Mandy Martin, Puritjarra 2, 2005. For further information on MANDY MARTIN, refer here: http://www.mandy-martin.com/
If there are diverse kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing place, then we need to learn to value the different ways each of us sees a single place that is significant, but differently so, for each perspective.
adrift on a sea of information at a time when the world's night is a destitute time. In the age of the world's night, the abyss of the world must be endured.
--Adelaide is home. Relaxation is Victor Harbor. I'm a frustrated photographer who has lost his way in life.I have trouble coping in the technological mode of being of our complex digital world.
An overweight, middle-aged man lies dead on a mortuary trolley, with a woman weeping over his body. The corpse's cold hand still clutches a half-eaten McDonald's hamburger. This provocative new fast-food commercial by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) in the US draws attention to the link between heart disease deaths and fast food. Studies show that people who consume fast food-- the high-fat, high-sodium offerings at fast-food restaurants are at a higher risk for obesity, a factor contributing to heart disease.
I doubt that a similar commercial will be aired in Australia, even though unhealthy food is a major health problem in this country. Health professionals talk in terms of high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart attacks; or an "epidemic of childhood obesity"; and supports public health campaigns that encourage physical fitness and improved diets. They support the fight against obesity induced by fast food.
However, there are no bans on advertising by the food industry that aims uses advertising strategies to get kids hooked on eating high-sugar, high-fat foods early in life. A non-regulatory approach to banning excessively fatty, sugary and salty food, is favoured. The argument is that there is no need for the nanny state because everyone just needs to be more responsible; those who aren't responsible are moral failures. This argument ignores how individuals' "free choices" are shaped by marketing and advertising.
It has a class dimension in that diets and diet-related disease are in fact a map of inequality. Those on lower incomes are more likely to suffer obesity, as children and as adults. They have higher rates of raised blood pressure thanks to excess salt in their processed diets. They are more likely to suffer diabetes and heart disease. They have more dental disease from excess sugar.
Just like the tobacco industry, the food industry has depended for its sales on this symbiotic relationship with the advertising industry. That's why tackling smoking required the states intervention to control tobacco advertising, to tax cigarette prices up, and to ban smoking in public places to help people quell the desires that had been so skillfully awakened by advertising.
There are no legal health and safety standards for food with respect to high levels of salt, transfats and saturated fats to tackle our unhealthy food culture.
| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:32 AM | Permalink
Hi Gary:
NYC Dept of Health recently took a similar tactic to address the rising obesity rates:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/pr2009/pr057-09.shtml.
Similarly, the state has an fairly graphic anti-smoking campaign, which requires tobacco sellers to post graphic posters near their tobacco displays. In fact, NYC and Victoria seem to have some reciprocity in their anti-smoking media. The one where the kid loses his mother in the crowd gets me every time.
Hi Gary:
NYC Dept of Health recently took a similar tactic to address the rising obesity rates:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/pr2009/pr057-09.shtml.
Similarly, the state has an fairly graphic anti-smoking campaign, which requires tobacco sellers to post graphic posters near their tobacco displays. In fact, NYC and Victoria seem to have some reciprocity in their anti-smoking media. The one where the kid loses his mother in the crowd gets me every time.