Friday, May 08, 2009

Horrors! Horrors!

There are so many things one can worry about in this world it sometimes boggles about what people actually do worry about.

Junk food ads account for two-thirds of televised advertisements for food that are shown when children are likely to be watching, researchers into obesity said Friday, based on a study of 11 countries.

Germany and the United States led the way at 90 percent, with Britain and Australia the lowest at about 50 percent, the researchers said, urging governments to limit such marketing in order to combat obesity.

"Internationally, children are exposed to high volumes of unhealthy food and beverage advertising on television," Bridget Kelly, a nutrition researcher at the Cancer Council NSW in Australia, and colleagues told the European Congress on Obesity in Amsterdam.

"Limiting this food marketing is an important preventative strategy for childhood obesity."

Oh good grief. Look, there's nothing wrong with eating junk food. As long as the calories you ingest are the same number as the calories you burn you'll be just fine.

Oh, and the reason that Britain has the lowest numbers? Because there's a law against marketing junk food between children's programs. And do you know what the effect of that has been? As there isn't any money (there's no point in advertising cars of washing powders to children now, is there?) no one actually makes children's programmes commercially any more. They just buy in imports.

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