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This ad came in the mail today. When I look at it, it completely blows me away. It seems criminal:
The last thing America needs right now is an “appetite stimulus plan”. Obesity is at record high levels in the U.S., along with all the diseases that follow obesity like diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, etc. If you look at it strictly from a cost-of-healthcare standpoint, the obesity epidemic is costing America a fortune. Never mind all the suffering, pain, lifespan reduction, etc. The high-carbs, high salt, high fat diet promoted in the ad is horrible, and hurting us all in several different ways.
As you know I have been trying to lose weight, and have had success with a program called the Dukan diet. It is a low-carb-for-life diet. The most interesting thing about the journey has been the change in the way I look at food, and the realization that carbohydrates really are a problem. I know without a doubt that carbs are a problem for me, and I have a growing certainty that over-consumption of carbs is causing the “obesity epidemic”, as well as the “diabetes epidemic” in the United States.
The problem with the over-consumption of carbs appears to be that carbs cause hunger pangs which then cause people to eat more than they should (usually more carbs, which exacerbates the cycle). As soon as you pull carbs out of the diet, hunger pangs cease for many (if not most) people. The reason may have to do with swings in blood sugar. If you don’t have carbs causing huge swings, the stability of the blood sugar level on a low-carb diet reduces feelings of hunger.
In the same way, if you pull carbs out of the diet of a diabetic, you again lessen big swings in blood sugar levels, which really helps with the management of diabetes. That, combined with a weight reduction (which the elimination of hunger pangs promotes), can often cure type-2 diabetes.
If you would like to learn more about this, see:
- What if everything that we are taught about carbs is actually propaganda?
- What is your “ideal weight” if you want to be healthy?
- Drew Carey loses 80 pounds with a no-carb diet
- All the dire warnings I have gotten about the Dukan diet have turned out to be wrong
So now look back at the ad. What is is offering is pizza, pasta and desserts — all very high in carbs. A typical slice of pizza has between 40 and 50 grams of carbs. A serving of dessert, be it a slice of cake, a bowl of ice cream, or a cookie, will have 40 or 50 grams of carbs as well. Pasta is basically pure carbs, as is a soda. It would be easy to eat one meal at this place and consume 300 or 400 grams of carbs. Meanwhile it would be much healthier (and very easy) to keep total carbohydrate consumption around 50 or 100 grams per day.
One argument always brought out in conversations like this is the, “people have the right to make their own choices” idea. And they do have that right. But there are three problems with the logic:
- Obviously we as a nation aren’t making good choices, or there wouldn’t be an obesity epidemic. This mirrors smoking, which caused a lung cancer epidemic.
- The hundreds of ads we see each day promoting food/carb consumption is shocking and hard to resist. Same was true of smoking, so we banned the ads.
- There is no real message to counter all the ads. No one makes money telling you to stop eating carbs. But people (like soda companies, pizza companies, cereal companies, etc) make lots of money promoting carb consumption.
It feels like we would be much better off if we banned food advertising like we ban cigarette advertising. At this point, obesity and diabetes are costing us far more than cigarettes do. And we would be much better off if we had a huge education campaign teaching ourselves to stop eating carbs and salt. Because if we stopped with the carbs and salt, it would save the nation hundreds of billions of dollars per year. It is a HUGE amount of money at stake.
So is the ad shown above criminal, or capitalism at its best?
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