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Should television advertising of fast food / high sugar foods be permitted?

13

Replies

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 31,717 Member
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    RovP6 wrote: »
    I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say that the food industry has a major role to play in rising levels of obesity so I would absolutely support a ban on advertsing of these products. Food manufacturers are far far more savvy about the effects that certain food combinations have on our ability to resist temptation than the vast majority of the gen pop do. While it's right to point out that none of this food is addictive, there's no denying the reaction we have to highly palatable foods. The science is clear and the release of dopamine we can experience simply when we think about certain foods is used extensively by the food industry to sell their products.

    Try eating 3500 calories of chicken over the course of a day versus eating 3500 calories of muffins or cookies. I'd guarantee you'd be completely stuffed after the chicken and wouldn't be able to eat another mouthful, while you could probably eat a few more muffins.

    The desire to overeat is genetically inherent in all of us. We have evolved to prioritise nutrient dense and highly palatable foods over thousands of years and really don't need the food industry bombarding us with images of how much more we can eat.

    Misconceptions and ill-conceived notions that lead to the demonization of foods combined with conspiracy theories about the food industry do nothing but cement my stance that the government (made of people with the same propensity for misconceptions and ignorant, though well-intentioned, ideas) has no place regulating the way I eat or how someone else advertises the foods I choose to eat.

    Let’s remember that it was the government which decided the new food pyramid should say that it’s healthy to eat 11 servings of carbs - any carbs - a day, leading to a decade of bread packages prominently featuring the food pyramid and insisting more bread was better health. It is possibly not pure coincidence that obesity rates exploded starting about the time the food pyramid was introduced.

    It’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s a fact that special interests pump money into getting laws and regulations that promote the sale of their products. As a result, the government has a poor track record when it comes to telling people what’s best for them to eat.

    The food pyramid never said "any carbs"...it said 6-11 servings of whole grains followed by fruits and veg. The food pyramid has nothing to do with it...I don't know very many people that actually followed the food pyramid.

    6-11 actual servings of whole grains isn't a lot...well 11 might be...but 6 servings of whole grains is not really a lot. 1/2 cup of oatmeal = 1 serving of whole grains...I typically have about a cup most mornings for breakfast. 1/2 cup cooked brown rice = 1 serving of whole grains...I typically have about a cup of brown rice or quionoa, etc for either lunch or dinner...so another 2 servings. A sandwich with two slices of whole grain bread would be 2 servings of whole grains. Right there I'm at 6 servings.

    There was nowhere in the food pyramid that just said to eat endless grains or any carb you want.

    Given that people completely ignored the other advice, like the advice to eat veg and fruit, and increased cals from fat when we were allegedly low fat, and continue to ignore the (very good) advice that is given now, I am also incredibly skeptical about any efforts to blame gov't advice for people filling up their plates with all that currently constitutes the so-called SAD.

    I grew up in the '80s when low fat was allegedly king, and I recall understanding that a good dinner was protein, some reasonable amount of a starch (corn, bread, potato, pasta, rice), and a significant serving of vegetables (and corn did not count and neither did potatoes, they were starches). We ate most meals at home, soda was a rare treat and so was take-out/fast food (and other restaurants, in part because expensive). Mostly we ate at meals, kids had an after dinner snack, often fruit. None of this was contrary to gov't advice, then or later, and it was understood to be common sense. I don't buy for a second that anyone is really confused as to what constitutes good nutrition such that they are eating the so-called SAD (which is a little stereotypical, no one I know really eats that way but everyone on those "look at how bad the average American eats" shows do, so perhaps some do) because they are genuinely confused and think Snackwells are super healthy and vegetables unimportant.

    In particular, the egregiously lacking vegetable consumption by the average person suggests that people are just ignoring the consistent nutritional advice. I tend to agree with those who said the advice has tended to emphasize grains more than veg and fruit somewhat (largely because of cost and because in the past getting sufficient cals was harder and overconsumption less of an issue), but given how even the pretty low recommendations are not met, I think blaming that for poor diets is obviously nothing but excuse-making.

    Exactly.

    And one of the reasons that I'm anti-ad-ban is that I, too, think the USDA (WHO, NHS, etc.) info is overall pretty good - one can find a howler now and then, and they lag the latest research a bit, but if a person had been following their evolving advice accurately for decades, I think that person would be doing pretty well on the nutrition side of health.

    Why does that make an ad-ban extra bad? Because all the money that's now chasing advertising and lobbying - because companies aren't stupid, they know we ignore the government nutrition advice, mostly - will be refocused on influencing the nutrition advice (government, academic, private "non-advertising" 'net, etc.).
  • Motorsheen
    Motorsheen Posts: 20,493 Member
    First Cigarettes.... Then Cheeseburgers..... What's Next? ShakeWeight ?


