First it was Michael Bloomberg. Now the Walt Disney Co. has enlisted. Setting anti-obesity standards is becoming hot behavior.
Last week New York Mayor Bloomberg said he would outlaw monster size sugary drinks in his city. This week Disney said it would ban ads for junk food on its TV channels, radio stations and websites aimed at kids. Disney will set its own standards. If a cereal is more sugar than grain, its ads won’t play on a Disney site. All junk food and drinks will have to qualify as at least moderately nutritious before they could be sold to a Disney audience.
First Lady Michelle Obama called the Disney decision a “game-changer.”
“With this new initiative,” she said, “Disney is doing what no major media company has ever done before in the U.S. — and what I hope every company will do going forward.”
Mayor Bloomberg was assailed for his decision by restaurants and soft drink manufacturers. He was, they said, meddling with the public’s freedom of choice and should back off.
Bloomberg stood firm. By targeting out-sized soft drinks, he said his goal was to get the public to choose moderation for itself. If a 12-ounce drink was the largest a peddler could sell, then people will accommodate, he believes. Those who wanted more could buy another 12 ounces.
He is surely right. Purveyors have increased serving sizes for many foods and drinks in order to take business away from competitors — and so the entire industry has morphed into peddlers of more. The result is plain to be seen, waddling in front of you on any sidewalk.
Disney was more direct.
When its current advertising contracts expire in 2015, the company will impose its own standards for the food and drink advertisements it will accept. Its object will be to protect children from being sold fattening junk food and, on the positive side, to encourage them to make healthy choices.
SOME FREE MARKET types will argue that this kind of standard-setting is elitist and an abuse of power. What right does Mayor Bloomberg or the Disney company have to tell folks what to eat or drink, they will ask in a huff.
The line of argument is used to justify pornography and to allow the most vile hate speech to be shouted from street corners and pasted on billboards.
But to argue that it is somehow unAmerican to set standards and require compliance, is to argue that a society and the individuals within it cannot tell good from bad and must be prevented from advocating wise choices in effective ways.
And that brings us back to the obesity epidemic.
Disney and Bloomberg take it seriously. The tragic increase in diabetes alone is justification for much stronger measures than banning quart-sized soft drinks or refusing Twinkie ads. The fact that most American adults are significantly overweight is a major factor in the increase in health care costs, which, in turn, make up a major, and growing, percentage of the cost of state and federal government.
