In the United Kingdom this week the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre banned the reappearance of several 1960s British TV food ads featuring the slogan "Go to Work on an Egg." The government-backed agency justified the censorship by claiming that the old egg commercials failed to comply with modern broadcast advertising codes because they don’t "promote a varied and balanced diet." Though the British egg embargo may seem like a distant problem to Stateside consumers — given our increasingly restriction-happy atmosphere — an American version of this iron curtain may be just around the corner.
In today’s Akron Beacon Journal, columnist Marie Cocco proposed greater regulations for U.S. food companies — claiming that an appropriate future role of this "nationally suspect" industry will be "acknowledging its role in the health threat [and] confronting the possibility of lawsuits and regulatory crackdowns." And last week in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, notorious nutrition tyrant and Center for Science in the Public Interest leader Michael Jacobson outlined the government’s part in any proposed marketing censure:
Though the food police currently have their sights set on Shrek and eggs Benedict, writer Fay Weldon understands that these Big Brother bans grease a slippery slop:
We seem to have been tainted by all the health and safety laws. If they are going to ban egg adverts then I think they should ban all car adverts, because cars really are dangerous, and bad for the environment.
