Labour Pushes To Ban Cartoon Characters From Cereal Packets

[naomi24]

//Tony the Tiger and other cartoon characters on cereal packets face being banned under a Labour government. Party deputy leader Tom Watson will today urge the advertising industry to stop using such images on sugar-laden products aimed at children.
If they refuse, a Labour government would bring in much stricter rules as part of the war against obesity.//

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6646643/Not-grrreat-Labour-pushes-ban-Tony-Tiger-cartoon-characters-cereal-packets.html

Nannying going too far – or do initiatives like this work?

[jim360]

Picture, if you will, a row of cereal boxes where the packaging has images associated with obesity, roughly speaking sized to the relative proportions of sugar. Good news, I'd suggest, for Weetabix, Shredded Wheat, and equivalent products. No doubt those who already decide that they (and their kids) like Cowboy Crunchies* will continue to buy it, but what would new parents go for?

*Toy Story 2 reference: "The only cereal that's sugar-frosted and dipped in chocolate..."

[Ken4155]

Thank you very much for the link, Naomi. Learning how to do them is on my 'to do' list :-)

[naomi24]

:o)

[youngmafbog]

Cereals do not make you fat. I grew up on them as a kid, complete with Tony et al and I was not a fat kid. (I am tubby now but dont eat cereal!)

And why should sensible people have 'obese' pictures trying to put them off their treat of a sugary cereal just because of a few irresponsible one?

I wonder what they will want in the window of the local Greggs?

[jim360]

Greggs customers :O

[youngmafbog]

Wont get many in a Greggs window.

[Prudie]

For interest ref the UK and smoking:
"From October 2008, all cigarette products manufactured must carry picture warnings to the reverse. Every pack must have one of these warnings by October 2009"

"Plain packaging is required for cigarettes manufactured after 20 May 2016 or sold after 21 May 2017"
8 years later..

[Khandro]

Can anyone show a direct statistical link between the packaging of cigarettes and people stopping smoking?

[jim360]

One can show a correlation, eg see the study I cited earlier, and I can provide a few others. It's obviously tricky to prove a causal link. This is partly because life is complicated, and partly because periodically the major tobacco companies tend to publish their own studies that, quite remarkably, show the exact opposite effect.

Who'd'a thunk it?

[youngmafbog]

I am really struggling to see the link with a cartoon on a cerial packet and a gory picture on the packet of 20 Woodies.

Are we really suggesting taking 'Tony' off and replacing with rolls of fat or super size backside?

And then expecting that to make a difference?

[jim360]

So far as I'm aware, this would be the first move to introduce plain packaging as a rule to cereal packets. As such I don't think there's going to be any direct evidence to show how useful or not it would be. (If anyone does know of such a study I'd be interested to see it.)

So I thought it best to mention cigarette packaging because that's a reasonably comparable example: an unhealthy product where advertising has been shown to increase uptake rates -- and, correspondingly, changing the packaging to remove brand markers and replace them with health warnings and pictures has been shown to have a small but non-zero impact on usage.

Would it be the same with cereal? Who knows? For the time being, I think Labour's proposal is limited to selling cereal in bland boxes rather than ones with pictures of fat children. But, since advertising works, then action to block advertising of unhealthy sugar-laden cereal products is bound to have some impact.

If that is the only part of Labour's policy on promoting healthier eating habits then it's merely a token gesture. If it is part of a wider package, including, say, action to try and force a reduction in sugar content, various taxes, reductions in the price of healthier food, etc, then it could be worth trying.

[naomi24]

Like anything, if people want it they will buy it. There’s enough information out there to tell people that sugar/fat is unhealthy but is the population as a whole getting thinner? No. Quite the reverse.

[jim360]

Indeed, but information can be "out there" and still not as easy to access, or to understand even once it's been accessed, as might be implied by the above. How much role Tony the Tiger, et al, have in that I wouldn't care to say. But, still, people are marginally more likely to pay attention to television adverts than to studies published in scientific journals.

[fender62]

today's cereal, i was curious and tasted a very popular brand..
all i could taste was sugar in a bowl of milk, back in my day, we had porridge and sometimes a drop of honey on it or a few currants, not both but either, now as for cereal box cartoon characters, its up to the parents to feed there children properly, and not use sugar as a cosh to behave.

[naomi24]

Jim, I'm not a gambler but I would be willing to bet that with the constant publicity we're subjected to very few are unaware that eating/drinking sugar/fat makes people fat. Ignorant they are not.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Another example of fiddling around the edges while ignoring the main problem. Which is parents.

What the State needs to do is to take a policy it has already started and follow it through to its logical conclusion. It has done pretty well so far through its policies which encourage single parenthood: there were 1.6 "single" mothers in 2017. The benefits of removing the "patriarchal male" stereotype from children's lives has been most clearly shown in the greatly reduced incidence of aggression and violence in young teenage boys in areas where the incidence of single parenthood is high.

Now it needs to go further and reduce the influence of the indulgent mother. Communal rearing of children using a well-trained professional staff will ensure healthy dietary standards (which solves the obesity problem), will provide a moral and educational regime suitable for today's diverse society, and will be able to anticipate or treat mental health issues connected with such things as gender identity

[Khandro]

fender; //back in my day, we had porridge and sometimes a drop of honey on it or a few currants, //

Eeee, you were lucky! :0)

[vetuste_ennemi]

"I had a very unhappy childhood. My parents ran way three times." (Les Dawson)

[woofgang]

there's no point going up against the energy drinks industry, they have already been caught by the sugar tax.

[youngmafbog]

Had same pictures on when I was young and there were very few tubbies, so what has changed?

Perhaps the answer to that is the answer to childhood obesity problems?