During this last legislative session, the Right to Eat Enchiladas Act, did not make it into law. As we are continuing our tumble down a slippery slope into a society where personal responsibility no longer exists, it’s a shame it did not.
How about we take a trip down memory lane? Tell me if this rings a bell from your childhood. You’re about to get in trouble for doing something you knew you shouldn’t do, and you tell the authority figure that catches you that the reason that you [fill in the blank] was because Johnny did it. Now on the count of three, everyone say the response that inevitably came next. 1… 2… 3…
“If Johnny jumped off a bridge, would you?”
We all know the answer to be a resounding, “NO.” Yet, in today’s world, “Johnny” has been replaced by “Advertising and Marketing.” Need proof, consider this from Adage:
Charging that the food industry’s goal is to get children to eat unhealthy foods, Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa also mocked the industry’s attempt at self-regulating its advertising messages aimed at children.
Standing in a Capitol Hill hearing room behind a long table crammed with food and toy products featuring characters such as Shrek, Spider-Man and even Barbie clad in a McDonald’s uniform, Mr. Harkin held up a book titled The Oreo Counting Book: 10 to 1 Is so Much Fun and called the marketing efforts by the food industry “obscene.”
“We got rid of Joe Camel. We’ve got to get rid of Shrek,” he said, holding large pictures of both.
Apparently, Senator Harkin believes the food industry to be the equivalent of the witch in the Grimm Brother’s Hansel and Gretel fairy tale. An industry made up of wicked witches whose only desire is to fatten America’s children for their own gain.
However, if the good Senator were to read the fairy tale closely, he would realize that the truly evil character was not the witch, who was just doing what witches do, it was the woodcutter’s wife who put the children in harms way.
Parents and caretakers of children are responsible for their children and the food they eat, not the food purveyors. The latter do what vendors do, they sell. If the buyers were demanding healthy foods, the sellers would supply healthy foods. This is a fundamental principle of the economy that fuels our democracy.