    (now available in designer colors... so, act fast!)
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
    Phirrgus wrote: »
    I’m inclined to say that since Joe Camel doesn’t grace our television screens, the fast food and breakfast cereal commercials should get lost as well.
    What do you think?

    People who don't practice restraint are going to not practice restraint regardless. Ads are never ending and dishonest and people can be inclined to do what they please regardless of what they know.

    Besides, while I dislike the ads, I do enjoy breakfast cereals and fast food. Ads or not, I'm going to partake. :)

    Do you think for-profit companies would pay to advertise if people were just going to buy their products (in the same quantity) anyway?
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,879 Member
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    RovP6 wrote: »
    I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say that the food industry has a major role to play in rising levels of obesity so I would absolutely support a ban on advertsing of these products. Food manufacturers are far far more savvy about the effects that certain food combinations have on our ability to resist temptation than the vast majority of the gen pop do. While it's right to point out that none of this food is addictive, there's no denying the reaction we have to highly palatable foods. The science is clear and the release of dopamine we can experience simply when we think about certain foods is used extensively by the food industry to sell their products.

    Try eating 3500 calories of chicken over the course of a day versus eating 3500 calories of muffins or cookies. I'd guarantee you'd be completely stuffed after the chicken and wouldn't be able to eat another mouthful, while you could probably eat a few more muffins.

    The desire to overeat is genetically inherent in all of us. We have evolved to prioritise nutrient dense and highly palatable foods over thousands of years and really don't need the food industry bombarding us with images of how much more we can eat.

    Misconceptions and ill-conceived notions that lead to the demonization of foods combined with conspiracy theories about the food industry do nothing but cement my stance that the government (made of people with the same propensity for misconceptions and ignorant, though well-intentioned, ideas) has no place regulating the way I eat or how someone else advertises the foods I choose to eat.

    Let’s remember that it was the government which decided the new food pyramid should say that it’s healthy to eat 11 servings of carbs - any carbs - a day, leading to a decade of bread packages prominently featuring the food pyramid and insisting more bread was better health. It is possibly not pure coincidence that obesity rates exploded starting about the time the food pyramid was introduced.

    It’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s a fact that special interests pump money into getting laws and regulations that promote the sale of their products. As a result, the government has a poor track record when it comes to telling people what’s best for them to eat.

    The food pyramid never said "any carbs"...it said 6-11 servings of whole grains followed by fruits and veg. The food pyramid has nothing to do with it...I don't know very many people that actually followed the food pyramid.

    6-11 actual servings of whole grains isn't a lot...well 11 might be...but 6 servings of whole grains is not really a lot. 1/2 cup of oatmeal = 1 serving of whole grains...I typically have about a cup most mornings for breakfast. 1/2 cup cooked brown rice = 1 serving of whole grains...I typically have about a cup of brown rice or quionoa, etc for either lunch or dinner...so another 2 servings. A sandwich with two slices of whole grain bread would be 2 servings of whole grains. Right there I'm at 6 servings.

    There was nowhere in the food pyramid that just said to eat endless grains or any carb you want.

    Tell that to the bread manufacturers who prominently featured the food pyramid on the front of breads which were anything but whole grain, along with the claim that you were supposed to eat 11 of them. You see the same sort of thing from modern sugar based cereals which prominently say, “heart healthy.”

    That's just marketing by a private enterprise...that's not actually the government or the food pyramid telling you anything. Right now anything and everything that remotely has protein in it has a big old PROTEIN on the label...even though it might only be a few grams...I mean almonds are marketed like crazy as a good source of protein...anyone with even a little knowledge of nutrition would know they are a good source of healthy fat with very few calories coming from protein. I see candies marketed as "low fat" or "no fat"...like no kidding...it doesn't entice me to buy them because I know they're just sugar. There has to be personal accountability...marketing is marketing and they're doing what they do...people need to educate themselves and take personal responsibility.

    If people actually followed the food pyramid or the new my plate, they'd actually be getting pretty well rounded nutrition. Personally, I think good nutrition is pretty much common sense..I think most people know for the most part what they should be eating on the regular...people just don't do it.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
    Studies have shown that people see a yummylicious burger on TV, looking much better than the one McD's actually serves in real life, and feel hungry. Advertising creates demand. Advertising is hugely expensive, and just like losing weight is about limiting CI and often increasing CO, making a profit is about minimizing expenses and charging as much as the market will bear. Spending gobs of money with no return will price a company out of competition.

    I'm not saying anything about what policy we should adopt, wrt fast food ads or anything else. I'm saying this (advertising is effective) is a reality that several people in here are willfully ignoring.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 31,717 Member
    Studies have shown that people see a yummylicious burger on TV, looking much better than the one McD's actually serves in real life, and feel hungry. Advertising creates demand. Advertising is hugely expensive, and just like losing weight is about limiting CI and often increasing CO, making a profit is about minimizing expenses and charging as much as the market will bear. Spending gobs of money with no return will price a company out of competition.

