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Marketing potentially harmful products to children should simply not be allowed. It is well-accepted that children lack the experience and power of judgement to

by aedron 10y ago

Marketing potentially harmful products to children should simply not be allowed. It is well-accepted that children lack the experience and power of judgement to properly evaluate marketing claims. A product sold as breakfast, that consists of 25% sugar, absolutely qualifies as harmful.

adrianN 10y ago
I dislike the idea of solving this via more regulation. Children don't decide what they eat, their parents do. So either the parents don't care about the health of their children (hard to believe), or they're not properly educated about healthy nutrition.
- branchless 10y ago
  Or they are exhausted from working all hours because the banks create credit from thin air to maximize rent extraction and lack the willpower to argue with their children every shopping trip. I have kids, it's a constant battle even though we have no TV and I'm fortunate enough to have enough time to educate them. I'm constantly fighting with a whole room of people who are disgusting scumbags with access to millions of advertising spend.
- nkrisc 10y ago
  Most likely the latter, as well as advertising to children to use them as emotional leverage against the parents.
- ovi256 10y ago
  The amount of discipline a parent (limited by the time and willpower a parent can input into the process) can impose is finite. Once we accept this hypothesis, we can see how usual norms are imposed by parental discipline plus non-parental discipline. A parent going against a norm will have to use an extraordinary amount of time and willpower to impose his unconventional norm, as he will lack the enforcement of the non-parent actors. Eating sugary cereal is a societal norm in today's developed countries. Therefore, a parent wishing to diverge from this norm would have to expend an extraordinary effort. He's also going against the professionals who already succeeded in imposing the norm and simply have to maintain it today.
- mikeash 10y ago
  Raising children is hard enough without segments of society actively fighting against you.
- martin-adams 10y ago
  As a parent I would agree that there is little education. Health professionals (in the UK) don't seem to care. Products you think are safe are then found out to be harmful in other ways. I don't think education is the silver bullet, but habit forming is. For example, what is the habit you resort to when deprived of sleep, late for work and kids are throwing a tantrum? Sometimes that habit lies in preparation, something most of are are not very good at.
curiousgeorgio 10y ago
Do you also think all marketing for alcohol should be banned? It is "well-accepted" that many adults lack the judgement necessary to prevent over-consumption of alcohol. A product designed to impair judgement absolutely qualifies as harmful. How about McDonalds? Or Coca-Cola? Should we just ban all marketing because we're no longer adept at making responsible decisions for ourselves and our children?
pitchka 10y ago
Yep. There's nothing wrong with sugar. Nothing wrong with meat, or milk. Or fat. People's lifestyle is wrong where they mostly sit around and do not move much. They overeat, average US citizen consumes 3600kcal daily. Instead of focusing on the lifestyle, we demonize sugar. Now, the company that uses sugar goes to play with capitalism and buys a producer of diabetes pills and everyone seems to assume that sugar is bad. I just cannot understand how you consider something containing 25% sugar harmful. Where exactly did you get that number? Do you consider meat harmful since it has been shown in (Is Meat Killing Us? jaoa) 1.5 million people metaanalysis that there's a considerable relative risk increase of all-cause mortality? Every single thing is potentially harmful. You believe that consumption of milk isn't harmful? Cows milk is there to create a bull out of a little baby cow? Should we stop marketing milk for children? This fear of food is absolutely orthorexic. There's no scientific evidence implying sugar is unhealthy or potentially harmful, and if you consider the pseudoscientific nutrition research as evidence, then you should also be fearful of the meat, eggs and dairy since there's bunch of "evidence" for that too.

by aedron 10y ago

adrianN 10y ago

I dislike the idea of solving this via more regulation. Children don't decide what they eat, their parents do. So either the parents don't care about the health of their children (hard to believe), or they're not properly educated about healthy nutrition.

branchless 10y ago
Or they are exhausted from working all hours because the banks create credit from thin air to maximize rent extraction and lack the willpower to argue with their children every shopping trip. I have kids, it's a constant battle even though we have no TV and I'm fortunate enough to have enough time to educate them. I'm constantly fighting with a whole room of people who are disgusting scumbags with access to millions of advertising spend.
nkrisc 10y ago
Most likely the latter, as well as advertising to children to use them as emotional leverage against the parents.
ovi256 10y ago
The amount of discipline a parent (limited by the time and willpower a parent can input into the process) can impose is finite. Once we accept this hypothesis, we can see how usual norms are imposed by parental discipline plus non-parental discipline. A parent going against a norm will have to use an extraordinary amount of time and willpower to impose his unconventional norm, as he will lack the enforcement of the non-parent actors. Eating sugary cereal is a societal norm in today's developed countries. Therefore, a parent wishing to diverge from this norm would have to expend an extraordinary effort. He's also going against the professionals who already succeeded in imposing the norm and simply have to maintain it today.
mikeash 10y ago
Raising children is hard enough without segments of society actively fighting against you.
martin-adams 10y ago
As a parent I would agree that there is little education. Health professionals (in the UK) don't seem to care. Products you think are safe are then found out to be harmful in other ways. I don't think education is the silver bullet, but habit forming is. For example, what is the habit you resort to when deprived of sleep, late for work and kids are throwing a tantrum? Sometimes that habit lies in preparation, something most of are are not very good at.

curiousgeorgio 10y ago

Do you also think all marketing for alcohol should be banned? It is "well-accepted" that many adults lack the judgement necessary to prevent over-consumption of alcohol. A product designed to impair judgement absolutely qualifies as harmful. How about McDonalds? Or Coca-Cola? Should we just ban all marketing because we're no longer adept at making responsible decisions for ourselves and our children?

pitchka 10y ago

Yep. There's nothing wrong with sugar. Nothing wrong with meat, or milk. Or fat. People's lifestyle is wrong where they mostly sit around and do not move much. They overeat, average US citizen consumes 3600kcal daily. Instead of focusing on the lifestyle, we demonize sugar. Now, the company that uses sugar goes to play with capitalism and buys a producer of diabetes pills and everyone seems to assume that sugar is bad. I just cannot understand how you consider something containing 25% sugar harmful. Where exactly did you get that number? Do you consider meat harmful since it has been shown in (Is Meat Killing Us? jaoa) 1.5 million people metaanalysis that there's a considerable relative risk increase of all-cause mortality? Every single thing is potentially harmful. You believe that consumption of milk isn't harmful? Cows milk is there to create a bull out of a little baby cow? Should we stop marketing milk for children? This fear of food is absolutely orthorexic. There's no scientific evidence implying sugar is unhealthy or potentially harmful, and if you consider the pseudoscientific nutrition research as evidence, then you should also be fearful of the meat, eggs and dairy since there's bunch of "evidence" for that too.