The EU prepares for war...

[John Dibble]

...against junk food ads.

Anyone care to take a guess when they'll start regulating people's diets directly? After all, people just can't be trusted to make their own decisions.

[John Dibble]

Wow i thought this was about something much bigger. Its not at all a new concept. In the U.S junk food companies are constantly being pressured to stop advertising to children during cartoons and morning programs. This month Kraft announced that they were going to stop advertising their popular cookie "oreo's" to youth audiences. So its not as new of an idea as you might think.

No, it's not a new concept. Still, there's many types of pressure - consumer, public, government, ect. In this case, it's government, and it is not the place of government to do so. If anyone should be legislating the diets of children, it is the parents.

[John Dibble]

I don't see anything wrong with consumer advocacy pressure.  Just like I wouldn't mind petition signing to move a brothel away from a church.  Shrug.

I have no problem with market pressue, and I have no problem with that alone. Boycotts, petitions, and the like are consumer actions. Nobody is really forced to give in to it. My problem is government pressure - they threaten to legislate it, which is force. Don't comply, go to jail. Resist arrest, get roughed up or worse. This issue is not something that needs government using it's powers of force to resolve. Even if the market can't resolve it, the means of using legislation do not justify the ends.

[John Dibble]

No its not just consumer pressure. Were you aware that for the 2005 school year in Texas the state government had to approve the schools menu's to "fight childhood obesity"? Thats an example of the govt. stepping in. Also the government makes the food pyramid that we are taught from kindergarden. The government is more involved in our diets than you want ti imagin, but your are right stepping in and outlawing advertisment is going to far. I was just adding perspective, pointing out that it happens in america also.

They are involved in what food they put in their schools and issue recommendations for diets that are used in schools and by most doctors. I do not really see that as overstepping bounds.

Forbidding advertisement is what is overstepping bounds. These products are not illegal for children to consume, nor is there any real reason for there to be, so forbidding advertising legal products to a market that can legally consume them is what is overstepping the bounds.

What I think his complaint about the school menu thing is that it is the state government stepping in, and school menus(and most school policies for that matter) are supposed to be the realm of local government.