any of you seen 'Fed Up'? It's a documentary that covers this very issue of poor food choices and childhood obesity, as well as the massive advertising campaigns that lead to children
overconsuming fast food.
In a world where Government responsibility replaces personal responsibility. Geez.
You want cheaper health care or universal health care? Then the government should promote healthy food and discredit eating unhealthy food.
A huge swath of the medical problems in the West, especially in the US, is 100% due to shitty diets.
Then nope. I do not want universal healthcare if it can be wielded as a bludgeon to justify the government trying to get more into people's lives, and I suspect that a LOT of other people feel the same way. You will never get universal healthcare doing things like that.
Bread is sugar.
Eat some nuts and fruit and vegetables. Nobody said it was easy or fun to be healthy (though after you eat well for even a few weeks you'll start to love the foods you're eating)
Banning advertising of these food is a step too far into your personal lives?
Health starts with food. If you eat shit, chances are you’ll have issues. To minimize the costs of a larger healthcare system it seems reasonable to be against highly effective ads usually targeted at children.
Unless companies are putting these advertisements onto your living room wall, they are not stepping into anyone's personal lives.
I really would love to see the explanation to how this intrudes into your personal life.
If anything, they're saving companies money with advertising fees because it's not going to hurt their business all that much. And if it does - then good riddance.
I'm going to start out with saying that using the term "personal lives" was a poor choice of words, and really wasn't what I was going for.
If we want to do universal healthcare, then it needs to promote freedom, not limit it in order to save a couple bucks. If that were the case, it could be used to regulate any and everything. That's not a road I want to travel down.
As stated above, that was a poor choice of wording. But do you think the government would really just stop at "advertising"?
Stopping an advertisment isn't regulation that deeply affects your life, or your ability to have personal choice.
Why does universal healthcare align with freedom in your mind? You get free healthcare, so you have the freedom to damn near kill yourself and shove that cost onto society? Why?
Fucking ell lad, they're just adverts on the tube
Yes because there are some things that people should not consume. This is why tobacco advertisement is banned and why there are now soda taxes popping up in major cities in the US.
Fats and sugars are addicting because they're not that common to get out in the wild so when you, as an animal, find some you are meant to engorge yourself. All that goes straight into your fat, but as an animal, that reserve isn't meant to stay there for long periods because odds are you may not eat for a day or two.
But modern man has far too much access to fats and sugars, in too much a concentrated quantity, and is not as active as before. Our bodies have not evolved to deal with the diet that we have artificially created in the past 120 years.
Uuuh...
Treatment for obesity-related diseases like cancer would probably still be expensive as fuck. I don't see how that would be nearly enough to do away with universal healthcare.
Of course people are still going to get sick and many will require health treatment at some point in their lives. The goal isn't to eliminate doctor visits entirely, it's to reduce it.
Especially for things like diabetes that really should be a very rare disease to have if we had a natural diet but in the US, we're quickly approaching 1 in every 3 adults having that disease and a more rapid rise of it for children.
So... Slippery slope argument?
Are you against any and all form of regulation? Because your reasoning could be applied to any instance of it. That's not a very convincing argument.
How the hell is having the freedom to essentially abuse your body with no financial cost to yourself a restriction of freedom?
No one here has banned fast food or garbage diets. Hell, you can still even go smoke yourself into having black lung.
Ultimately what we eat is our fault. But in the case of children the only people that can be blamed are the parents. If the parents aren't teaching their kids how to eat a balanced/healthy/good diet then they should probably be held responsible. It isn't McDonald's fault for selling product people will buy of their own free will. But it is the parents fault for neglecting to teach their kids how to eat. Besides, in the case obesity it isn't necessarily what you eat but rather how much you eat. anyway, I just see banning tube advertisements for "Junk food" as a "Look mom! I brushed my teeth!" kinda thing. It means well but ultimately nothing is really accomplished. It would be much better in my opinion if they focused on obesity elimination through education. But hey what do I know lol.
I never got this line of thinking of attributing the entirety of the responsibility to the last link of the causal chain. It's just reductive.
If you spend billions on an advertising campaign designed to get more people to consume your unhealthy food, then yes, you are, at least in part, responsible for the increase in unhealthy food consumption that follows.
Obviously I'm being intentionally hyperbolic. I directly acknowledged that the comparison is extreme. Most people do not enjoy steamed vegetables because there is not an incentive to eat something that should ordinarily be the primary constituent of our diet. High fat and high sugar items were for most of human history a luxury. Finding those treats often could mean averting starvation, it's an incredibly powerful and deep seated drive. This is a big part of why it's difficult to habituate eating healthy foods.
We're talking habituation of use/consumption. Addictive drugs give a large "kick" infrequently, junk food gives a relatively small kick and gets reinforced very often. My point is that either way it's sufficient to elicit an outcome of changed behavior.
Obesity is a massive problem in western countries. In the United States its arguably a national security issue. The government banning advertisements for junk food on government-run transportation and government-owned facilities is just about the least intrusive attempt to quell it that I can imagine.
I never got this line of thinking of focusing on something with such a minuscule part in the issue. it's just pedantic.
Sure, the companies have some sort of technical responsibility but to say that parents are the 'last' link is foolish. Parents are the biggest influence on their children and have historically held the majority of responsibility for their children. If we want to solve the problem of obesity we need to stop focusing on measures that don't actually do anything. I mean the article mentions that
the Advertising Association said it would have "little impact"
(In the context of pressure on families with kids). I mean if they want to limit advertisement then by all means they can do it; there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. But it is just irresponsible to me to pretend it will have any legitimate long term impact.
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