Eudoxa

First, threatening corporations to comply with a certain policy under the threat of legislation is bad for democracy. Be as it may with the validity of Mr. Kyprianou's thoughts about food advertisements, preparing legislation provides clarity for both the administration and the private sector and opens up the opportunity for political debate. The threat of legislation creates uncertainty, since you never know when you have complied enough. Threats are normally used as a working method by those breaking laws, and should never be used by those making them.

Will a ban on advertisements for "unhealthy" food work? In our native country these laws are already in effect, since advertisements directly targeting children have been banned since many years. What are the results in Sweden then? Today 50 percent of Swedish men and 33 percent of Swedish women are overweight. Some 10 percent are obese, almost double the amount compared to the 1980's. The situation of Swedish children is regarded as particularly serious; 18 percent of all children between the ages of 6 and 17 are overweight.

These are dire figures for a country that has long prided itself on its public health records. Despite paternalistic efforts by the Swedish government to promote healthy lifestyles, subsidising recreation for toddlers and to ban or tax unhealthy ones, Sweden seems to be a quite normal European country when it comes to obesity and very much part of what the World Health Organization calls an "epidemic" of obesity.

The attack on advertisements stems from that European society has long discussed in terms of a particular food being good or bad, rather than in the more adequate terms of healthy or unhealthy diets. Actually, any kind of food could be considered good or bad, depending on the quantity and the context it is ingested in.

Pointing out certain types of food simplifies the issue and has led to a discussion promoting simplified solutions like suing companies that produce "fat" foods, levying taxes on fatty food, banning the advertising of certain types of food. But these reactions ignore the fact that people gain weight for reasons a lot more complex that just what they eat.

Our bodies have through evolution adapted to a life of under-nutrition (or even, before the 20th century, starvation) and hard physical labour, not of abundance and a sedentary lifestyle. We are very well suited to storing energy during short times of plenty, keeping it in reserve for long droughts. But today, because of human ingenuity and technological progress, the lean times do not come as often, so our bodies have a hard time consuming the energy they take in. Our brains are set to stimulate us to seek nutrition as if we are under a biological ideal weight, and that ideal weight is set much higher than what is good for us, since it never could be attained in the past.

The only healthy way to lose weight is to eat less and exercise more. Eliminating specific foods will not yield the desired results and may even be unhealthy in the long term.

Rather than encouraging the prevalent ideology of its-somebody-else's-fault, European parents should be given clear choices and the opportunity to take personal responsibility for their children’s health- through clear labelling and supported by better education in schools and at home.

Democracy is rule by law and by the citizens. Threats and paternalism is the opposite, it undercuts the individual and diminishes their responsibility. If we really want to stop the so called epidemic of obesity we have to do it the other way around. We must convince more people to take responsibly for their way of living.