Some background: Coco Pops, as you all know, are a popular and widely known breakfast cereal targeted at the child demographic. Monica Trapaga is a former presenter of ABC children's show 'Playschool'.
Monica Trapaga was paid by Kelloggs to do an advertisement for cocoa pops. In it, she says:
Coco Pops can help children get the calcium they need. In fact, Kellogg's Coco Pops with milk provides more than 25 per cent of daily calcium needs. Around 10 per cent of it from the cereal alone. Kellogg's Coco Pops - you learn something new every day.
It's nice of Kelloggs to take credit for the calcium contained in milk in order to boost the supposed nutritional value of their relatively nutritionally empty product in the eyes of Australian parents. Two and a half to three glasses of milk per day will easily fulfill the RDI for calcium of children aged 1-11. What Kelloggs don't pay children's TV presenters to advertise, or put in bold letters on the nutrition panel for Coco Pops is that they contain 36% sugar. That means over 1/3 of every serve is made up of refined sugar. Coco Pops are also extremely low in fibre, at 1.2%- only 12g per hundred grams. Compare this with 11.6% fibre for whole wheat mini wheats (also made by Kelloggs), or 9.2% for blackcurrant mini wheats (a flavour probably more acceptable to kids than plain). In short, Kelloggs Coco Pops are not the sort of thing that should be promoted as an everyday part of your child's diet.
Gam often calls me a food nazi, so before he comes in here and starts shouting 'sig heil!' I want to state that I'm not anti-junk food. I'd be a hypocrite if I were- I polished off an entire bag of mint patties after our football game today, and barely a day goes by without me ingesting some sort of 'junk'. However, I am a big believer in people knowing what they are getting, and I think it's entirely inappropriate to deliberately mislead consumers into thinking a product is healthy when it in fact isn't. Admittedly it isn't the brightest thing in the world to trust an advertisement to provide you with all you need to know on the nutritional value of a certain product, but many, if not most consumers genuinely don't know any better, and the advertisement serves to create an association in their mind between product and positive nutritional value. This, in the end, can be detrimental to the consumer's health.
Miranda Devine rips into critics of the advertisement as 'fascists' (I never would have guessed that Gam had anything in common with Miranda, but there you go). She misses the point entirely when she says:
Trapaga, 39, is whippet slim despite the fact she ate Coco Pops as a child.Strangely enough, plenty of slim people have a dark history of occasional Coco Pops, Big Mac and Coca-Cola consumption. It is easy to forget that, in moderation, as a treat rather than a substitute for daily meals, sugary low-fibre calories do no harm.
The point, Miranda, is that the advertisements are not for Coco Pops as a 'treat' for your kids: they are advertised as a healthy, everyday breakfast cereal. No-one is saying that eating Coco Pops will make children fat, so trying to score a smart-arse point by saying that Monica Trapaga consumed Coco Pops as a child really falls flat for any readers not missing one or both hemispheres of their cerebral cortex.
She can't resist a stab at hippy/greenie types (can she ever?) either. With a wail of "Where will it end?" Miranda envisions a world where vegans dictate that we stop consuming meat and eggs, and attempts to attach veganism to the wealthy liberal elite by pointing out that some millionaire called Brian Sherman, who owns a place in Paddington (Sydney) is a vegan and employs vegan chefs. Somehow this is different to the many non-vegan multimillionaires who hire chefs to cook food that they like.
Funnily enough, she mentions the so-called 'Cheeseburger Bill' which was passed in the US House of Representatives last week. It's a bill that holds that overeating and obesity are matters of personal responsibility: sentiments I wholeheartedly agree with.
What I don't agree with is the companies that produce certain unhealthy foods promoting them through advertising as being good for consumers, or their children. Miranda Devine is on the side of the companies, however:
And if parents cave in to children demanding Coco Pops for breakfast every morning, that's not the fault of television or the government. It's because they won't say "No".
The advertisement featuring Monica Trapaga was not one designed to induce the 'nag factor' in children. It was aimed at conveying to their parents the message that Coco Pops was a healthy, nutritious breakfast cereal for their children. After supporting the misleading messages directed towards parents, Miranda Devine then attacks them for making bad decisions with regard to their childrens' health.
She also quotes Tony Abbott from his appearance on the Four Corners program on childhood obesity as saying:
But if parents don't think Coco Pops are good for their kids there's a very simple solution - don't buy it.
But what if the parents, wrongly, are led to think that Coco Pops are good for their kids? Led to the wrong conclusion by advertisers loudly backed by Tony Abbott and Miranda Devine. What then? Do their children deserve to suffer the consequences?
7 comments:
I saw Abbott's comments. I thought he came across as very arrogant, particularly when he said that if any parents disapprove of these ads, they always have the option of switching the TV off. This just avoids the issue, doesn't it? Yes, yes, they know they can switch the TV off, but that doesn't address the problem relating to this sort of advertising.
I'm not familiar with Miranda Devine... But judging from what you've said, I'm not missing much!
Not familiar with Miranda Devine? Lucky, lucky you. The SMH employ her as a right-wing columnist simply for the sake of having a right-wing columnist, not because she has even two brain cells to rub together.
I only ever found myself agreeing with her once, and that was on the proliferation of cosmetic surgery in our society.
"My boy was dull and lifeless. We were worried he may not have any sort of attention deficit disorder like all the other children, and were concerned he may not fit in.
That's when we tried Coco Pops, the sudden blood sugar rush, mixed with the colouring and flavouring, and he's never been more hyper-active! I can barely keep him from attacking me and screaming - thank you, Kellogs."
The package and advertisement should contain health warnings, or else they should have their arses sued for false advertising.
Junk food advertising during child hours is criminal. It's designed to attract the attention of kids (der) and get them to nag for it. Indeed I believe it's something like 90% of ads in kids hours are junk food or toys, all shit they do not need. And as for the shopping trolley kids have a HUGE say in what goes in there. And marketeers know that. Which is why they run ads for kids in those hours.
Other western countries regulate ads in those periods, why can't we? Also, as for childhood obesity - I am a fat bastard because I didn't exercise and I ate too much. I know that. But in todays 'fear laced' culture of kiddy fiddlers behind every bush, or terrorists on the street corner, the halcyon days of kids being able to ramble where they want for two hours when they get home are long gone.
And whose fault is that? Why politicians and the media.
Tony Abbot should be ridden around by me and my 120 kg frame while I tug on his f_cking ears. He is a twat and an abysmal choice as health minister - especially when his morality denies him the chance to assess the abortion issue from a health perspective.
Moral failings my lardy arse. Kids like delicious fatty foods cause they are exactly that. Delicious. Far nicer than the unpleasant lettuce mum's forcing on them. Remove that from their conscious and it makes the job easier.
And if Abbot is all 'turn off the TV' we should remind him that the only reason the libs won the last election was an apathetic public taking their queues from the far more monied Liberal party TV campaign - which was bracketed often by Ronald f_cking McDonald doing some f_cked up magic trick that ended in some unhealthy food appearing in his oversized clown hands.
Using T.A.'s logic, ads for cigarettes will soon be back on TV.
Yep, but that will only be after they've abolished medicare so the suckers who get emphysema or lung cancer will have to pay for treatment themselves or else die a whole lot sooner.
...HELL YEAH!! Take THAT you jerks!!
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