Sexing Up the Sprouts: The Government’s Latest Fantasy Ad Campaign Because nothing says “seduction” like a parsnip in slow motion and a whispery voiceover about fibre.
Forget banning junk food; ministers now think a flirtatious courgette can cure obesity. Unless broccoli starts pole dancing or comes battered with chips, Britain isn’t biting.
Last week, while chewing on a triple cheeseburger that had absolutely no intention of making it to my large intestine without a defibrillator, I saw a headline that made me choke on a gherkin. Apparently, the government is planning to tax junk food adverts in order to fund a campaign that makes fruit and vegetables sexy. Yes, sexy. Like lacy carrot lingerie and avocado stripteases. This, they say will break the “junk food cycle”.
Let’s all just take a moment and imagine a steamy ad break on ITV where a courgette emerges from the sea in a sequinned bikini while Barry White hums in the background. I’m all for eating your greens, but unless someone’s discovered that broccoli contains Viagra, I don’t see how this is going to rival a sizzling Nando’s billboard or the hypnotic allure of melted cheese slowly oozing off a slice of Domino’s.
Apparently, this “advertising tax” is the brainchild of people who’ve clearly never stood in a Tesco queue at 6pm. When your blood sugar is lower than a Love Island contestant’s IQ, no amount of sexy celery will stop you grabbing the meal deal with the Mars bar.
Now, the government says this will be like the smoking ban, only with kale. But that’s absurd. Smoking adverts were banned and then backed by decades of death statistics, gravely-voiced campaigns and photos of lungs that looked like burnt lasagne. Sugar, salt and saturated fats? They’re not hiding in dark alleys offering you a light… they’re in your toaster, your tea; and roughly 98% of everything served at a British birthday party.
This country ignores public health adverts like we ignore fire drill announcements in a cinema, politely, but with a firm commitment to carry on eating popcorn. Take the “Change4Life” sugar campaign, for instance. You might recall the scene of people doing yoga while a disembodied voice encouraged us to ditch fruit shoots for something called flavoured water. Nobody listened. Instead, we marched straight into corner shops, grabbed six-packs of Lucozade, and blamed the resulting hyperactivity on screen time; not glucose grenades in a bottle.
Then there was that anti-obesity campaign, the one that warned us our organs were drowning in fat. Dramatic? Absolutely. Effective? Not in the slightest. Mostly because it aired immediately before The Great British Bake Off, where Mary Berry was lovingly basting a lard-filled pie with butter and calling it “a cheeky treat”.
Let’s not forget the smoking ads. You know the ones; rotting lungs, hospital beds, gravelly voiceovers that made every living room feel like a terminal ward. They were genuinely terrifying. But smokers watched them with the same expression I reserve for when the washing machine beeps… vaguely irritated, but nowhere near motivated enough to get off the sofa and do anything about it.
Yet now we’re told fruit is going to get a glow-up. We’ll just slap some glitter on a tomato and suddenly Britain will shun Greggs for grapes? Pull the other courgette. I’ve eaten celery. There’s a reason it’s only used as a garnish or something to stir a Bloody Mary. It tastes like disappointment and dental floss.
Even worse, some advertising bod suggested the UK’s finest creatives would be climbing over themselves to work on a “fruit and veg account”. Really? I’ve met ad execs. They didn’t get into the industry to rebrand radishes. They want to flog aftershave, burgers and overpriced trainers that light up when you run.
So before anyone says “we have to do something” about obesity, I agree. But this isn’t something. This is the same as giving Speedos to someone in a lifeboat and saying “good luck”. If the government really wanted to tackle obesity, they’d start with actual policy. Not promotional kale calendars or erotic beetroot montages.
Let’s not forget, this is also the same government that won’t ban two-for-one pizza deals, won’t tax sugary drinks properly and won’t subsidise healthy food. But it will invest in seductive sweetcorn commercials.
So no, I won’t be seduced by a slow-motion mango. I won’t fall for a banana draped over a chaise lounge. I won’t get hot under the collar because a courgette winked at me from a billboard.
If the government really wants to change Britain’s eating habits, here’s a wild idea: make healthy food cheaper, not sexier.
Because until broccoli comes with free chips and a Coke, the junk food cycle is going nowhere.
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Chris Geiger, Author of The Cancer Survivors Club.
Daily Dose of Disbelief!
Bsky: @chrisgeiger.com
Bsky: @thecancersurvivorsclub.com
Bsky: @dailydoseofdisbelief.com
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