Killer stoves were not given long to enjoy their moment in the spotlight. Now it’s the turn of passive cake, finally unveiled for the menace it is in the ...
Killer stoves were not given long to enjoy their moment in the spotlight. Now it’s the turn of passive cake, finally unveiled for the menace it is in the U.K.
The head of a food watchdog has appeared to suggest people should not bring cake into the office for the sake of their colleagues’ health as she seemed to liken sharing treats to passive smoking.
Professor Susan Jebb, chairwoman of the Food Standards Agency, also lamented that the advertising of junk food is “undermining people’s free will”. She said while it is a choice to eat sweet treats — as it was a choice to enter “smoky pubs” — people can help each other by providing a “supportive environment”.
She told The Times: “We all like to think we’re rational, intelligent, educated people who make informed choices the whole time, and we undervalue the impact of the environment.
“If nobody brought cakes into the office, I would not eat cakes in the day, but because people do bring cakes in, I eat them.
“Now, OK, I have made a choice, but people were making a choice to go into a smoky pub.“With smoking, after a very long time we have got to a place where we understand that individuals have to make some effort but that we can make their efforts more successful by having a supportive environment.“ We still don’t feel like that about food.”
Leaving aside the (reasonable) argument that the decision of whether smoking should be allowed in a pub ought to have been left to its owners, Jebb’s comments are a reminder that those who want to control what we consume will never be satisfied. Cigarettes one day, a slice of cake the next. Note too that, as so often happens, controlling what people consume comes complete with (in this case, implicit) calls for censorship, in the form of a lament for the fact that advertising for “junk” food is still allowed.
Britain’s latest Conservative prime minister, Rishi Sunak, didn’t agree with Jebb’s advice, but: “We want to encourage healthy lifestyles and are taking action to tackle obesity, which has cost the NHS £6 billion annually.”
Note how the role that (as so often happens) Britain’s National Health Service has is used as a justification for government venturing where it should not go:
The Times reported Professor Susan Jebb insisted restrictions on junk food adverts were “not about the nanny state” but would instead tackle what she described as a “complete market failure” where sweet goods take precedence over vegetables.
She told the paper: “The businesses with the most money have the biggest influence on people’s behaviour.
“That’s not fair . . . we’ve ended up with a complete market failure, because what you get advertised is chocolate and not cauliflower.”
I, for one, am shocked that there are not more advertisements for cauliflower, a vegetable which needs all the help it can get.
Meanwhile, the censors are waiting their moment:
Successive governments have failed to introduce a long-promised ban on pre-watershed TV advertising for junk food, with Rishi Sunak’s new administration announcing in December that the anti-obesity measure will not come into force until 2025.
Does [Jebb] think there is a huge latent demand for cauliflower? Does she believe that a nationwide marketing campaign for it would lead to people snacking on cauliflower instead of chocolate? Economists would predict that such an advertising blitz would, at best, lead to vegetable eaters consuming slightly less swede and slightly more cauliflower, but let’s test it. Let the Food Standards Agency put some of its £143 million budget into advertising vegetables and see how it goes. My guess is that it will go about as well as all the other expensive media campaigns governments have wasted money on trying to get people to eat a more ascetic diet.
And yes, Susan, making it illegal for food companies to tell consumers about their products is ‘nanny state’. And no, what you’re describing is not a ‘market failure’.
Snowdon wonders why, after 13 years of Conservative or Conservative-led government, agencies such as the Food Standards Agency have expanded in the way that they have, and that they have come to be led by someone like Jebb.
A reasonable question, partly answered by the fact that under Cameron, May, and Johnson, the Tories were led by nanny-staters. Best guess: They still are.
And as for Labour. . . .