The dark side of habit forming junkies: Frontiers for the Junk Minds

Abstract

Fast foods began as a wholesome family journey in the 1940s with drive-thru and basic four-
item menus but today it has transitioned into an addictive extremity. People have been under
the overconsumption loop on a daily basis and if this remains in continuity, it is promised to
imprint many lifestyle diseases and altered proteins throughout the generations. Therefore, as
a means of mitigation, it is vital for the consumers to realize the consequences of falling into
the marketing schemes of junk food industries and for the policymakers to implement tax free
healthy foods instead of junks. Using their same marketing manuscript against the food
companies to further encourage healthy food habits through social media platforms and other
virtual outlets is an effective way to grasp people’s worries in one go. Collaborating with
organizations such as Australian Department of Health and Aged Care, UNICEF, Department
of Agriculture and territory governments can help the healthy food campaign’s
implementations at the right place efficiently and can slowly enforce the recommended food
standards, in line with their food legislations.

Key words: Advocacy, Junk foods, Unhealthy, Obesity, Diet, Policymakers, Food industries

Background

The carbohydrate-dense, nutrient-poor foods have been taking over the food industries as
they are more convenient, cheap and accessible due to which many industrialized nations are
facing the Junk Syndrome epidemic (Jia, 2022). The diseases that follow up with junk foods
such as diabetes, arthrosclerosis and hypertension are slowly creeping into as a part of
everyone’s lifestyle as a byproduct. Young people are often the targeted customer segments
of such subliminal advert tactics by the food industries and for that reason Australian
teenagers aged from 14-18 years get more than 40% of their daily energy from processed
discretionary foods, which is highly of a concern to the public health organizations (ABS,
2013). The situation at present moment seems to be even more appalling as recent findings by
the Cmmonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization’s Healthy Diet Score

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survey confirms that nearly 80% of Australians are consuming junk food on daily basis,
consuming up to twice as much as what is recommended in the Australian Dietary Guidelines
(Hendrie, 2021).

(Morgan, 2021)

One of the key factors that is contributing to the obesity epidemic is the toxic fat activism that
promotes obesity and stands by the fact that bodies come in all shapes and sizes, all the way
up to 600 pounds. There are extremists normalizing unhealthy eating habits and revolting
against the public health campaigns believing that war on obesity is socially acceptable state-
sanctioned eugenics (Taylor, 2007). These politics revolving around junk food consumption
has indoctrinated the consumers into ‘Live to Eat’ instead of ‘Eat to live’. The food
companies have outsourced the livelihoods of everyone to their companies’ food profit.

That being the case, the Public Health Association of Australia must delve into this matter to
advocate the consumers about their detrimental dietary choices and simultaneously hold
policymaking discussions with the relevant stakeholders such as PHAA, Australian
Department of Health, local government and representatives from the consumers to transpire
solutions that considers the process, result and relationship at the same time. With
collaborative efforts from all corners will curtail the deleterious lifestyle and instil affordable
and healthy dietary options.

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Revitalizing the fault in our foods

Nauru, a tiny island country in Micronesia, northeast of Australia, was once a healthy island
nation has now been known as the most obese country in the world. Its population has the
highest prevalence of diabetes ever discovered, where 94.5% of the total population are
classified as critically overweight and that number is growing (Hallett, 2015). With people no
longer being able to grow their own foods, today Nauru is almost 100% reliant on imports
and western lifestyle for them seemed like a glamorous update. Brainwashed with the ideals
of western civilization, citizens of Nauru have been living a sedentary lifestyle. The whole
story demonstrates the massive roles food and lifestyle plays in our life.

Disseminating stories about how Nauru is currently suffering from obesity can serve as the
first step in creating sense of urgency to other nearby citizens. It allows the viewers, listeners
and witnesses to become aware of the deleterious consequences of indulging in convenient
eating habits.

The obesity epidemic has no single or simple approach as it is a complex problem that
required multifaceted approach from all the stakeholders such as policymakers, state, local
organizations, community leaders, healthcare and food experts (CDC, 2022). The consumers
should also be aware of the marketing schemes and sneaky tactics by the food industries on
predictable consumers. The people deserve more public consciousness when it comes the evil
science behind fast food productions. Everyone deserves the right to know about the
Pavlovian trap food industries has set behind addictive hormone-triggering ingredients. The
food industries love personal responsibility arguments as their favourite rebuttal point when
concerning health activists raise these issues. To protect their commercial interests, food and
beverage industries utilize many strategies such as actively lobbying government, excessive
franchising, vilifying scientific evidences, propagandizing the public through influential acts,
funding research studies designated to support their position and asserting that obesity is
simply a matter of personal responsibility (Vandenbrin, 2020). That means the food industries
uses its immense resources, its money and political authority to essentially subvert our ability
to make informed dietary choices while at the same time denying that they have any role to
play in this obesity epidemic.

