World leaders to discuss junk food ad ban at U.N.

Idiots! People around the world are STARVING! Starving and eating grass in North Korea, god knows what in many parts of Africa, go to Haiti and they are making so called cakes made from DIRT and the poorest people on our planet suffer while rich fat well fed so called world leaders have the AUDACITY to even begin to talk about JUNK food? Go to a poor barrio, etc..this food is not junk!

Dumb.

Children don't buy the food, the parents do. The idea that advertsing (or promotional toys in kid's meals, in the case of SanFransico) is behind childhood obesity is idiotic. Look, kids want to eat junk/fast food because it tastes good. (Foodies may disagree, but the phenomenon is undeniable). Kids eat junk/fast food because their parents buy it for them. Parent's buy junk/fast food because it's A) cheap, B) easy, and, C) because they think it tastes good too.

You want to get serious about childhood obesity? Especially in poor comunities? OK, how about this:

1) Invest in ensuring that poor neighborhoods have access to aforable grocery stores. Do you have any idea how many inner city neigborhoods don't even have a grocery store? In the US, it's quite a lot. How are parents supposed to feed their kids fresh vegatables when the only place to get food withing driving distance is McDonalds? Or when a fast food hamburger is cheaper than a home cooked meal?

2) Encourage exercise. And do it by more than Phys. Ed. classes and parental education campaigns. Kids need a place to play outside - that means a safe, clean public park, basketball court, etc... in the neighborhood. It also means afterschool sports programs, and things like community basketball and youth boxing at the local gym.

3) Affordable daycare. The sort that working parents can rely on so that they can go out an make the money their family needs to provide for their children. The sort thay will prepare the kids healthy meals so that the time-strapped parents don't have to every night. Also the sort that will provide physical activity for the kids while their parents aren't their to supervise.

4) Education about health and nutrition - many parents need this sort of stuff so that they can understand how to prepare healthy, afordable meals for their kids, and understand how not getting the right sorts of vitamins and minerals and dietary balance can effect their kid's health. Info on cheap, easy to prepare meals that even the worst cooks could be expected to prepare.

This is just the begining of what we should be doing. Instead, the UN (and like minded "do-gooders") are out trying to tell us what we can and can't buy. There is nothing wrong with a healthy kid eating the ocassional Big Mac or gulping down a cola. There problem is when the kid eats nothing but junk and never exercises any of those calories off. Lay off the happy meals and Cheetohs commercials and start getting serious.

But I love Dorritos commercials, they're the only ones worth watching.

righteous busybodies blowing other people's money.

This is going to be hard goal to achieve in America when Michelle Obama is hawking Girl Scout cookies inside the White House.

You'll have my Thin Mints when you pry them from my cold dead hands!!

...Provided I haven't eaten them all first...

With the global population growing exponentially, aren't premature deaths a good thing?

It really is an audacity like elbudamexicano says. 160 million children under the age of 5 are malnourished and every year 15 million children die of hunger. Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger.

so called world leaders have the AUDACITY to even begin to talk about JUNK food? Go to a poor barrio, etc..this food is not junk!

I may be missing something here. So bear with me. The junk food ads are aimed at the starving kids, in order to save them? Not the marketers riding on their backs? So the junk food manufacturers are practicing a form of social welfare? Isn't that laudable. Making sure that those who do have more money to spare get access to these tasty but destructive foods is laudable too, of course. It doesn't matter these consumers die a bit later than those in the former group of multiple diseases. Right. The UN should ignore the problem.

So the UN is now saying that you are no longer responsible for your conscious decisions and that companies that produce products are responsible for what you decide to eat. People know it's junk food. They just have to enforce not feeding it to their kids. So many in Canada feed their kids cola and soft drinks for their supper knowing that it is sugar in a bottle but they do it anyway. The makers aren't responsible for the parents decision. What next we ban MacDonalds right to put up it's big M because people can't control themselves? EFF the UN!

The junk food ads are aimed at the starving kids, in order to save them?

I think what they're getting at is the ridiculousness of limiting what food can be marketed to people while there are people that would fight tooth and nail for a bag of the calorie laced junk food. Imagine what people from starving countries would think if they heard that in some countries the people ate so well that the government feels the need to step in to prevent them from getting too fat.

The UN should ignore the problem.

Yes, leave people to their own devices. I've always advocated that whether it’s food, drink, alcohol, or drugs. If a person wishes to live in a drug induced stupor their whole life then who’s to say they should be stopped? Same goes for a person that wishes to make themselves a fat slob. All humans might not be smart but placing bans, restrictions, and regulations on consumption assumes they lack sapience and the ability to make decisions for themselves.

Kids eat junk food because they like it, not because of some wildly successful marketing campaign. And last I checked kids don't draw much of an an income which means they aren't even the decision-makers in the process. There's a problem with obesity but I really just don't see how banning ads directed at children is going to do anything. The money could be better spent in other ways.