Junk Advertising
The latest ill-thought populist vote grabbing ploy by Labor leader Mark Latham is saying he intends to ban junk food advertising during children’s programs. Now at face value this seems like a worthy plan. Everyone acknowledges that childhood obesity is an icreasing problem, and certainly the consumption of junk food contributes to this, in addition to the major factor being insufficient physical activity. (Having said this the majority of children I see in my practice are not obese)
The problem with this plan is that it is not as easy as it sounds. To carry it out you need to have a clear definitions of what consitutes “children’s programming” and more controversially, what constitutes “junk food”. This would necessitate a whole extra degree of regulation of the food industry, which of course would have to be prepared to fight off legal challenges to it’s rulings by the wealthy big players such as McDonalds.
Basically what this would mean would be legislating to take up what should be a parental responsibility, and this should not be the role of government. It’s up to parents to decide what their children watch, and whether to give in to advertising. Most of the best kids TV is (and always has been ever since I was a kid) on the ABC, and so is free of this sort of advertising anyway. Besides, cutting out ads for McDonalds during childrens programming is not going to stop kids (like my 3 year old) begging their parents to stop every time they drive past the golden arches, which seems to be every couple of kilometres nowadays. There is definitely a problem, but it’s the responsibility of individual parents and families to solve it, not governments. If anything the government should be spending it’s money on promoting a healthy alternative, like advertising on good nutrition, or promoting physical fitness in children. That’s positive government, not the negativistic type that Latham is espousing.
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