UK to Ban Junk Food Ads - re Childhood Obesity
Sorry to be so pessimistic but that won’t stop the addicts. The junkies will always find their fix.
But I will say I wouldn’t mind if they’d go away over here as well.
Wait, wait… I’m confused… The UK Government is trying to curtail junk food?!
What will supermarkets do with 90% of their shelf space? I see a commercial retail real estate meltdown in the making here. 
Good point! … It’s not going to work is it. Geezy is right to be pessimistic.
I liked some of the stuff on the list. Quite surprising.
Oh they will sell the stuff just the same, obviously. It’s just about ads. MAYBE it does some tiny thing for the next generation…? Who knows. I doubt it could be effective…
I consider it being realistic, no way it could make a big difference. People do obviously harmful things to themselves if they are addicted or get much joy from it. See smoking. I can’t get it. It’s not like we grew up like that unlike eating bad food… It’s smelly, expensive, it doesn’t even have calories, clearly unhealthy, bad for people around us (I am quite sensitive to the smoke so even the few minutes per month for me is so bad as I can’t breath properly)… Still. People just keep doing it.
It’s a ban against advertising, so I’m not sure how much reach it will have. Also, is in only for “online adverts”? I’m not sure
It’s tough to balance individual autonomy against unfair advertising. But the long delay in implementation does give people time to sort out their thinking about how it should work. Allowing adverts after 21:00 should limit the damage to responsible adults who presumably know how to defend themselves. I know the U.K. has a similar restriction on curse words that seems a good balance between more wholesome fare for the young people and and a more relaxed attitude toward shows for grownups.
One of the problems with this: how many kids watch television? My kids don’t. They watch streaming, youtube, online stuff. Plenty of podcasts/youtube videos. Unless you curtail the advertising there, too, you’re hitting a small target.
Sorry, but I am not cheering this at all. Why? Because IMHO this is Big Government being a know-all and deciding what is good for us and what is not. Agreed that most of us might agree in this instance the targets they have chosen are reasonable. BUT it is not too far a step for the next one to be banning ads for red meat “because we know that red meat causes cancer”. And banning ads for something is usually a precursor for stronger restrictions in the future.
In general, if the government tells me X is good for me I will tend to avoid it, and if they say Y is bad for me, I will go and look some out and make a judgment for myself of whether it is bad for me or not. I do not trust their judgement AT ALL… in most cases, government guidance is just plain wrong, so a Contrarian action plan is the best course.
Call me a crazed libertarian, but I am not happy with what they are doing here.
Alec has a point… I mean the ad thing. I definitely won’t avoid food just because it’s in the guidelines. I just ignore the guidelines*. I know that my body likes at this point anyway so I don’t expect much changes beyond the reasons of taste changes and simplicity and the like…
*I actually need some research to find the guidelines in total, part of it is hard to avoid, of course and yes, I tend to go against it but not because they are guidelines. I only follow myself.
I’ve decided that in our modern day society anything I’m being steered toward or steered against has a profit motive behind it. It basically has nothing to do with providing me a benefit, and whatever I’m being told, the opposite is more likely to be true.