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Your face, my thane, is a book

The other day, I had a hankering for some fast food. Nothing too gross, mind you; nothing that would make me feel ashamed enough to enrol in a religious order, or consider a 24 hour fast to punish myself or anything. Just something greasy and dripping with sauce, with melted cheese oozing from beneath a bun not designed to hold so much meat, and a size for which I couldn’t possibly open my mouth wide enough. I don’t often succumb to thoughts like this, but sometimes I hanker to visit the darker side of my nature; the side on which it is perfectly acceptable to drink full-strength Pepsi unadulterated with dangerous artificial sweeteners; the side where I can wipe my pinguid fingers on my tee shirt with no repercussions from startled bystanders; the side where the ensuing night does not turn to heartburn and dreams of purgatorially fiery punishments.

Needless to say, I do not make these decisions lightly -but, okay, sometimes I scatter my concerns to the wind (not my wind, you understand) and opt for decadence; sometimes I feel I owe myself an indulgence or two, eh? I think the resultant nausea helps to tilt me towards my better, more adult side -the one that has to endure the too-full feeling and deal with the self-reproach, the one that senses the need to atone for worthlessness: run-of-the-mill penance stuff.

Anyway, you can’t regret something until you’ve done it, and received in exchange, a dietary hangover. As I suffered through my own, the thought that this might qualify as a universal therapeutic occurred to me. Why not give gluttony a mission? Agency.

We’re all influenced by what we see and hear; it’s what fashions are all about; it’s why there are ads on the programs we watch. Still, now that I’m retired and have more time to think about things, it may not be as simple as that.

Of course when I’m really hungry, seeing someone on TV digging into a pizza dripping with cheese and sprinkled with large specially coloured hunks of pepperoni or globs of fat gleaming from strips of perfectly done bacon, makes me want to reach for the phone and have one delivered. But, ordinarily, I’m repulsed by the greasy fingers eagerly fighting for the largest piece, or the rapacious smiles on the actors who are paid to appear insatiable. Why the difference?

It’s an interesting paradox: advertisements may succeed in times of need, but fail -or even discourage their viewers- at other times. Things tied to powerful urges like hunger strike me as obvious candidates for on-off switches, but how consistent, how predictable, are the messages in affecting the desired result? If we could solve that, perhaps food ads could be used to discourage unhealthy eating rather than encouraging it. But I don’t think simply throwing learned studies about proper nutrition at hungry people would be very effective; preaching healthy anything seems pretty hit-or-miss. Acquiring better eating habits can be as hard as sticking to a restrictive diet.

Anyway, why would a hungry person who would ordinarily be tempted by an attractive fast-food hamburger on an ad, decide to opt for a salad instead? I mean if you can almost taste the cheese and feel the bacon crunch as you watch the cleverly-timed commercial on afternoon TV programs, how can you ever hope to convert a carnivore (okay, we’re actually omnivores) into a plantivore -or at least into some kind of more healthy vore?

Interestingly, according to many neuroimaging studies, watching someone being hit by a hammer or pricked with a pin will activate the neural networks in our brains that are associated with pain so we will actually feel the emotions and behaviour consistent with feeling the pain. That doesn’t bode well for undoing the cravings for junk food unleashed by descriptive advertisements on dinnertime TV however. Not unless…

Maybe the trick would be to exaggerate the feelings engendered by unhealthy foods; maybe showing someone gorging on a greasy pizza, or stuffing handfuls of ketchup-soaked French fries into their mouth might make us feel how unpleasant it would be like to eat like that. Maybe, especially if we were no longer hungry, we’d feel sick even thinking about it.

You’d certainly have to pick your targets carefully, though. Too obvious a portrayal might give away your intentions and sabotage the exercise; you’d also have to be careful of who was shown as an unhealthy eater, staying well clear of any obesity stereotypes, gender, social, or ethnic representations for fear of backlash…

Hold on, though! We’re trying to get everybody to react, right? Suppose there were a pushback? If the varieties of ad examples included adequate representatives from all groups, it would be inclusive, and the only reason for objection would be dietary guilt. Anyway, I think the timing of the ads as well as the food examples portrayed would be what made them effective. I mean, no matter who we are, I suspect we all overindulge at times -it’s just a question of allowing us to learn something from it. 

The problem, of course, would be how the ads might affect those groups who were forced into unhealthy consumption by poverty or lack of choice because of where they live. In separate ads shown at different times, and different communities, it would make sense to suggest affordable beneficial alternatives to the unhealthy choices no matter the socioeconomic group.

Maybe we could direct that those unhealthy infomercials appear only after suppertime when the appetites of the populace have been already satisfied -at 7, or 8 PM, say- and schedule the healthy stuff before lunch or late in the afternoon while we’re still dreaming of satiety… Of course, I can’t imagine the idea would be acceptable to the fast food advertisers, but it might encourage them to modify their ingredients -or, failing that, maybe government incentives might change their minds.

A bit too much government interference? Too discrediting to work, too parental, too naïve…? I dunno -it’s just a thought, eh?

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