    I'm not saying anything about what policy we should adopt, wrt fast food ads or anything else. I'm saying this (advertising is effective) is a reality that several people in here are willfully ignoring.

    I'm not saying it's ineffective. I'm saying the point of it is usually narrower than you're suggesting it is.

    It's very effective. But it's most often, in a strategy sense, about building or expanding market share in a category, not about expanding that market.

    Even when the goal is expanding a market category, it's largely about stealing from an adjacent category. Granola bars got chocolate chips and marshmallow partly to steal market from cookies. Beer, wine, and liquor seesaw sales between them, but don't much affect bottled water. (Bottled water did affect soda, or maybe was a marketer response to category decline in soda.) Etc.

    Major market disruptions via advertising are different, but fairly uncommon. Shifts from one market type to another (fast food vs. fast casual vs. pre-prepped frozen meals) are usually slow.

    Advertising does work, though: Corporations take a pretty data-driven view of it, and usually have clear objectives for campaigns.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
    I don't mean you, Ann, or Carlos. Below is an example. There's some truth to this, but it's much too black and white and we have to acknowledge that it's not quite this simple.

    Other research has shown that children have more power over a family's spending than we'd probably like, it comes from pestering harried parents until they give in. When my mom was young, people could buy a car and a house on one income, and one parent could spend a lot more time and effort on parenting. Today in most families both parents work full time and commute. It's harder to do everything we associate with good parenting when you're exhausted, pressed for time, and stressed about money. Again I'm not saying anything about what we should or shouldn't do politically, I'm saying today's reality makes it harder for people to make the right choices day in and day out. That's part of why so many waistlines have been growing for a few decades.

    I'm not in favor of banning almost anything, but I'm also against looking at the world in black and white terms.
    Athijade wrote: »
    No.

    How about people stop blaming others for what they have done to themselves? A commercial on TV doesn't put that food in your mouth. You have to make a conscious decision and effort to get the food and eat it. The commercials are not making anyone fat. This is simply ridiculous.

  • Freedom of speech. Censorship is a very dangerous and slippery slope.

    This shouldn't even be a debate in the free world.
  • Theoldguy1
    Theoldguy1 Posts: 2,427 Member
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    RovP6 wrote: »
    I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say that the food industry has a major role to play in rising levels of obesity so I would absolutely support a ban on advertsing of these products. Food manufacturers are far far more savvy about the effects that certain food combinations have on our ability to resist temptation than the vast majority of the gen pop do. While it's right to point out that none of this food is addictive, there's no denying the reaction we have to highly palatable foods. The science is clear and the release of dopamine we can experience simply when we think about certain foods is used extensively by the food industry to sell their products.

    Try eating 3500 calories of chicken over the course of a day versus eating 3500 calories of muffins or cookies. I'd guarantee you'd be completely stuffed after the chicken and wouldn't be able to eat another mouthful, while you could probably eat a few more muffins.

    The desire to overeat is genetically inherent in all of us. We have evolved to prioritise nutrient dense and highly palatable foods over thousands of years and really don't need the food industry bombarding us with images of how much more we can eat.

    Misconceptions and ill-conceived notions that lead to the demonization of foods combined with conspiracy theories about the food industry do nothing but cement my stance that the government (made of people with the same propensity for misconceptions and ignorant, though well-intentioned, ideas) has no place regulating the way I eat or how someone else advertises the foods I choose to eat.

    Let’s remember that it was the government which decided the new food pyramid should say that it’s healthy to eat 11 servings of carbs - any carbs - a day, leading to a decade of bread packages prominently featuring the food pyramid and insisting more bread was better health. It is possibly not pure coincidence that obesity rates exploded starting about the time the food pyramid was introduced.

    It’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s a fact that special interests pump money into getting laws and regulations that promote the sale of their products. As a result, the government has a poor track record when it comes to telling people what’s best for them to eat.

    The food pyramid never said "any carbs"...it said 6-11 servings of whole grains followed by fruits and veg. The food pyramid has nothing to do with it...I don't know very many people that actually followed the food pyramid.

    6-11 actual servings of whole grains isn't a lot...well 11 might be...but 6 servings of whole grains is not really a lot. 1/2 cup of oatmeal = 1 serving of whole grains...I typically have about a cup most mornings for breakfast. 1/2 cup cooked brown rice = 1 serving of whole grains...I typically have about a cup of brown rice or quionoa, etc for either lunch or dinner...so another 2 servings. A sandwich with two slices of whole grain bread would be 2 servings of whole grains. Right there I'm at 6 servings.

    There was nowhere in the food pyramid that just said to eat endless grains or any carb you want.

