{"id":4023,"date":"2010-10-04T06:12:31","date_gmt":"2010-10-04T04:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ultimatefatburner.com\/?p=4023"},"modified":"2015-02-15T09:32:48","modified_gmt":"2015-02-15T14:32:48","slug":"hamburgers-heroin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/hamburgers-heroin\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamburgers = Heroin?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m not quite sure what to make of this Australian\u00a0community service announcement\u00a0equating feeding fast food to children with hooking them on heroin.<\/p>\n

[youtube:http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6P-4bzj9sdI]<\/p>\n

Lord knows, it certainly catches attention, and is effective (in its own way) of making the point that a fast\/junk food habit can be harmful – particularly when started early in life. But I have a\u00a0few\u00a0issues with it:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0Shooting up a child\u00a0is a deliberate act of abuse. Conversely,\u00a0regularly feeding a child fast\/junk food is more likely to be done out of ignorance, benign neglect or because preparing fresh food is difficult (such as in single-parent households and\/or lower-income families living in “food deserts<\/a>“).<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0It’s always\u00a0Mom’s fault. Always. Fathers – when present – are just as “at risk” as the kids, since Mom – and only Mom – decides which foods the family will eat. So if Mom screws it up, everyone’s doomed.<\/p>\n

3. A parent can certainly give his\/her kids fast\/junk food every so often, without causing any\u00a0obvious harm. And – despite the fact that it’s (overly) energy dense –\u00a0a lot of\u00a0fast food menu items\u00a0still\u00a0possess some<\/em> nutritional value. A hamburger, for example, provides some protein, vites and minerals. Your typical fast food meal is suboptimal, sure, but not totally beyond the pale. Conversely, I’m not aware that heroin has any<\/em> redeeming value (except perhaps to dealers).<\/p>\n

4. Obese\/overweight people are not the equivalent of hardcore drug addicts – this is a degrading and\u00a0insulting parallel.<\/p>\n

Some may argue that the ad is useful precisely\u00a0for its\u00a0shock value, but it’s waaaay too over-the-top for me. Thus, I’m not surprised that it’s catching a lot of flak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not quite sure what to make of this Australian\u00a0community service announcement\u00a0equating feeding fast food to children with hooking them on heroin. [youtube:http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6P-4bzj9sdI] Lord knows, it certainly catches […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,28],"tags":[1848,631],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4023"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9195,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4023\/revisions\/9195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}