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Comment by gomez9 | Hacker News Reader

Why not regulate junk food advertising? I don't watch much television, but when I do, it's shocking to see how normalized unhealthy food is in society.

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The problem is the lack of access to quality, affordable, nutritious food. Food deserts are a huge problem in many parts of the US, where lower income households simply don’t have access to healthy food.

I don’t see how regulating advertising solves this problem.

What's available is an important factor in what people choose, but ultimately people have to make a choice between good and bad food. Little kids are especially vulnerable to fast food ads and people develop their eating habits when they are young.

> The problem is the lack of access to quality, affordable, nutritious food

not buying this - lentils are a nearly complete protein, don't really expire, certainly aren't expensive, and i don't think could be viewed as anything but healthy

That is a very real problem. It's commonly referred to as a food desert

https://www.cdc.gov/healthcommunication/toolstemplates/enter...

http://americannutritionassociation.org/newsletter/usda-defi...

1. How many people know that about lentils?

2. Can you buy lentils at the convenience stores most accessible to people in "food deserts"?

Lentils aren't magic, there's plenty of foods like this -- pasta, rice and beans, oatmeal. Most of them are sold at convenience stores in urban areas.

You’re assuming that everyone has access to lentils, which is an incorrect assumption.

Many live several miles away from stores that sell produce and dry grains/legumes and aren’t able to purchase this kind of food on a regular basis, opting instead for canned goods or fast food.

I find that this is a common issue on the site when discussing problems. There are a bunch of people in this thread making claims that people do have access to healthy foods, or its their choice for eating unhealthy, when many of the people on this site have likely never been in a position where they could not access healthy foods, or were not even taught about proper nutrition. I find similar issues in other threads, such as the Airbnb thread where people are saying that there is no problem with Airbnb from the perspective of well off business travelers, with no consideration for locals. Time and time again people weigh in on arguments from a sheltered/privileged point of view with no consideration for people that may not have the money, time, knowledge, etc. to take for granted what we all do. I generally like ycombinator, but sometimes the echo chamber of primarily old, upper class male engineers is quite taxing

You're also assuming that people know how to make tasty meals out of lentils, or have the energy to do so. The idea of quality food encompasses not looking and tasting like grue.

i'm just responding to a strong and overly simplified claim, quoted above.

that people don't have cooking skill or patience indicates other problems other than access to food - i happen to agree - so i think it's fair to say the claim should include other things like: commuting etc. leads to low energy/motivation to cook leads to choosing unhealthier foods; lack of community structure means there aren't as many people to cook for so less efficient, etc.

again, OPs claim is that food access is "the problem"; i just think it should include other things, such as what you said.

You're viewing things in black and white terms. Food deserts are a problem, but they aren't the totality of the problem.

Lots of junk food is sold in places with ample access to food. Advertising is part of it.

Food deserts aren't nearly the problem one might naively think. Making high-quality, healthy, affordable, nutritious produce available to the households that need it the most does not tend to result in dietary shifts. Often what's lacking is the cultural knowledge, culinary experience, time, or physical infrastructure to cook the quality, affordable, nutritious food every human being should have.

Follow the money.

Jumping straight to prohibiting certain messages and / or their delivery is shocking to me. Free expression (even from vile creeps like Ronald McDonald) and public health are both important.

Tobacco and alcohol advertising is already heavily regulated. Makes little sense why these same standards should not be applied to food, especially when obesity's impact on society is far worse.

I want to suggest that it was also wrongheaded to censor tobacco and alcohol advertising.

Is it ok to censor porn ads in kids TV programs?

In a mature and thoughtful society, with robust communities committed to stimulating and attentive care for kids, yes I think it's preferable to take a super conservative approach to censoring content and instead to spend enough time directly with kids (our own and those of our friends and neighbors) to help them navigate the minefield of content that exists in the world.

I am hopeful that that's the world we're cultivating.

I'm sorry but it's not clear to me - do you mean that in that case censorship is allowed, or not?

In case it wasn't clear, my point is that no-censorship-whatsoever just can't work in the real world. You always have to draw a line somewhere.

Why?

I think that in order for our world to be peaceful and tolerant, we need to be extremely restrained in what expression we use the heavy hand of government to censor. I don't like tobacco or alcohol advertising, but I want to be able to live in a society with content I don't like (or even that I find dangerous) and still be healthy. I think that's important for the information age.

I'm a pretty strong supporter of free speech, but I don't see how it's relevant when you're talking about the speech of corporations.

The first amendment only covers political speech. The government can and does censor things like profanity and pornography (there’s a reason why you can’t say “fuck” on the radio). Advertising isn’t political speech and wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) be protected. Considering that advertising is basically psychological manipulation to get you to buy products, especially products which directly prey on your lizard brain things like hunger, I see no reason not to censor junk food advertisements. It worked with cigarettes.

Not true, the first amendment is about more than political speech. See this article for a little of the history of free speech:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/two-con...

[Note in particular: After all, the genius of the First Amendment lies in bringing isegoria and parrhesia together, by securing the equal right and liberty of citizens not simply to “exercise their reason” but to speak their minds.]

> The first amendment only covers political speech.

This opinion terrifies me. I'm grateful that so few people, including those in a position to decide on government restraint (ie, SCOTUS, etc), agree with you.

In your ideal world (where the text of the 1st amendment is interpreted as you propose), how do you prevent the government from simply labeling any speech it doesn't like as "non-political" and then censoring it?

This seems like a shockingly naive viewpoint given what we know about human susceptibility to advertising.

Consumers consider consider themselves too smart to be fooled by advertising, and yet advertisers spend billions every year because they know advertising works.

It's that gap in understanding that makes advertisements insidious.

We all agree that this is the problem, but the elusive solution seems to be the field on which we disagree.

I prefer to take an extremely restrained approach to state-backed restrictioins content and instead focus on empowering people to recognize when they are being manipulated and resist being fooled.

My concern is that the state-based censorship approach won't last long into the information age, and that if we haven't developed robust protections within our communities by then (against the full exposure of "bad" content) then the effects may be worse for the wear.

The naive part, then, is the idea that we can develop robust protections within our communities. At the risk of invoking "think of the children," our communities are ever-evolving, and the most vulnerable members are replenished regularly.

I'd love to believe that we could, as a community, make wise choices, but reality demonstrates otherwise.

I'm very much loathe to grant the government yet more ability to restrict content, but there is no doubt that television advertising bans on alcohol and tobacco are effective[0], so I definitely understand the desire to enact similar restrictions around unhealthy foods given their societal costs. I think the line is too fuzzy for me to be comfortable, but I'd rather go that direction than re-introducing tobacco advertising knowing that doing so will result in a reversal of the positive benefits.

[0] https://www.nber.org/reporter/winter04/saffer.html

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