    Tell that to the bread manufacturers who prominently featured the food pyramid on the front of breads which were anything but whole grain, along with the claim that you were supposed to eat 11 of them. You see the same sort of thing from modern sugar based cereals which prominently say, “heart healthy.”

    That's just marketing by a private enterprise...that's not actually the government or the food pyramid telling you anything. Right now anything and everything that remotely has protein in it has a big old PROTEIN on the label...even though it might only be a few grams...I mean almonds are marketed like crazy as a good source of protein...anyone with even a little knowledge of nutrition would know they are a good source of healthy fat with very few calories coming from protein. I see candies marketed as "low fat" or "no fat"...like no kidding...it doesn't entice me to buy them because I know they're just sugar. There has to be personal accountability...marketing is marketing and they're doing what they do...people need to educate themselves and take personal responsibility.

    If people actually followed the food pyramid or the new my plate, they'd actually be getting pretty well rounded nutrition. Personally, I think good nutrition is pretty much common sense..I think most people know for the most part what they should be eating on the regular...people just don't do it.

    I would agree, and most likely not have a weight issue also.
  • CSARdiver
    CSARdiver Posts: 6,257 Member
    I don't mean you, Ann, or Carlos. Below is an example. There's some truth to this, but it's much too black and white and we have to acknowledge that it's not quite this simple.

    Other research has shown that children have more power over a family's spending than we'd probably like, it comes from pestering harried parents until they give in. When my mom was young, people could buy a car and a house on one income, and one parent could spend a lot more time and effort on parenting. Today in most families both parents work full time and commute. It's harder to do everything we associate with good parenting when you're exhausted, pressed for time, and stressed about money. Again I'm not saying anything about what we should or shouldn't do politically, I'm saying today's reality makes it harder for people to make the right choices day in and day out. That's part of why so many waistlines have been growing for a few decades.

    I'm not in favor of banning almost anything, but I'm also against looking at the world in black and white terms.
    Athijade wrote: »
    No.

    How about people stop blaming others for what they have done to themselves? A commercial on TV doesn't put that food in your mouth. You have to make a conscious decision and effort to get the food and eat it. The commercials are not making anyone fat. This is simply ridiculous.

    There isn't much black and white - it's all shades of grey.

    I analyze behavior with a few governing concepts - one being "Facta non veba" or Deeds not words. Watch what people do over what they say. I note the behavior of the tech executives and how they ban or severly restrict their kid's screen time. I would imagine the same with uncontrolled advertising. Fact is these people are where they are due to a great deal of discipline and can withstand a child pestering, but they don't invite the opportunity, or at least mitigate it.

  • Freedom of speech. Censorship is a very dangerous and slippery slope.

    This shouldn't even be a debate in the free world.

    Can't tell if the accidental or intentional irony.

    Lol it was completely accidental actually
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
    I feel like a lot of the responses are kind of knee jerk: I like fries, of course we sounds keep them around. There's some irony in that because the point many people saying no are making is that advertising has nothing to do with consumption, disallowing McDonald's ads on cartoons doesn't mean you can't still get and enjoy fries.

    Dismissing an idea out of hand is a lot easier than debating it on its merits.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
    CSARdiver wrote: »
    I don't mean you, Ann, or Carlos. Below is an example. There's some truth to this, but it's much too black and white and we have to acknowledge that it's not quite this simple.

    Other research has shown that children have more power over a family's spending than we'd probably like, it comes from pestering harried parents until they give in. When my mom was young, people could buy a car and a house on one income, and one parent could spend a lot more time and effort on parenting. Today in most families both parents work full time and commute. It's harder to do everything we associate with good parenting when you're exhausted, pressed for time, and stressed about money. Again I'm not saying anything about what we should or shouldn't do politically, I'm saying today's reality makes it harder for people to make the right choices day in and day out. That's part of why so many waistlines have been growing for a few decades.

    I'm not in favor of banning almost anything, but I'm also against looking at the world in black and white terms.
    Athijade wrote: »
    No.

    How about people stop blaming others for what they have done to themselves? A commercial on TV doesn't put that food in your mouth. You have to make a conscious decision and effort to get the food and eat it. The commercials are not making anyone fat. This is simply ridiculous.

    There isn't much black and white - it's all shades of grey.

    I analyze behavior with a few governing concepts - one being "Facta non veba" or Deeds not words. Watch what people do over what they say. I note the behavior of the tech executives and how they ban or severly restrict their kid's screen time. I would imagine the same with uncontrolled advertising. Fact is these people are where they are due to a great deal of discipline and can withstand a child pestering, but they don't invite the opportunity, or at least mitigate it.

    What % of folks are tech executives? Do you think they have any advantages as parents compared to Amazon warehouse workers who pee in bottles because they don't get enough breaks?