I REALLY should not be thinking right now of my love of Christmas mince pies, with a nice glass of Penfolds Grandfather, or maybe a fine Madeira. I know, I know, it’s only the beginning of May but some of the fun of this year’s Christmas is already under assault from the public health puritans and we need to get organised.
Every year we can have a bit of a laugh catching those Christmas telly adverts and become seasoned critics of the good, the bad and the utterly saccharine.
Will John Lewis out-do M&S this year or will its advert be a condescending woke-fest? Will Boots blow it this time by belittling men, like they did last Christmas, and will Lidl and Aldi be more British than Tesco, Morrisons, or Asda? There’s always one that catches the eye and makes you feel all warm inside, and another makes you gag with embarrassment
Whether it’s an all-singing, all dancing advert with jiving Christmas jumpers and flying self-basting Turkey Crowns or a homily to gifting rather than receiving, how can you have a Christmas advert without a reference somewhere to mince pies or any other fayre defined as less healthy food like a bird with lattice streaky bacon or Christmas Pud drenched in Brandy Butter?
And yet a ban on our festive indulgences is what is coming down the tracks as the Labour Government looks to introduce draconian limitations on food advertising. From 1 October this year, paid-for online adverts for ‘less healthy’ High in Fat, Sugar and Salt (HFSS) foods will be banned by law. Regardless of the audience’s age, the ban applies to all UK-targeted ads, and also includes a ban on adverts before the 9pm watershed on TV and Internet protocol television (which delivers television live over the internet).
It’s all thanks to all those joyless know-it-alls who think the cause of obesity is us ignorant dullards being convinced to over-indulge by what we might see before the 9.00pm. Apparently after 9.00pm is of no importance; maybe advertising beyond that hour has little impact or maybe it’s only tender young minds that are seduced by Christmas food porn – that all seems implausible to me.
Whatever it is, obesity is not the result of kids watching food adverts (the main battle for many if not most parents is trying to get them to put down their screens and eat anything put in front of them).
The sad news is supermarket executives are already considering how to react to the new rules coming out of government, its agencies, NGOs, and the Advertising Standards Authority that draws up industry guidelines. Designed to limit the visibility of High in Fat, Sugar and Salt (HFSS) or ultra-processed foods – the typical catch-all bans have no nuance and will result in a change to our Christmas culture – which is, after all, meant to be a feast. The problem of many people being overweight will not be resolved by this change.
Ultimately the adherents of puritan lifestyles will seek to ban the adverts altogether. I’m sure many would ban Christmas if they thought they could get away with it.
Christmas TV adverts are not made in October for release in November – they are conceived early in the year and filmed over the spring and summer months, meaning there’s no time to react to the new ASA rules which are expected to appear in October. This timeline challenge has already led to , Archie Norman, the Chairman of M&S, to say Christmas adverts featuring foods like mince pies and Christmas Puds might not be made at all.
The new rules go further than just particular foods but also covers brands that are defined by such foods – meaning a brand like Mr Kipling that is entirely associated with making cakes – or Greggs, that is entirely associated with making pies, bakes and sausage rolls (selling a salad roll is not a counterweight) – will not be able to advertise at all before the watershed.
Why is all of this utter nonsense happening? Where did the disassociation with the real life experience of families come from? The answer is the West’s public health industry, infected with its own highly contagious lurgy resulting in ratcheting assaults on our individual choices. No intervention is ever enough, it always needs to be extended and ultimately takes people towards outright bans – driving our behaviours underground.
Having failed to reduce our waistlines using a sugar tax on soft drinks with 5g or more of sugar per 100ml – it is now being proposed reducing it to less than 4g/100ml. The huge cost to the industry counts for nothing. The failure of existing interventions simply generates a chronic doubling down where the infected NGO seeks a bigger hit from a more aggressive dose.
In delivering these admonitions the institutional capture of the Advertising Standards Authority looks all too apparent and cannot be discounted.
Is the public finally wakening up to the great harm that NGOs have on our personal freedoms and cultural values? Twenty years ago NGOs, many of which are charities, were more trusted than any other institutions, but this no longer holds true. The latest Edelman Trust Barometer shows business is trusted more than NGOs, with government and the media further behind both.
This year’s barometer shows business achieves a public trust level of at least 60 per cent in 15 of 28 countries measured – but for NGOs it’s only 11 of 28, while government is distrusted in 17 of the 28. In addition only business is seen globally as both competent and ethical.
Organisations like Jamie Oliver’s Bite Back, Obesity Action, and the Food Ethics Council spend a great deal of money lobbying government and its agencies. Sustain.org, which runs the Children’s Food Campaign, systematically triggers complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority to provoke interventions.
The result is ordinary people who simply enjoy occasional treats in burger restaurants find themselves paying higher prices due to policies shaped not by democratic consensus but by activist agendas. The recently proposed sugar tax on milkshakes exemplifies such overreach, a regressive policy that will disproportionately punish lower-income households while doing little to address obesity.
When unaccountable charities dictate behavioural change through institutional and regulatory capture we need to ask, who elected them to make these choices for us?
Be it Blair and Brown, or Cameron, through to Sunak, our political elite who first let these political puritans into our lives have never challenged the growing influence of taxpayer funded activist NGOs. In fact they have spent more and more on them – all in the name of saving us from ourselves. Changing the route march of NGOs mandating full control over our lives must be a job for the next government – but now is the time to make the case for stopping NGOs growing fat on the taxpayer’s pound.
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Photo of Christmas mince pies by Robert and tanya78 from Adobe Stock.
