Every parent needs to learn one small but important word: “No.”
It may be short, but if used correctly and consistently, it is powerful.
Without it, children grow up unable to distinguish between right and wrong.
And yet, today, parents who know how to say it are rarer than hen’s teeth.
Take for example the Government’s shiny new ban on junk food advertising. Starting next October, foods high in fat, sugar or salt, such as cakes, biscuits, ready meals and chips, will not be able to be advertised online or before 9pm on television.
The goal is to address the growing problem of childhood obesity. Almost one in ten children of foster age are currently obese and around 20 per cent suffer from tooth decay by the age of five.
Poor diets, combined with other factors, such as lack of exercise, cause many of these young people to become obese adults, with all the associated health problems and poor quality of life that this entails.
In the long run, of course, they end up costing the country a fortune in healthcare and benefits.
Nearly one in ten foster-age children are currently obese
Keir Starmer’s brilliant new ban on junk food advertising means foods high in fat, sugar or salt cannot be advertised online or before 9pm on TV.
None of this would be necessary if parents learned to say “no” more often: if, instead of taking the path of least resistance, they stood up to their chubby tyrants and refused to budge. No to sweets and soda drinks, no to nuggets and chips, no to takeaway food. Not all the time, of course, but most of the time.
But that’s not something that happens anymore. “No” seems to have become a dirty word in parenting. Everyone should have treats and, apparently, Happy Meals. And so Health Secretary Wes Streeting is channeling his inner Nanny McPhee and putting us all on the naughty side.
Will it work? The probability is slim.
According to the Department of Health’s own assessments, these measures are expected to reduce children’s exposure to such ads by just 8.9 seconds, resulting in a net reduction of exactly 2.1 calories from their daily diet. As the Mail’s health editor Shaun Wooller pointed out yesterday, that’s less than a tenth of a jelly.
The difficulty is that there are many other factors at play here. The proliferation of fast food establishments very close to schools, for example, or the fact that chips and chocolates are invariably cheaper and easier to obtain than “real” food.
Many families are too busy, too lazy, or simply too inept to cook healthy foods from scratch (after all, home economics hasn’t been taught in schools for years).
The game console has replaced the playing field. Add to that the rise of Deliveroo culture, with all manner of high-calorie treats delivered straight to the door with just a few clicks, and it’s not hard to understand why our kids are so fat.
None of this really has anything to do with advertising. Junk food ads were just as colorful and compelling in the 1970s and 1980s, possibly more so given the almost complete lack of regulation. Do you remember The Honey Monster? Tony the tiger? Cadbury’s Smash Aliens? Ronald McDonald? But then there was no obesity crisis.
No, that has been caused by profound cultural changes over several decades and a fundamental deterioration of social standards in general. Preventing little Kevin from seeing a Dunkin’ Donuts ad won’t change any of that.
After all, these harmful foods will still be on sale. At the train or bus station, in the supermarket or at the corner store, part of your food offer. And they will still be, in many cases, cheaper than healthier options and invariably much harder to resist. Unless you change those fundamentals, you will never eradicate obesity.
Ultimately, the only belts this policy will tighten are those of broadcasters, advertisers and similar industries, whose losses, by some estimates, will easily run into the hundreds of millions. All companies, let us not forget, on which thousands of jobs and livelihoods depend.
But as we have already seen under this Labor administration, job losses, especially in the private sector, are not really something to worry about.
Indeed, it could be argued that the Labor Party’s aim is to restrict private enterprise and freedom of choice as much as possible (see also private schools, the agricultural tax and the recent increase in employers’ national insurance), by while the reach of the public sector expands (repeated salary increases and gold-plated pensions). And if that means state censorship, so be it.
In that sense, this ban serves Labor’s objectives perfectly.
It hits precisely the type of people this Government likes to attack, expands the reach of the Nanny State, limits individual choice and possibly restricts freedom of expression by cutting the income of broadcasters, internet platforms, independent content creators , publishers and other organizations that rely on advertising revenue to fund their work. Intelligent.
If you don’t believe me, look at what Sadiq Khan, the “pioneering” Labor mayor of London, has designed.
It proposed its own ban on junk food advertising on the capital’s public transport network in 2019 and it has been rigorously enforced.
In March, for example, it emerged that comedian Ed Gamble was forced to redesign his tour poster because it showed him eating a hot dog. The offending sausage did not comply with Khan’s rules and had to be replaced with a cucumber, with somewhat surreal results.
A company promoting artisanal cheeses was banned because the fat content of its products was too high.
But then last week, in the run-up to the House of Commons vote on assisted dying, tube stations were suddenly adorned with posters from the Dignity in Dying pressure group. In one, an attractive blonde in striped satin pajamas dances in the kitchen as if she just won the lottery.
“My last wish is that my family does not have to see me suffer,” the caption reads.
In another, a woman smiles while playing a guitar. Again, the title reads: “My last wish is to play with my loved ones.” The general impression is that assisted dying is far from being the last resort of desperate people, but rather an attractive and quite interesting lifestyle option.
So in other words, no cheese or sausage for you kids, but if you want to outdo yourself, go for it. Tell me, what kind of twisted logic is that? Transport for London (TfL) insisted that the death announcements “met” its standards.
But the thing doesn’t end there. TfL also recently gave the green light to posters featuring controversial Muslim preacher Ismail ibn Musa Menk, known as Mufti Menk. In the photo, surrounded by burning US dollar bills, he advertises a financial vehicle compatible with Islam.
Menk, who once preached that homosexuals were “worse than animals”, has been accused of promoting “segregationist and divisive teachings” and is banned from Singapore and Denmark for his extreme views.
And yet, apparently none of those things are a problem under Khan’s rule. Once again, Labor apparatchiks prove it’s one rule for them and a hard rap on the knuckles with a rule for everyone else.
Of course we have to address the obesity crisis in this country. But censorship and handing over control to the nanny state is not the way to do it.
After all, the only growth this policy will stifle is that of the country’s creative industries, while contributing to the ever-growing waistline of the bloated public sector.
In other words: Labour’s dream, everyone else’s nightmare.