According to Hugh Pym, reporting on a recent survey in "Obesity 'costing same as smoking'," lost productivity through days off work and lower performance due to obesity related illnesses cost 2.8% of global economic activity (2014). Since it is now more serious than smoking and alcohol harms, the researchers have called for wider steps to be taken to control this mounting socio-economic and personal problem.
If you accept that the harm smoking causes justifies controlling the sales of tobacco, and banning it for children, who are most easily tempted into unhealthy ways, then naturally you will agree that something similar must be done about the serious health harms caused by obesity. Pym reports that the authors also want controls put on adults to help solve the problem, but I think that a lot of people might get upset if governments started to ban, for example, chocolate cake for everyone between the hours of 2:00 PM and 5:00 PM in the way that the Thai government currently bans the sale of alcohol even to adults at those times.
However, children clearly need to be protected from the serious health and other risks that bad diets cause, so the same arguments that support banning the sale and provision of cigarettes and alcohol to children must also apply to other harmful substances, in this case, ice cream, chocolate cake, candy, fatty pork and the like. Most of these have approximately zero nutritional value: they are, just like cigarettes or champagne, things that make the user feel good, whilst offering no substantial benefit and causing much harm. If we believe in liberty of choice and a right to chose our own lifestyle, we cannot stop adults from making unhealthy personal decisions, but children are not mature and they do need to be protected from the dangers of alcohol, cigarettes, and life threatening dietary habits. If their parents fail to act responsibly, it is clearly the state's obligation to intervene to protect innocent children from unnecessary risks. One effective way to do this is by passing laws to control the sale of harmful substances.
It is time to criminalize the sale to children of ice cream, chocolate cake, Pepsi, fatty pork, and other unhealthy foods that offer no significant nutritional value. This must be done to protect our children and to save our society from rapidly growing threat. Don't you agree?
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I think this one is about the length you should aim for, but a bit longer is OK.
ReplyDeleteSo, do you agree with my argument, or have I made a mistake somewhere in my reasoning?
I absoultely agree with you. I think that there must be some law restrictions to these things' consumption. I had restricted my child's soda consomption, but I failled. I think severe restiontons about some actions occure unexpected type of reactions. I think school's ecudation imposes more important on fixing children's conception of eating. Nowadays school's deits' education concnetrate on the abuse of alcoholes and drugs. They don't know the problem of seewt
ReplyDeleteAnd throw the dealers who sell ice-cream to children in prison, exactly as the marijuana and yaa baa dealers are treated for harming innocents by selling them what they want.
DeleteAnd the chocolate cake dealers. And the fatty pork dealers. These people are all making profits by harming society and individuals, and that can't be allowed to continue. It's time to get tough and use the law to force people to be healthy for the sake of society!
In fact, ...