What do you think your brain is made of? About two-thirds fat, is what. And kids need fat, too. In fact, children under two should not have fat-restricted diets because of adverse effects on growth and development. So there.
The point is, fat is not your enemy: ignorance is. Do you really think the manufacturers of 'healthy' and 'lite' products give a rat's ass about you? Give me a break - if there was a profitable way to recycle kitty litter and market it as a granola bar, somebody would be doing it. Fat itself is not inherently bad, as some people would have you believe, just a problem if you eat the wrong kind in the wrong amounts. And removing fat does not automatically make a food 'healthy'.
What troubles me most is that so much advertising is aimed at parents, insinuating that the products being promoted are somehow better for your kids than real food. Vitamin packed! Good source of minerals! Gives them the energy to play hard! Yeah, well so does a sardine, but it doesn't have a picture of a superhero on it or a bunch of ads showing how cool you'll be if you eat it.
Here's how it works: take a perfectly good piece of food, process most of the nutrition out of it, add back some 'enrichment' and preservatives and don't forget the artificial sweetener. Add a few hundred thousand dollars worth of advertising and a picture of someone in spandex bike shorts grinning like a chimp. Voila: health food.
Heaven forbid you should send your kid to school with a peanut butter sandwich and a piece of fruit. Omigod - the kid sitting three rows down might keel over and drop from third-hand peanut breath exposure. Then you'd all have to go for counselling.
Bad enough that adults fall for this so-called healthy lifestyle advertising, but I really resent the fear-mongering that allows big business to pimp our kids for profit. Don't give your kids cheese, it's BAD for them. But our new low-carb fat-reduced just-about-cheese product is GOOD. And conveniently packaged in plastic with an expiry date of 2052.
Take a look at the ingredient list on some of the so-called healthy foods. You might be surprised to find sugar (or worse, sugar substitute) listed near the top. If you listen carefully to the ads, notice phrases like "may help to", "studies suggest", and "has been associated with". Translation: We're not allowed to outright lie, but we sure as heck would like to give the impression that this stuff is good for you.
When a company makes a profit from a trend, it behooves them to get others on the bandwagon. The more money involved, the easier to get others on board. Finance some studies, take some surveys, get some intense media campaign going, and you can pretty much demonize anything you want. If you can get the government in on it, so much the better. Restricting ads for certain products and imposing taxes on them (such as is now being considered for 'unhealthy' foods) is certainly creating an unfair marketplace, not to mention trampling our freedom of choice into the ground. It is not the role of the government to influence what I choose to eat or drink. I personally believe that eating sugar is healthier than eating a chemical substitute (go to Mercola.com for a gazillion reasons not to use artificial sweeteners, including weight gain!). Slanting the market in favor of so-called 'healthy' choices is not concern for public health. It is SOCIAL ENGINEERING. Two of the scariest words in the English language.
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
(Squealer speaking to the farm animals in George Orwell's Animal Farm, 1945.)
Too true, too true.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to dig up the essay I wrote on the evils of advertising in college... It ties into this topic.