alt Hacker NewsUK bans daytime TV ads for cereals, muffins and burgers
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I could see supporting with this, but it does seem like an abuse of the 'for the children' argument for this.
Children pretty much have to eat what you give them until they get a job.
Also some chicken nuggets are bad, but some average a gram of protein per 10 calories, which is a pretty good ratio, and especially for frozen food. Can't help but think this is too broad.
Can we have one or several months without ads of any kind?
Perhaps then we can appreciate a world without ads more.
It might also reduce the environmental burden of overconsumption.
Well I didn't understand how -besides the cereals maybe- are unhealthy
> Breakfast cereals including ready-to-eat cereals, granola, muesli, porridge oats and other oat-based cereals.
until I re-read and saw this:
> But the new restrictions will not apply to healthier options such as natural porridge oats and unsweetened yoghurt.
So I think it's not clear in the first sentence but "ready-to-eat" is meant to apply to all the items in the list and not just the cereals.
I hope other countries take action soon. It's deeply irresponsible how we allow advertisements and Big Sugar/Fast Food companies to exploit colorful cartoon characters and misleading health claims to hook people—especially children—on excessive sugar and fat consumption. This not only fosters unhealthy eating habits but also conditions them to crave specific branded flavors from an early age.
Given so many kids watch the state-funded CBeebies, which doesn't need ads, or YouTube or Netflix, which presumably this won't cover, this is probably just another chance for TV companies to stop broadcasting kids' content at all.
Help me understand. The UK government basically said that parents are not responsible enough to make dietary decisions for their children so the government needs to step in and do it for them?
Does that not seem like an overreach? Its not like 4 year olds are driving to McDonald's by themselves and ordering burgers. The parents are the ones being targeted here.
Good thing they made this move once daytime tv was basically irrelevant to anyone under 40 or it might've had some impact.
I don’t think this goes far enough. Kids see adverts for this stuff in so many other places, TV is just one small step. Take a kid into a supermarket and there’s junk food advertised everywhere.
Baffling to me how advertising to those without a stable source of above living-cost income is allowed in the first place. Let alone advertising to children.
Glad they got that through - the argument's been going on for ages. Here's a 2006 "Total ban for junk food ads around kids' shows" article https://www.theguardian.com/society/2006/nov/17/health.food
But I don't think they did sugary breakfast cereals because Kelloggs et al made a fuss.
One thing I noticed is during UK Daytime TV is there are a comical amount of funeral and life insurance ads, it's incredibly depressing.
A good move but it's still mad to me that we're banning junk food ads while fossil fuel ads are still allowed which are creating damage many orders of magnitudes greater than a muffin ever could.
Is there a name for an ideology that says all social and economic problems can be solved through mass psychology? You could call it psychohistory perhaps, but there's got to be a newer term. Seems like it's the dominant ideology of a variety of technocrats.
Yes there are psychological aspects to governance but more and more it's becoming the only solution to all problems. Obesity is skyrocketing? It's the psychology. People don't like unlimited immigration? Get out the mass psychology. People perceive that inflation is out of control. Get out the mass psychology. Market is down. Employ mass psychology. People don't give a crap about a war that they have no stake in. Mass psychology. I guess propaganda works and it's very cheap, lol.
Good that they are trying but “ …aired after the 9:00 pm” running ads after 9 pm is even worst. If you need to consume sugar you might as well do it in day time.
The significant background that the UK just delivered a House of Lords enquiry in to the food system[0] which recommended a "complete ban" on junk food advertising and that the government ban junk food vendors from regulatory feedback. You can bet the consumer packaged goods (CPG) AKA 'junk food industry' - the likes of Mondelez, etc. - are actively resisting these changes with all manner of false reports, shoddy advertising doublespeak and back-channel arrangements. Given this background, the ban is relatively light touch. Expect further developments.
[0] https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld5901/ldselect/ldmfdo...
Wow, what's wrong with burgers?
I mean, certainly you can get bad meat, and maybe it's easier to conceal in a burger than in a steak, but ... how about literally all other processed meat that is invariably processed more than burgers? Salami, sausages, hot dogs, ...
I personally love burger, and consider it one of the finest foods.
Fortunately, there's a very easy way to know the quality of a burger - if they ask you, how well you want it done, it's high quality! Shitty burger places like McDonalds and Burger King don't want to risk selling you a medium-done burger... Funny enough, UK is one of the better places for high-quality burger, much better than e.g. Switzerland or Slovenia! My favourite in London is (was? 2019) Honest Burger...
wish we wouldn't keep demonizing fat though, if you decrease one form of energy intake (sugar) you have to increase another form of energy intake, no problem with this being fat, as long as it's naturally occurring in the environment and thus among our adaptations.
I hear crumpets are also frowned on - my favourite breakfast food!
If only I ever watched ads on live TV I would have noticed…
what about sausage rolls and meal deals?
future headline: A UK man was found dead in his flat after his TV broke. apparently he had starved to death after not being reminded of the existence of food by the ads.
Can we do gambling ads next? We banned tobacco ads and then seemingly forgot the lesson that it's actually bad to let advertisers shove addictive and self-destructive products in the publics face, including to former addicts at risk of relapse.
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What about alcohol? Or other carb heavy or sugar heavy products? Why these?
this is exactly the type of policy you'd expect from a governing body that is completely out of touch with the working class. I can imagine the cambridge, UCL, and oxford graduates patting eachother on the back after the meeting, congratulating themselves on solving childhood obesity.
What a useless, idle government. This is just pretending to work. Next, they'll raise the price of alcohol 10%, and make the penalties for "knife crime" 10% longer. Western governments have ceased to function for anything other than graft.
There's a good paper (more than one, actually) on this that I wish I could recall offhand; but outside of graft, Western governments can only manage to govern (and not particularly well) during sudden emergencies, like natural disasters. Other than that, they're running worthless lifestyle campaigns to justify their continued existence to a faddish public, like this.
The reduction of sales for cereals, muffins, and burgers will be non-existent. British children will remain fat. We will remain in thrall to a useless politics of trendy middle-class aesthetics, cheered on by celebrities.
What's TV? Some kind of primitive multicast YouTube?
Anything TV related is irrelevant nowadays
This will make zero difference these days.
Yes, it's the ads. After all, we know how economical and fast it is for people to access healthy meals. I look forward to the speedy eradication of all obesity problems
So UK doesn't have freedom of speech any more? If the products are bad for people/kids/etc, why not ban the products instead of just the ads?
What about no ads, at all? Have you ever thought of that? Just stop and consider the ramifications of such a ban. Most junk on TV and the Internet would not exist once people were forced to pay directly for consuming (eugh) it. YouTube would go back to what it was almost twenty years ago, for one. Imagine a Google with no ad-ridden, SEO-tweaked, LLM-generated sites in the results, not a single mainstream media outlet to be seen... one can only dream. Now, for junk food (the actual subject of this thread), I wager its sales would be severely diminished, or heavily diversified between other, less successful brands, at least.
What about adverts on YouTube and TikTok and other online platforms? I doubt kids/teenagers watch much TV at all these days.