Junk food ads banned during childrens TV *Has The world gone mad!!*

How can produce be considered healthier if it has to be shipped from another country, adding to air pollution.

Fruit from other countries can be sat in cold storage for months, is gamma irradiated and treated with fungicides and pesticides to keep things off it while in storage, and is made nice and shiny with wax (I used to work at a cold stores, so I got to see the dates on the stuff etc.)

Local stuff comes off the tree, goes in a box, the box is taken to the greengrocers, and it's put on display.

Any form of storage reduces the nutritional content of food.

Fox...the where does the food come from ? issue revolves around the burning of fossil fuels to transport the food...nothing more. Did you mean fair trade ? Fair trade's one of those feel good ideas that doesn't really mean much in the real world. I've been to a couple of fair trade coffee plantations, and they're no different from the non fair trade ones,,the people live exactly the same at both types.

Our local McDonald's are taking the same tack with the salads, fruit, and deli sandwiches..IE they're reacting to consumer demand like any competitive business.

uh-huh, cuz while it's in the plane, the air-pollution is sucked into the apple, causeing it to be unhealthy.

*ROFLMAO*

That goes right up there with:

"Brawndo's what plants need. It's got electrolytes"

Do they transport apples by plane in Aus?? or truck them instead..humm I wonder just how much fruit travels by air when compared to other modes ? Anyways. there's a coating of shellac on apples to help seal them

Fox - yes it does matter, a fair trade apple is worse than a local organic one its all about the carbon foot print we are hearing so much of. i try my hardest to always use local business and farms for as much of my shop as possible. supermarkets are evil. convientiant but evil.

Fai Trade has been proven to offer so much to the countrys where it is produced from, the extra money goes towards sending children to school, clean water etc. the proof is there in all the research that has been done. so for coffee and other things i can not get hold of from local farms then its fair trade all the way.

Stout... i wander how many people actually know about the shellac on fruit? its rather odd/amusing to have non vegan friendly fruit

Does anyone here object to banning alcohol and tobacco ads during children's programming?

If so, why? If not, why not?

They don't have them in the uk, they used to though. and to be honest getting rid of them doesn't seemed to of worked/put the kids off drinking and smoking as the numbers of underage smoking and drinking is rising all the time.

The UK is perhaps the most dysfunctional nation in the world when it comes to alcohol though- alcohol abuse is currently a huge issue, both where adults and teens are concerned.

The causes of that dysfunction seem currently to be not well understood, but it's probably fair to say that the underlying problems which lead to adults routinely abusing alcohol, also affect teens and pre-teens.

(IMO, a big part of that is the fact that, in the UK, there is an underlying attitude that alcohol facilitates, or is even essential to, social interaction).

So, the fact that, post-drink-advert ban, underage drinking has increased, does not mean that banning the ads has failed- it's quite possible that, without the drink-ad ban, underage drinking would be even worse than it is now.

Additionally, Lightning was talking about drink/smoking ads during childrens programming- correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think drink/smoking ads have ever been part of UK childrens programming?

In which case, there never was a ban, so it would not have been relevant to increased teen-drinking (like I say, correct me if I'm wrong on that).

first you were talking about how unhealthy the food was, give mcd's a minute and credit before you start on a new complaint of pollution

They don't need credit. They've got profits.

In Canada, we've had a total ban on tobacco advertising in place for years and I can't imagine many advertisers wanting to advertise a product like alcohol to a target audience that isn't legally able to access their product...sounds like a waste of money to me.

Yes..the shellac on fruit...I think it's time to create an awareness campaign on this issue followed up by a marketing campaign to introduce individually packaged alcohol wipes for vegans to remove the non-vegan contaminate from the outside of their fruits and vegetables.

So if insects or insect products are not vegan, then what about bacteria and fungi ? just because you don't see them, doesn't mean they don't have feelings too ?

Good point onewheeldave i don't think there ever was ad during the kids tv ads. there was and still are some drinking ads during other tv prgrams that children watched with their parents(i think, i am not sure as i don't watch alot of tv)

@ stout

I just naturally assumed that vegans would have that information ( about the shellac ) but I bounced the idea off two vegans yesterday...proving my assumptions to be incorrect.

Actually I was half serious about the alcohol wipes, I'm uncertain about alcohols ability to dissolve set shellac, but a product like that would allow an aware vegan to eat an apple without peeling it. I'm not about to pursue the idea myself..merely suggesting that there could be a market niche here

You figure that consumption of insects is taboo among vegans for cultural reasons and doesn't play into the "animal suffering" mindset ? Could be...I know that around here most people consider eating insects as just plain gross.

Also..people rarely eat insects that they know about in a classic case of ignorance being bliss

IMO "drawing the line" at considering insects as animal products is a very, very difficult stance to actually take and live. As I mentioned above, what about the aphids and other types of insects/larvae on vegan friendly foods ? Seems to me the vow to avoid causing harm to insects would be just this side of impossible to keep in the real world.

While on the subject of insects/grubs- as any aboriginal (living the trad way) or modern day survivalist knows, many are nutritionally superior in many ways to vegetables and meat.

As you know, I'm not pushing/promoting 100% vegetarianism/vegainism in this thread (though respect to vegans as, when it comes to minimising harm, they're pretty much at the top of the pyramid).

So I've often thought about the practicality of 'grub farms'- using a life form which is less capable of pain/loss/suffering than trad food animals (cows, pigs, hens etc)- the end product being a highly nutritious paste with no obvious grub/insect visual characteristics.

Obviously not suitable for vegans, but it could be presented as a less harmful (both to animals and environement), super-nutritious, relatively cheap, 'green food'.

The main problem would be prejudice/distaste, due to our cultural view of insects/grubs.

A little thought about what goes into, for example, sausages (bits of waste animal, including rectums etc) may give food for thought on that one?

Is it just me..or do all these threads seem to be running together ?

I'm always curious as to what motivates vegetarian and vegans to make the choices they do and quite often the reasons are clear cut and valid to my way of thinking. I may not make the same choices..but that doesn't stop me from being interested.

Which is why I'm curious about the bug thing. If vegans are concerned about things like honey, cochineal, and shellac, then obviously some vegans have given thought to insects as animals and I'm not being critical of vegans when I ask questions like "what about the aphids in the broccoli? " I'm more curious as to whether this has been raised as a point amongst vegans..or if they've even thought about it.

Yes..it's about drawing the line..or more so, about where do you draw the line...and why ?

Maybe insects will become the new meat...if people are willing to eat the lips and assholes that make up hotdogs...who knows.

It really does come down to lowering or minimising harm- no one, vegan or otherwise, can get through 70 years of life without inadvertently killing some insects.

Concerning aphids in broccoli- there's no alternative, as pointed out in the veggie thread, meat eaters kill far more plants than veggies and vegans cos their animals eat loads of crops and, hence, more aphids.

So, the vegan knows that they cause aphid deaths, but, by being vegan, they cause far less than they would otherwise- they've minimised the harm.

while i welcome the ban on junk food adverts i personaly think the ban should have been worded to ban all adverts