The slippery slope...
The government tells shops to hide cigarettes behind the tills, but allows them to set up mazes of crisps, chocolate and sweets that we are forced to walk through to get to the till.
Failure to understand the purpose of advertising...
We also allow food companies to advertise junk food to our children – but as far as I know, everybody likes crisps; it's not like we need encouraging to eat more of them.
Choice is an illusion. Removing choice gives us freedom...
Responsibility is constantly deferred downwards to us as though the food system is a benign force simply there to offer us choice and let us get on with it. But those decisions are impossible ones to make in a deceitful system like this. Take for example the report by the Pesticide Residues Committee, which states that wholemeal loaves contain significantly more toxic residues in them than white loaves due to the milling process. Yet nutritionally, brown loaves are much better for you. Less toxic, or less nutritious: how are we supposed to make that choice? We shouldn't even have to.
Stupid idea for a new law...
If I had more time, I'd start a campaign called See Your Food, which would demand the legal right to be able to witness how our food was made, reared, killed, prepared and packaged.
More stupid ideas for bans...
We need bigger solutions: bring back rationing for fish immediately, end the majority of advertising for highly processed foods, introduce the compulsory teaching of cooking in schools, reverse the rise in meat consumption, legalise much higher welfare standards for animal husbandry, ban GM foods.
The author...
Matthew Herbert is a British electronic musician
Never heard of him. I hope I never hear from him again. Get back to your synthesizer, sir.
