> Self-regulation in food and beverage marketing is being exploited and
>> is failing to curb childhood obesity, research by a global obesity
> It's easy to blame the media (and now the Internet) for social
> problems, but I don't buy it.
> I find that hard to believe. I question the influence of solely
> advertising on obesity because: 1) all sorts of junk food has been
> aggressively advertised on TV and print for 50 years yet this obesity
> problem is recent and 2) they took cigarette ads off TV years ago but
> smoking remained popular for a long time afterwards 3) they never
> advertised hard liquor on TV but it is a growing youth problem and 4)
> they don't advertise illegal drugs at all on TV but it's a problem.
I suspect there are other factors involved, specifically the wholesale replacement of sugar with high fructose corn syrup as a sweetener. There are a couple of studies that implicate corn syrup as being more addictive and more harmful than cane or beet sugar. I know personally that I can drink a glass of sugar-sweetened lemonade and not want another. OTOH, a glass of corn syrup lemonade will just cause me to crave more.
Then there's the whole transfat thing too ...