The real truth on childhood obesity

What’s wrong with the AFGC’s voluntary ban? Surely they’re helping out by jumping the gun? Well, in a word, no. This way they get to define the word “children”. In its initial examination of the need for reform, The ACMA had been dropping disturbing hints about bans that defined a child as anyone under 16 (rather than 12).

Even worse than that, with the ACMA doing the drafting there would be no chance to parachute in weasel words like the ones proposed by the AFGC. An example appears in the wording of the voluntary “ban” itself when it says the ban should be applied “unless those products represent healthy dietary choices … presented in the context of a healthy lifestyle”.

If you want to know what that looks like, you need look no further than Coke’s new website, which is choc-full of healthy lifestyle messages for Coke drinkers.

The AFGC’s hope is that by showing what terribly good corporate citizens its members are, they’ll head the Parliamentary Obesity enquiry and the ACMA off at the pass. Parliament won’t insist on traffic light labelling and the highly processed food industry will avoid the cascade effect of the ACMA implementing actual bans rather than voluntary ones written by the AFGC.

It may seem like the AFGC is jumping at shadows, but they have paid attention to what befell Big Tobacco. They know it’s better to stop this particular train before it leaves the station. If they can’t, they fear it won’t be long before the only place you’ll be able to see a Coke ad will be in the sealed section of an adult magazine.