Plus, "when they target children" would simply become harder to define as companies would modify their ads, but the problem would remain if parents aren't taking an active role in educating their children themselves as to what is unhealthy, and making purchasing decisions that are healthy, instead of depending on the government (or corporate advertising) to do it for them.
If you want the government to do your parenting for you, I don't know what to tell you. Not my idea of good parenting, and I think the results will be disappointing. We can agree to disagree on that.
Clearly you aren't a parent, and I suspect you also have never been a child. It would be handy if what you wrote were true. But children aren't robots, and parents aren't the only people who influence them. The reason that food companies target children in their advertising is that it works to manipulate them.
1) No mentioning of prices 2) No calls to action 3) No aggrandizement of product. Underwriting can be a neutrally-worded description of product.
I've really come to believe that all media that could be described as public (the outdoors, network television, radio, perhaps much more...) should abide by these rules, insofar as commercial advertising pollutes it horribly.
Or they do understand, and are willing to make the tradeoff. I'm about to order a pizza. It will be unhealthy, and also delicious.
I both care and understand.
The fact that soda is an easily-consumable, relatively cheap, energy-dense, decent-tasting liquid foodstuff is why I purchase it.
[0]: http://rivergrandrapids.com/the-first-official-us-coin-said-...
The only thing you can really control is yourself and your reactions to things. I don't watch TV, read newspapers, watch football games, browse the web without an ad blocker, or live in a city. I haven't seen an ad in years. When I do venture into the city, I recognize that I must have seen ads, but I can't recall what any of them were; I'm too busy thinking about other things.
Stop blaming other people and focus on yourself.
As for your advice to focus on one's self, maybe you should try taking it.
This is stuff that we should decide as a society to keep ourselves safe from corporate psychopaths.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92990&page=1
You can ban it from TV and radio if there's a compelling government interest but even the head medical chied of the ADA says there is no definitive proof that sugar causes diabetes. (See my link above)
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/commerc...
Should the feds be able to shut down Hackernews? It's a corporation. NY Times? It's a corporation.
The distinction you want to make is commercial speech should be able to be regulated. And it is. False advertising is illegal but lying about politics is a first amendment right.
Also, sugar isn't harmful in moderation.
Plus the science of diet is hilariously poorly understood. 15 years ago people would have been trying to ban fatty food. Now all the sudden fat is good?
And that goes triple for popular diet advice. It's all fads. We still can't figure out a diet that works for whole population long term.
If the first amendment should apply to corporations, should the New York Times be restricted on what articles it can print? What about the movie documentaries you see on Netflix?
I think that sort of hyperbole isn't helping any arguments against sugar. No need to ratchet up the rhetoric - this is already a hot topic. Sugar is bad, yes, but if it was thought to be "as harmful" as tobacco it would have warning labels and you'd have to be a certain age to use it.