Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday April 11, 2013
What should governments ban "for our own good"? It's always a difficult question for me, as a fundamental believer in individual responsibility. Certainly slap bans on assault rifles and Uzi machine pistols and all the other weaponry Americans like to kill each other with. But do the same life threats really apply to hamburgers, lollipops and soft drinks?
Ironically, in the US media, sugar has been described as "Public Enemy No.1." It's blamed for obesity, attention deficit disorder, even called toxic. A new book claims it's addictive. The warning for marketers is clear: sugar may be the next regulatory target, long before they get around to guns.
Former Parliamentarian for the Greens, Amanda Bresnan, wrote that the host is gathering against the sweet crystals: the AMA, the Heart Foundation, Cancer Council Victoria, Diabetes Australia, VicHealth and the World Health Organisation have all called for the banning of junk food advertising in children's tv hours. It's a formidable pack that has the cooks and confectioners rightly quaking.
In particular the righteous are attacking the "pester power" commercials. You know, the ones that spark your kids to say "Mum, Mum, Dad, Dad, gimme gimme..." every step through the shopping centre.
You can't help but feel dislike for the commercials, particularly if you've ever had your kid throw themselves on the supermarket floor in an ear-splitting tantrum. But whether that makes the ad a capital offence is another matter.
Certainly we do have an epidemic of obesity, both in children and adults, with some 25 per cent of our population being overweight. It's a serious health issue but is it a legal issue as well?
Sometimes government intervention works. The fact that we do not suffer rotted teeth to match our bursting waists is mostly thanks to the fluoride added to the water since the 1960s. But 50 years later that is still causing controversy, so legislation can prove to be a blunt health tool.
What do you do as a marketer? Well you can't ignore the threat, you must be ready to cope with it if it comes.
The big soft drink companies have been readying themselves for years - "Tab", "Diet Pepsi", "Coke Zero" are in the fridge already. If the sugared drinks are ever banned, these sugarless alternatives sit waiting.
It's harder with a hamburger, for ever branded by the documentary Super Size Me, which depicted a grossly overweight America growing fatter burger by burger.
It took an Aussie, Charlie Bell, to come up with a new direction during his brief stint as world CEO of McDonalds. He brought in healthier menu choices, juice instead of soft drinks, and created the popular McCafes. All this within a year - in January 2005 he died of bowel cancer, aged 44.
However he showed that even the biggest fast food chain can put out a healthy message, and that way of eating has been taken up wherever you look.
Asian restaurants have brought us delicious Vietnamese soups and Chinese vegetables; salad counters and juice bars dot the high streets. Joggers and cyclists are a norm these days. So we have become healthier as a society - IBISWorld research shows that today two-thirds of Australians can be considered "health conscious".
So when the right choices are available to us, most of us take them. Do we really need the arm of the law to force us to be sensible?
Think of all that money that would be spent writing new laws and taxes, which would create yet another lawyers' feast. Instead, let's use it to encourage the laggardly third of our population to be more aware of the sensible options for a healthy life.
ray@ebeatty.com
