Metal Reviews

What about the relentless and scientifically perfected ensnaring of kids who are too young to understand those choices through kiddie-orientated advertising and "happy meal" nonsense? Their uncompromising marketing at kids, and their filling up of schools up with coke vending machines is not the kind of thing that can be swept under the carpet as a "individual responsibility" issue.

It's pretty clear that through their advertising fast food companies do obscure how how nutritionally, ethically, environmentally unsound their stuff is. The entire point of advertising is to lie, and these companies must spend billions and billions every year on advertising.

EDIT: Don't get me wrong; human blimps need to take responsibility for their actions, and probably will so when they die in five minutes. But, individual responsibility is certainly not ALL there is to it.

And you've never been?? Get down there!

SRSLY, I would... maybe once every three months or so, with Frigid.

You usually don't see children going into fast food restaurants or drive-thrus to order their own food. It's the parents who do the ordering and paying for their kids. My parents hardly ever took me to any fast food restaurants, maybe ony something like twice or three times a year. And they always told me that soda is bad for me (specifically that it'd "rot my teeth and make me fat"), so I hardly ever drank soda ever. I still don't, it's very much only a "once in a while" thing.

Even with kids, relentless advertising does not mean, or have the same effect of brainwashing in any way.

Candy companies do the same type of thing nowadays. It seems, every time I go to the Supermarket, I see some new gimmicky spin-off of a popular candy/cookie brand like Oreo's or M&M's. For example, yesterday I saw that Oreo's had a new "spin-off" called "Ice Cream Sundae Flavor."

In addition to typically-naive children, a lot of low-income Americans also pretty much live off fast food. For example, there's a McDonald's at my university campus where a lot of homeless people regularly go for a "few scraps." This is probably one of the main reasons why the whole notion that obesity is largely restricted to the rich and wealthy has been more-or-less reversed.

Well "brainwashing" is a very exaggerated term. Plenty of young kids kick and scream and throw tantrums because they aren't allowed what they want to eat. If the only person that ultimately decides what is eaten is the parents, then why is there so much advertising for junk food aimed directly at kids? It's because advertisers understand that by targetting kids they can get around the rules parents set.

Absolutely; it's really interesting. There are papers that talk about how fast food outlets have completely forced "healthy" food shops (i.e. groceries and stuff) off the high street in low-income areas, but not high-income ones. I'm still not quite sure why this is... would be interesting to find out.

As I parent, I'm targeted with that problem. We set the rules, but sometimes it's hard to say always NO to everything.

Luckily, my old child is not fond of burgers, but he loves pizza. The usual solution is one or two saturdays at month, homemade vegetable pizza, he helps to make it and it's very happy.

Ganesha sounds like a really cool dad, he makes homemade pizza with his son and listens to metal

My parents used to make healthy pizzas when I was little. I'd be like "Onions? Peppers? WHERE'S THE SALAMI!!!!!????" and then listen to some nu-metal to show them how badly they'd treated me.

I think it's very cynical to suggest that junk food advertisments target kids because they want to undermine the parent's authority. Kids are who they demographic, because kids like to eat junk food. Junk food appeals to kids. Healthy middle-aged people who go running every day won't take a second glance at a box of Sugar Bombs, but their kids will beg and plead for it, and if the parent decides that some Sugar Bombs every once in a while wouldn't hurt, then they get some.

If there were no advertisments whatsoever for either Sugar Bombs or whatever brand of healthy cereal the healthy middle-aged person eats, and they came in the same unadorned cardboard box, the kid would still want the Sugar Bombs, because kids like sweet junk food.

Yeah, now I'm a cool dad for my sons. Within 8 years, when my old son will be 14 and my young one 11, I'll be a fucking old parent that is everything except cool... That's a fact.

Onions, peppers, zuchinni, green aspargarus, and a lot of tomato and mozzarella.

Cynical about the practices of massive junk food corporations with notoriously bad ethical practices and famously ruthless expansionism? Guilty

The way I see it, advertising targeted at kids does undermine a parent's ability to give them a healthy diet. These companies can hook kids in. Not just because kids like junk food, but because they create a whole experience, bright colours, funny characters, little toys you get... McDonalds personify themselves as a damn clown, for example. We could say that the only acting factor here is the choice of the parents as to what they allow, but surely if that was the case fast food advertising would be targeting the parents, rather than the kids. They have very sophisticated market research (I think) and they have to know what they are doing. I don't think that a "one-off treat" kind of thing would be good as a business model for a lot of these companies. They depend on people adopting bad nutritional habits as a regular lifestyle choice.

That said, I don't ever watch kids TV nowadays, so I don't know if fast food advertising is as bad as it was. In the UK it seems a bit like McDonalds has had to change its strategy (going on about how ethical and healthy it is), I guess because it was under pressure over the very issues we've been discussing.

Deceptive advertise or not it still comes down to individual choices. You can't blame junk food companies nor more than you can blame Smith And Wesson for some idiot using a S&W gun to kill someone.

It all comes down to the same principle.

I see the advertising more about competition than about subverting the parents. With all the bright colors and funny characters, McDonald's wants to attract kids and parents to their chain instead of say Burger King. That's why you see commercials going all "MCDONALDS FRIES ARE SO MUCH BETTER THAN BURGER KINGS LOL" (even though that's a blatant lie ). It's all about competition, and getting the customer to buy your product instead of the other guy's.

Also, I don't think it's true that they depend on people eating there 24/7. There are over 300,000,000 people in the US alone. If 300,000,000 eat McDonald's just once a month, then that's about 3,600,000,000 McDonald's products sold in a year. If they price their products right (which, seeing how big they are, they most likely have), then that's some massive profit they're looking at.

Our species is doomed.

So you wouldn't have a problem with S&W targeting their advertising at kids?

I don't think you can say that they'd just be happy with a certain level of profit, though. In fact, if I know my business law (and I don't), aren't companies legally obliged to maximise their profit for their shareholders, which would surely mean getting as many people into a junk food "lifestyle" as possible.

Sure, it is about the competition, but that doesn't solve the issue- why target the kids so much, when it's the parents that have the final say.

Anyway, I guess this doesn't really relate to the HAG anymore. The bottom line for me is that I think it's unhealthy (in more ways than one) that there are institutions with such power in our societies that have a massive vested interest in making people obese.

It's a different issue again, "individual choice" is not enough to refute this. A company like McDonald's doesn't need to compete with local smaller, ethical businesses. An independent retailer only needs to lose a very small percentage of their custom to a large chain to go bust, whereas the outlet of the large chain next door can run at a loss until it gradually closes everyone else down. It can afford to sell stuff at a loss, it can outspend everyone on advertising and other psychological tricks. Going on about "consumer choice" is a total diversion, and just gives these companies a free pass to do whatever they want.

Thinking about it, I haven't eaten at a McDonalds for, like, 14 years or something.

Actually, there was a bill passed in the states a few years back that targeted the very thing you are talking about. For example, Kellog's and Post were severly restricted as to how they could market sugary cereals with cartoon mascots during children's programming. The end result wound up being it effectively killed the traditional Saturday morning cartoons format that had been a staple in the States for decades. Now the only places to go for kid's oriented programming is Cartoon Network, and *shudder* Disney and Nickelodeon. Yes networks still have to put on Educational programming for children, by law, but we all know kids don't want to watch that stuff, unless it's something fun like Beakman's World was. So yes, it did do some good, but at the same time it massively cut down the amount of options kids had for entertainment geared towards them.