Ideas@TheCentre
Fat kids, junk food and emotion
Every time you open a newspaper or watch the news, you find yourself being bombarded with the news that junk food creates fat kids, and for the crime of unleashing a childhood obesity epidemic on innocent parents and children, the fast food industry should be punished or at least have their commercial activities severely curtailed. Individual or parental responsibility plays no role; it is all the evil ‘fast food industry.’
At least this is what the concerned stakeholders (government funded lobby groups) think. However, in the never-ending competition to see who’s more publicly caring, rational discussion often gets tossed aside.
Takeaways are labelled as ‘bad,’ ipso facto those who sell them are also ‘bad.’ Disagreeing with this lands any dissenter ‘on their side’ and sees them denounced as ‘uncaring’ about poor, innocent fat, diabetic kids.
In Crikey (4 February 2010), Jane Martin from the Obesity Policy Coalition wrote an article bemoaning self regulation in ‘the fast food industry.’ She cites an advertisement for chicken nuggets/soft drink/free toy combo that Hungry Jack’s has been offering as an example of ‘the fox looking after the henhouse.’
The advertised meal may not be the healthy option. But does it make fast food chains somehow predatory and evil? No. Does it mean fast food chains are responsible for childhood obesity rates? No. Does it somehow mean parents hold less responsibility to feed their children a balanced diet? No.
The power of claims about the inherent ‘badness’ of the fast food industry lies not in the assertion but in the appeal to emotion, to good and evil, to right and wrong, of some cosmic battle between money hungry capitalists and fearless defenders of the poor downtrodden, burger-loving proles.
This plays to emotions such as compassion and fear, and it is as professional as it is effective. In both New Zealand and Australia, the heads of major obesity action groups are professionals many of whom formerly led anti-smoking groups: another good versus evil campaign.
With the ‘sin’ of smoking now largely purged from public sight, it makes you wonder which is more important: the cause or the battle against some invented goliath?
Luke Malpass is a Policy Analyst with the Centre’s New Zealand Policy Unit.