Therefore, the industries mechanism of shifting blames and drawing attention away from the
industry must be realized by the public itself.

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Now the problem does not revolve only around the misconception and propagandized
information created by the food industries as income and wages earned are equally important
when it comes to prioritizing our food habits. The relevant officers from National Health and
Medical Research Council, federal government, United Nations Development Programme,
and Public Health Association of Australia must assemble an expert group with enough
power to lead the change effort in curtailing the obesity epidemic. For the team to be
effective, the team should consist of sponsor of high-ranking executive who is in charge of
the change initiative with the responsibility of providing executive-level assistance as well as
supply of resources required for the promotional act of healthy eating habits. The members of
the senior guiding team will be chosen with the responsibilities of influencing the area to
make decision based on resources and information gathered from particular area to support
the healthy eating campaign. The change team and field guiding team will consist of those
members that will be responsible for advocating the people based on audience segmentations
as information passed to them should be understandable and comprehensive at the same time.
Influencers and trendy celebrities must also be on board with the executing teams in order to
grab the attention of people at large-scale manner in many forms of modalities such as
concerts, media platforms, shows and so on.

The team should work with the vision of making nutritional foods easily accessible to the
consumers to reset their dietary choices.

The reason for why this sort of lifestyle must be abandoned is because it harms the
environment due to its overproduction through industrial activities as well as the livelihoods
of younger generation. We owe children a food environment that isn’t at least actively hostile
to their health. These kids are left in oblivion, actively having to fend themselves through
dietary choices and exploitation by the food industries. Children’s cartoon characters like
“SpongeBob” and “Scooby Doo” are frequently used on packaging as partnering characters
to stimulate the kids to eat unhealthy foods. This marketing strategy has been utilized since
the dawn of times and if it continues, hereditary disorders will be the norm for the upcoming
generation.

For the campaign to be held successful, it will require a collaborative efforts from people of
all segments such as doctors, teachers, students, policymakers, NGOs and the government.
As for the campaign plan, the advocacy should be held in different states segmenting
teachers, children and policymakers separately. The campaign strategy should focus on three

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vital things: process, relationship and result. It should target the food industries and hold them
accountable for their exploitative businesses. This would require implementations from the
politicians and the policymakers and strict compliance in accordance to the revised food
security legislation. The main goal of the campaign is to trigger the consumers and make
them re-evaluate their lifestyles immediately. Taking help from the food activist in bringing
the attention of the world to this concerning matter will surely result in many health and
welfare organizations to act upon this contemporary issues.

The advocacy programs for children should be executed in a basic way so that the children
can understand and grasp the key points from the campaign. For the kids’ advocacy programs
to be effective, the facilitation must solely focus on “edutainment” meaning learning with fun
activities. In that way, children will be able to remember and imprint the disseminated
information by participating in activities. As for another solution, since children are easy
target when it comes to cartoon characters, slapping cartoon characters in vegetable and fruits
packaging will allow the children to be dedicated to healthy fruits and veggies. Sooner or
later, the children will be conditioned into healthy eating habits by the help of their favourite
characters.

As for the teachers and parents’ advocacy programs, the campaign must strategize and design
the agenda to demolish the misconstrued facts by the food industries. Fearmongering must be
introduced in order to create a sense of urgency to the parents so that they will know that
doing nothing is not the best option for their kids. The dissemination of empirical findings
will be mainly handled by the members of medical community as they would be the best
advocates with plenty of evidence based information and references crosschecked. Having an
association meetings and continuously sharing relevant policy information to the doctors,
teacher and parents’ will help establish rapport and credibility with trust. Inculcating healthy
food habits in academic curriculum can also have beneficial results by imprinting thriving
dietary choices from a young age as children’s brain are not fully developed, it is only a
matter of time for them to grasp onto something addictive such as sugars.

