How many times do we need to be told we are a nation of fat, lazy, self-destructive gits? asks Kathy Sheridan
A quick sample of stories from yesterday's papers: "Women are tops in the smoking league"; "Health warning issued on high heels"; "More than 100,000 could suffer from tummy bugs this Christmas"; "Increased cocaine use 'causing savage, violent acts'"; "We're overweight ... fat's a fact"; "East has highest intake of alcohol".
It's Christmas time, for pity's sake. Something head-bangingly po-faced is stealing that holiday feeling, wrecking the one time of year when we should as a right, be able to totter around in whorishly high heels, pleasantly, eh, woozy after a glass of wine and a banoffi too far, without having to read about unpleasant bodily reactions.
It seems like mere moments since the last national obesity/drink/drug alert. Girls skip breakfast. Young men like fried food. The less educated you are, the fatter you're likely to be.
Of course we should pay attention, but as all the best politicians know, timing is everything. Who is going to pay a blind bit of notice a couple of weeks before Christmas?
The same applies to the Green Party's call for a ban on junk food ads and on all advertising to children under 10, as well as restrictions on toy ads.
The party did its homework, according to its communications spokesman, Eamon Ryan. It surveyed 200 ads which appeared on Network 2's The Den and nearly half were for junk food such as biscuits, sweets and high-sugar breakfast cereals - which in the context of soaring obesity, is a persuasive argument to ban the lot and cut out "pester power".
But why now? The topic of marketing to children has been up for discussion since Eamon Ryan was a child.
Dermot Ahern professed himself "baffled" that the Greens' Bill was being published at this time, given that he had already instructed the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) to draw up a children's advertising code.
Indeed, the BCI is looking for input from the public and questionnaires for adults and children are available on its website (www.bci.ie), which must be completed before 5 p.m. on December 21st (another odd piece of timing).
Even so, it's worth more than a passing glance. This is about something more sophisticated than the odd binge in McDonald's. We know that brand loyalty can be influenced from the age of two. We live in an era when schoolyards are becoming "brand showrooms" and companies are increasingly getting straight through to the young by product placement in the movies and television.
A colleague has been particularly exercised by the National Lottery's use of children in its advertisements, in particular the "Hampers and Roses" campaign. For several years, it has been using a child in advertisements for a scratch card.
And while winning a hamper and box of Roses or whatever sounds cute and benign, the truth is that a scratch card is a gambling product, which after all is banned for purchase by under-18s (i.e. children).
Imagine the fuss if children were featured in ads for alcohol or betting on the horses? Surely the same principle applies, even after the infamous "watershed", when in real life, as we know, under-18s make up a substantial slice of the viewing public?
The current "Don't Worry Be Happy" campaign opens with a small child checking the numbers from the television and the wonder of a win dawning on her face before cutting to a fabulous sunset celebration of a family on safari to the soundtrack of Don't Worry Be Happy. It may well be the case in many households that the six-year-old is planted in front of the television to check the numbers but it's hardly something to be affirmed either by the National Lottery or by the relevant authorities. Who stands to gain from the inculcation of a gambling culture among the very young?
The response of the Advertising Standards Authority - a self-policing body funded by the advertising industry - to my colleague's complaint was that there was no case for investigation.
"The case was brought to the attention of the ASAI complaints committee and received their approval". Received their approval? That's going a bit far, surely? If it looks like child exploitation, and sounds like child exploitation, then it probably is child exploitation.
There are few important issues over which we have control anymore. In the US, children aged 4 to 12 spent about €44 billion in 2001, but influenced 60 per cent of their parents' brand purchases.
This is your chance to regain territory. Have your say.