TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Exploitative Internet Marketing Fuels Child Obesity

Re: Exploitative Internet Marketing Fuels Child Obesity

Wesrock@aol.com
Mon, 11 Sep 2006 20:00:08 EDT

In a message dated 11 Sep 2006 11:18:38 -0700, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
writes:

> Michael Perry wrote:

>> Self-regulation in food and beverage marketing is being exploited and
>> is failing to curb childhood obesity, research by a global obesity
>> taskforce presented on Tuesday has found.

> It's easy to blame the media (and now the Internet) for social
> problems, but I don't buy it.

> I find that hard to believe. I question the influence of solely
> advertising on obesity because: 1) all sorts of junk food has been
> aggressively advertised on TV and print for 50 years yet this obesity
> problem is recent and 2) they took cigarette ads off TV years ago but
> smoking remained popular for a long time afterwards 3) they never
> advertised hard liquor on TV but it is a growing youth problem and 4)
> they don't advertise illegal drugs at all on TV but it's a problem.

I was born in 1928 and so I grew up in the depression years of
the 1930s and then the 1940s.

Cooking then was commonly done with lard or solid other animal fats.
Hamburger places existed, fried their hamburgers and french fries in
lard, and the hamburgers were generally bigger and greasier than you
get today in most places frequented by children. Why were't we
visited with an epidemic of obesity.

> They depend far more on restaurant foods which are
> much fattier. They give in when the kids whine for junk food to shut
> them up because they're too stressed out and tired to fight with the
> kids over it.

But fast food places sell much tastier food. And, at 78, I still find
them much better tasting than all the so-called health foods, low-fat
foods, and trendy products. So much so that when something is
advertised or shows on the label that it is "xx% fat free" or
"contains only XX grams of fat," I will usually turn away from it.
Too bad, too, because some good-tasting products actually have not
been changed at all, but there is no way to tell it from the labeling.

I'm not sure, however, what this has to do with communications, except
that it more or less shows that at least some advertising is not as
effective as the advertisers would like.

Wes Leatherock
wesrock@aol.com
wleathus@yahoo.com

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