Initiating an online campaign where students speak about harmful impacts of junk foods, in
addition of hashtags, can quickly circulate the messages conveyed throughout the districts.
With the help of promotion team, the videos and posts regarding the campaign can be made
viral for the campaigned to be directly accessible to everyone viewing from media outlets.

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In Mexico, the government forces all the food companies to add black labels to their products
indicating those that have excessive amounts of calories, sugars, saturated fats and sodium,
Products that are having at least one black label are prohibited from adding cartoon characters
that are appealing to the kids (Tonelson, 2021). Such mandatory label law can help
Australians make healthier food choices and slash sky-high obesity rates in the country.
Another way to strategize the campaign would be to lift heavy taxes on healthy foods and
impose taxes on junk food. This will gradually have the consumers to shift their food
preferences as healthy foods would now be easily available at affordable prices.

The obstacles that are likely to be faced in during the execution of the campaign would be
rich corporations and the greed to corrupt the institutions that were established to protect us
from the public health problems. As these food corporations fund food content creators, our
society can’t get enough of food contents and for proof, look no further than the fact that
watching people eat unhealthy amount of food from the screen has become the massive
online phenomenon. “Mukbang trend” might be a feast for the eyes without calories, it
certainly has its consequences. Virtual cues of insanely delicious food lights up the brain’s
reward center, inducing craving and causing people with the strongest mental response to
overeat later on (Passamonti, 2009). Typically hungry people, restrictive dieters, individuals
with higher BMIs, binger eaters and those with other forms of eating disorders are most
susceptible. These forms of marketing strategy has dragged people into unhealthy eating
habits in the most unnoticeable way possible.

Therefore in order to tackle the brain altering stimuli produced by the food industries, the
campaign must work on minimizing exaggerating food contents like mukbangs and other
unhealthy food habit practices. Several regulations and tax must be bombarded for predatory
marketing scheme targeted mainly to the children.

As for those that participates in the campaign, the campaign would reward the participants
with media presence, cash prices for best online contents, chances to meet with higher
officials and ministers The long term win would result in tax free healthy foods, making it
available even for people with low income earnings, flourishing health and lifestyle,
increased livelihood and decreased obesity rates and other diseases associated with unhealthy
eating habits.

For such healthy implementations to continue and be practiced throughout everyone’s life,
the campaign must be held every year in order to remind the people about the consequences

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of their actions. However, small projects and subprograms should be executed every year
with different themes in order to efficiently drive the campaign into stronger recognition of
the issues surrounding social equity and sustainability in health.

In order to maintain a stronger bond and influential relationships, participation in government

and non-government initiated forums and workshops should be planned with cohorts,
relevant policymakers, teachers, food experts, doctors, students and commoners to get a full
objective perception from all the angles. This will allow understanding and issue discussion
in a motivated continuity as everyone would be involved in the planning and decision making
process to obtain the common goal.

Conclusion

Influencing a health policy regarding healthy eating habits can be very difficult as it needs to
be approached in a multifaceted manner. It required heavy interactions, resources and power
as for one issues, several factors and groups would be responsible. However, the campaign
represents the synthesis of different scenarios in which everyone faces a common problem.
The solution lies in collaborative efforts from all the segments and both top-down and
bottom-up approach. One-sided endeavour will not promise the success of this campaign
therefore, in order to make peace with the food, policies must be revised by considering the
sustainability of livelihood and these polices must be implemented and strictly adhered by
everyone. The campaign is not a linear process but rather a dynamic and complex one, which
requires coordinated approach if results are expected sooner.

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References

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Retrieved from Australian Bureau of Statistics:
http://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/microdata-tablebuilder/available-microdata-
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CDC. (2022, April 5). Overweight & Obesity. Retrieved from Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention: http://www,cdc.gov/obesity/strategies/index.html

Hallett, V. (2015, September 2015). The People Of Nauru Want To Get Healthy - So Why
Can't They Succeed? Retrieved from NPR:
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Hendrie, G. A. (2021). Strategies to Reduce Consumption of Unhealthy Foods and

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Morgan, R. (2021, May 24). McDonald's, KFC, Hungry Jack's & Domino's Pizza are
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are-australias-favorite-restaurants

Passamonti, L. (2009, January 7). Personality Predicts the Brain's Response to Viewing
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Tonelson, D. (2021, April 12). Mexico's 'Junk Food' Warning Labels Are Junk. Retrieved
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