Wednesday, 20 November 2013

"Tobacco Today But Other Consumer Products WILL Follow"

Hey, Deborah Arnott, prepare for more embarrassment. Remember this?
[...] the “domino theory” i.e. that once a measure has been applied to tobacco it will be applied to other products is patently false.
Yes, we're testing that comedy staple Myth #7 again today.
Myth #7: It may be tobacco today but other consumer products will follow
FACT: Tobacco is not like any other product
No-one seems to have told Aussie nurse Rhonda Wilson about this 'patently false' bit. She sees fast food as a product crying out for the same treatment so she does, inspired directly by her country's plain packaging law ('sic' throughout).
Exactly the same messages could be echoed for fast food. I am thinking of especially the large companies who mass produce fast foods…. you know who they are…. they are dominated by bright attractive colours in their ‘restaurants’, and on their packaging…they include ‘nutritional facts’ on their labels (that you need a magnifying glass to read). They have cheap options to lure the cash poor….and they have meal deals and family meal deals which include fizzy sugary drinks to the mostly fried mix! 
It is not rocket science  – this stuff…hard to refer to it as food! This stuff is really, really bad for people to consume. It directly causes BAD health.  There is a clear and obvious cause and effect….. if you eat a lot of fast food + sugary drinks you will get fat, have cardiac disease, diabetes, diminished mental health… the list goes on…. other blog posts of mine have discussed food security and the excess of poor quality food… 
Fast food is addictive – our brains crave the saturated and transfats, and the more we have…the more we crave. It is fact.
There is another stark similarity too. Exactly like plain fag packs, she doesn't care that there is no evidence whatsoever to promote her snobbish prejudices above the public's right to freedom of choice without hindrance.
Would plain packaging and plain signage restrictions make a difference? I'm not sure that the evidence is out there to say it would help…. but in terms of health, I can’t see that it would do any harm to try!
Looks uncannily like a bona fide 'domino effect', doesn't it?