Thursday, November 08, 2012


Eat More Crap!
Today is Thursday, 8 November 2012.
On this date in 1895, Wilhelm Roentgen discovers the X-ray.
____________________________________

I frequently find “Personal Health”, the Tuesday column in The New York Times by Jane E. Brody, to be quite informative and useful.  Unfortunately, her column of 30 October (“There’s Homework to Do on School Lunches”) harbours a glaring omission.

She correctly notes that “many parents, pressed for time, money, or both, don’t introduce their children to foods that foster good nutrition and a healthy weight, allowing them instead to feast mainly on produce-poor fast foods that are high in fat, calories and salt”.
Often true, so far as it goes.  However, a culprit at least as significant is the American legal fiction that corporations are people too, guaranteeing them a right to free speech, which they employ by flooding the media with advertising which pressures children in the direction of a diet filled with (profitable) crap.
Until this abhorrent legal travesty is reversed, and the media promotion of unhealthy foods is banned, our society will continue to produce increasing numbers of the over-weight and obese, with all the health problems that entails.
I suppose that is one route to population control…
Similar situation obtains in K-12 education.  Nintendo, etc. could care less if children learn, so long as they buy buy buy and self-anesthetize.

Turn it off and bury your nose in a good book!

3 Comments:

Anonymous Wanting Clarification said...

HH said - "Often true, so far as it goes. However, a culprit at least as significant is the American legal fiction that corporations are people too, guaranteeing them a right to free speech, which they employ by flooding the media with advertising which pressures children in the direction of a diet filled with (profitable) crap.
Until this abhorrent legal travesty is reversed, and the media promotion of unhealthy foods is banned, our society will continue to produce increasing numbers of the over-weight and obese, with all the health problems that entails."

Corporations are not people. However, they are an extension of people who either own stock in them or own them outright. Thus, they have a right to advertise (free speech) their products/services. You say their free speech pressures children to do something unhealthy. Where are the parents in all this? You state parents are pressured for time, etc. etc., inferring that they are FORCED to relinquish their desire and duty to oversee their children's wellbeing, including the various environments to which their children are exposed (home, school, religious institutions, friends, friends’ homes, etc.)

Corporations advertising their products are an "abhorrent legal travesty?" Who is to judge what is abhorrent and what is not? Your blog writings espouse that anything with a Republican tag on it is EVIL. Are you suggesting that the Republican Party, which itself is not a person but represents people's view, should not be allowed to do any type of advertising?

HH said - "Similar situation obtains in K-12 education."
I looked up the word "obtains" in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. It lists no such word. What is your meaning here?

11:33 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Obtains" - customary or accepted.s

4:36 PM  
Blogger HH said...

Wanting Clarification: kindly grant me another day or two for reply. Thank you.

10:00 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home