Stealing directly from the anti-smoking agenda, "researchers" found that banning fast food advertisements will reduce childhood obesity. Banning such ads from television alone will reduce the number of obese children by 18 percent, 14 percent for older children. Sounds good but how do the researchers come up with these figures? Upgrading the epidemiology shell game that behavior engineers ply to reap big bucks and produce the exact results that have been pre-determined, the anti-food con men "used a statistical test that presumes TV ads lead to obesity." This presumption, needless to say, was validated by the research. What a surprise!
In addition to its uncritical coverage of this pre-determined study the Associated Press reporter ponders the imponderable:
"The causes of childhood obesity are complicated."
Complicated? Actually the kids are fat because they consume more calories than they expend. Even stupid people have known this natural phenomenon for centuries. The researchers, far from stupid, are aware of this fact as well but common sense is never as financially rewarding as the junk science that shrieks for prohibition.
The authors are a bit circumspect on whether fast food TV ads should be eliminated or curtailed. If history is a guide the inane fast food advertisements will go the way of the far more clever and classy cigarette ads. Certainly the industries that flood the airways with fast food ads are responding just as the tobacco industry responded three decades ago when cigarette ads were targeted. McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell and the rest are whimpering that they are good corporate citizens and that children’s health is their top priority, buying into the false premise that "something must be done." Something will be done but it won’t help fat kids and will be another nail in the First Amendment’s coffin.
0 Comments