The public health issue is morbid obesity. Is it morally OK for a giant corporation to target a community who flat out love their product? What next: marketing?
Fat-shaming is wrong, but calling it morbid obesity, makes you sound concerned, not insulting. Morbid obesity is like saying there's congestion and gridlock in the cardiac CBD, and if we're not careful, the council will need to install a quadruple bypass.
I'm old enough to remember when there was an event called the Benson & Hedges Fashion Awards. Hot, stick-like women were associated with hot thin sticks. I also remember when B&H sponsored cricket and when Winfield sponsored league. We've come a long way.
Tobacco is now a pariah, and their ill-gotten gains are no longer permitted to grab the coat-tails of other shallow physical pursuits. Indeed, cigarettes are not even allowed to advertise themselves, and must be sold incognito.
Just to look upon their packaging is like looking inside the Lost Ark, and risk your own face melting from gruesome images of worst-case scenarios.
Despite the War on Chicken, KFC, say what you like, is still food: a source of energy and nutrition. Dropping a pallet-load of KFC onto a famine region would be helpful: not the same as dropping cartons of cigarettes.
And health-wise, what's worse for your body: eating KFC, or playing rugby league? Why is it noble and admirable, for rugby players to smash their heads into each other, risking spinal injuries, broken legs and concussion - yet if your preferred technique of self-harm is diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiac disease, it's somehow worse? Aren't they both damaging? Aren't they both a drain to society?
Certainly there's a puritanical thing going on. We like to think we're championing health, but really, we want people to suffer. Inject aromatic sodium and fat into all four chambers of your heart, while couch-bound, surfing porn, and you're the baddie. But: lose fingers, toes and brain cells while climbing Everest - and you're a hero.
The First World problem is this: be careful what you wish for. Back in the day, we hunted and gathered - a certain amount of energy had to be spent to take any in. Nowadays, hunting and gathering consists of a verbal request, while sedentary, at a drive-thru. More often than not, even the transmission is automatic.
So how to protect us from ourselves? Should KFC be limited only to those buyers who can show a certain number of Fitbit steps on the same day, or who can demonstrate a thigh gap, or show visible front hip bones? Should KFC packaging be made to show health warnings and stigmatizing pictures?
Should you only be allowed to obtain KFC at the age of 18, and even then, with a prescription? (Of course, then Pharmac would have to deal with the question whether the 11 herbs and spices be replaced by a generic formulation.)
If KFC really wanted to target children, they'd shell out for an ad where the Teletubbies gorge themselves on the product. (At least it would explain how they got tubby.)
Honestly, you'd think fast food is our education system, the way some complain. We're arguing whether a girl or boy should get a different toy in their Happy Meal. Maybe boys shouldn't get a Happy Meal at all. They should get a Staunch Meal, which comes with a grey plastic man-cave, to encourage them to retreat, suppress emotions, and just say everything's OK. Girls meanwhile can get a Happy Meal where the actual meal itself is a plastic toy, and after posting an Instagram, they only pretend to eat it.
@RaybonKan
www.raybonkan.com
