British scientists found brilliant colleagues. A certain Lebanese American University undertook to prove that pictures of food cause increased appetite and the desire to eat. Pictures depicting junk food mean a desire for junk food. I don’t know what kind of university it was or who ran it, but he wasted money on his research for nothing. You’d think we wouldn’t know that watching food is appetizing.
Yes, everyone knows! Once upon a time, a supermarket hung a huge banner with a picture of a grilled chicken outside my window. At first everything went as usual: I lived, worked, exercised in the gym. But after a few weeks, I started to notice that I was going to cafes and shops too often. I even bought grilled chicken twice. Moreover, to spite the advertiser who planted such a bomb on me, I bought it from another store! Then my waist started to go up. I also started eating more ice cream.
The situation was resolved unexpectedly: the same network changed the banner. And instead of grilled chicken, he hung pictures with raw chicken, a piece of beef and raw kafaty! I immediately lost three kilos in a week. Because when I went to the kitchen, my gaze was on a huge, bluish, gutted carcass. I think I stopped eating altogether!
What about all those food blogs? I personally have an occupational hazard. Risk factor. From time to time, I wrote articles on food quality and nutrition, and I had previously conducted reviews on food prices. And every time I type something and search accordingly for information about products, I see days of contextual food ads. Now cooking video blogs have been added to the load. When you ask something nutrition-related on a search engine, “Zen” will flood you with recommendations for cooking videos.
“I buy 400g of breast, you won’t believe it…”, “My husband eats it with his fingers” and things like that. When I wrote down the egg prices, they advertised to me for a week asking if I could eat those eggs in bulk.
So after this column you will quietly read the news, and for a long time you will see a dizzying carousel of recipes on the screen. But no: After reading this text, you will continue to see hamburger ads for a day or two. Miles I am sorry and offer my condolences!
All these endless food pictures and cooking videos are causing hunger pangs. This is what scientists at the strange university have proven.
There you have it, it’s official: Advertising food and the people who make it creates an appetite and desire for all kinds of nonsense. As a result, the average person becomes fat, sick and weak. They eat all kinds of garbage!
And I can’t help but say this: Junk food is consumed mostly by young people. People over 40 are still not very used to fries or hamburgers.
I see people eating fast food, especially in shopping malls, if I pass by food places. Wretched! We now have young people in England or the USA who amaze me greatly: fat, misshapen girls, 16 years old, with swollen elephant legs and three chins joined together. Now we have both girls and oatmeal girly boys. And this is St. Petersburg!
Today, the weakest young people live in the poorest areas. Ivanovo, Kostroma, Kurgan, Vladikavkaz, Novgorod, Pskov – young people and students are quite poor because they cannot buy fast food or pizza for dinner. The fattest young people live in cities such as Tyumen, Ufa and Kazan in the oil north. Because there is already money, but there is still a lack of education to understand the consequences of malnutrition. Moscow and St. In St. Petersburg, as a percentage, there are not as many fat people as in rich cities.
Still, fast food in general has not taken root widely here. We are lucky: the growth of incomes and the garbage food industry in our country coincided with the emergence of the ideology of healthy eating around the world. We had some time to eat chips and fries.
Fortunately, languages u200bu200bare taught, the Internet is not banned, medicine and science are developing with the times – the strong pressure of junk food has collided with the oncoming tide of sanity. We didn’t have time to eat our hundred-pound floor-length aprons.
But if resistance to garbage calories is not strengthened, then our people will quickly eat monstrous volumes of America. And I am not speaking under the influence of propaganda. I was in the USA and saw with my own eyes that the fine people there were from good areas of big cities. They have money for fitness and proper nutrition, they train, and judging by similar figures, all of America trains in waves according to the same programs.
Only a few percent go to the gym and buy salads and veal. The rest look misshapen, chew on breaded wings, and see ads all day long for the most disgusting food that costs a dime in the American wallet but consists of real food garbage. In the United States, there are banners everywhere with hamburgers, ready-made lasagna, chocolate, pizza and giant half-pound glasses of ice cream. It’s incredibly widespread capitalism.
We are probably also supposed to understand capitalism’s grin: unlimited junk food advertising that is allowed to run uninterrupted just so capitalists can profit from irresponsible ordinary people. We had such grins in the 90s in full swing when they advertised vodka and even cigarettes for young people. It’s hard to believe it now, but “youth” cigarettes were produced in Russia.
Prohibited. Later, umbrella brands were banned, for example when a vodka manufacturer advertised a mineral water brand of the same name. Only this gap remained with zero beer. I hope they cover it up soon.
So why are junk food ads allowed? Especially if it is known to not only encourage the buyer to choose in the direction of unhealthy food, but also increase cravings for it and increase appetite in general? Without hamburger advertising everywhere, people will not only prefer steamed pasta but also eat less in general.
In our country you cannot advertise vodka, cigarettes or drugs that are not registered in Russia. Why is it possible to advertise French fries around? Meanwhile, smokers live short lives and die quickly. Alcoholics also do not put much burden on the healthcare system, they do not have time, they drink and sleep without the participation of doctors. But fat people live for a long time, undergo constant treatment, lose their capacity early and cost the budget a large amount of money. Why does the country voluntarily accept such expenditures? Just to allow businesses to profit from unenlightened people?
Following countries with obesity and fast food problems, measures to protect citizens from bad eating habits are constantly being discussed in Russia. They have already suggested excise taxes on unhealthy foods, taxes on fast food cafes, and proper nutrition classes in schools. Isn’t it possible to simply ban mass advertising of junk food? Get a list of dishes that are generally prohibited from being shown in ads and legally define them, and for cafes that feature junk food, impose quotas on the consumption of images of their dishes. For example, a hamburger shop’s sign might display a small hamburger of a certain size. And there is no right to order paid advertising featuring junk food. The same goes for bakeries.
Normalize the use of junk food images. Well, or replace it with synonymous images that have a healthier or neutral connotation. Colonoscopy clinics or circumcision offices have found ways to advertise themselves without showing that they perform examinations and circumcisions.
We urgently need to do something about the dominance of visual advertisements for garbage food. It will be doubly funny as our bellies grow bigger by laughing at Americans.
People will soon be crawling on all fours due to overeating. Maybe it’s time to actually fix the problem?
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the position of the editors.