Tuesday 16 July 2013

If It Looks Like A Domino ...

Not much comment needed here.
GRAPHIC images and plain packaging for junk food may be forced on consumers, as food industry heavyweights debate tough measures to combat obesity. 
A panel of food science, nutrition and manufacturing experts will tackle whether tobacco's plain packaging approach would help curb the country's growing obesity epidemic at the Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology convention today.
Just six months into the plain packs experiment and we have more proof that the 'domino theory' is, indeed, "patently false", and the slippery slope "the most unslippery slippery dip" ever seen.

Oh how wrong we were, eh?

Now, why on Earth are Aussies coming to this silly conclusion?
A new poll shows the number of people who strongly agree Australia is becoming a nanny state has increased by a fifth over the past year, with 55% believing Australia is a nanny state and more than 70% thinking plain packaging won't be an effective policy.
Bah! What do they know? They're not experts like Debs Arnott and Mr Chapman, now are they?


6 comments:

George said...

At least they've got shot of Gillard.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

From whispers I've heard, Rudd could be worse!

jay said...

Your pic is misleading - they forgot to put the images on the 'plain' packaging - bet they'd just transfer the 'appropriate' ones from cig packs (does obesity cause erectile disfunction? will we see a bent curly-wurly?)

Michael J. McFadden said...

Hmmm... they moderate the comments. Well, this is what I just added:

===

Tony wrote, "I would challenge New Zealand, Otago University professor of marketing Janet Hoek's claim that tobacco usage had halved in New Zealand since plain packaging."

Tony, EVEN IF IT WERE TRUE... Hoek's claim, in the way that she used it, is simply an out-and-out lie. She VERY clearly is stating it as a matter of causality, i.e. that the drop was due, exclusively, to plain packaging. In other words, she is ALSO saying "Increased taxes, sales and advertising restrictions, public education, antismoking advertising, smoking bans in bars, restaurants, and workplaces, ALL of these other things had NO effect on smoking rates and should be dropped or returned to their earlier status since plain packaging has been the true cause of smoking's decrease."

This kind of single-issue focus for every new antismoking proposal is a classic trick/lie used by the antismoking industry in all its various guises. If taxes are being voted on they'll claim drops in "children" smoking are due to past tax increases. If it's a ban vote, they'll say past bans caused the drop.

Google "V.Gen5H" and read "The Lies Behind The Smoking Bans" there to get a better understanding of such trickery.

-MJM

Michael J. McFadden said...

bent curly whirly? LOL! Probably! I guess it depends on whether you can FIND the curly whirly under the fat!


There are different arguments about the cause of the obesity crisis, and I think the great increase in sodapop consumption is one of the better ones. Even artificially sweetened pop could be having an effect since our bodies are being "fooled" into expecting calories that don't arrive -- and may then go into some sort of "emergency override" mode encouraging more eating or more storage of calories that do come in.


There's one aspect of the smoking factor I've never seen properly addressed though: In our natural long-term evolved state, human beings probably spent most of our waking hours stuffing things into our mouths for enough nutrition to survive. Oral gratification, on an almost constant level, became synonymous with survival.


Today we have all sorts of food choices out there that offer us, not just BASIC gratification, but HEAVENLY gratification ... so is it any wonder that there's a tendency to constantly stuff more in than we need?


BUT... smoking provides oral gratification and reward as well. So smokers probably tend to take some time off stuffing foods into their mouths so their mouths are clear for them to smoke. Thus, less stuffing, thus, less obesity.


We see this effect most clearly in quitters since they suddenly try to substitute food on a moment to moment basis, for the oral gratification they've just given up by quitting smoking. That combines with such things as decreased metabolic activity due to the withdrawal of a stimulant, and thus we see the post-quitting ballooning that the Antismokers *try* but can never succeed in denying: it's just too real.


But I don't think I've ever seen the sort of explanation I laid out above as referring to the general population: given our food opportunities today, it may very well be that there's simply a direct relationship between smoking and obesity on the simple basis of smoking reducing excess food/treat/caloric-gratification consumption.


- MJM

Bisley said...

It is a violation of people's right to live as they choose and beyond the legitimate authority of government to regulate what, how much, when, or where anyone eats, drinks, or smokes; all existing restrictions should be repealed, we certainly don't need more. The argument that people doing things that others consider dangerous and/or unhealthy will cost the taxpayers money is a lie and a fraud. If people die earlier, as a result of their choice of lifestyle, the savings of not having to provide them with pensions and care in old age will more than offset any other expense incurred. End-of-life care, for most people, is generally prolonged and expensive, regardless of what they die from, or when.