Ham ban damns Aussie poor as high-paid anti-junk food warriors detach from reality | David Penberthy

Once again our privileged ruling class has set its self-righteous sights on the people they think too stupid to look after themselves, writes David Penberthy. Have your say.

You had better think twice next time you pop one of those ham stackers into your kid’s lunch box. The war on ham is officially under way.

The first government in Australian has joined the battle and others are being urged to follow suit to stamp out the ham scourge.

Kids are dying, people. Apparently it’s because of the ham.

The ham is part of a broader crackdown on the advertising and promotion of processed foods.

(The rise of processed foods overlapping as it does with the greatest advances in life expectancy the world has ever seen.)

How does advertising work?

Does the subliminal link between a child seeing a passing bus with a Fanta advertisement on it immediately manifest itself in a desire on the child’s part to drink a Fanta?

TELL US WHY IN THE COMMENTS

Does the image of the Fanta on the passing bus force the parent to instantly raise the white flag and acquiesce to their child’s demand for Fanta? Is that what we are dealing with?

Let’s leave the Fanta aside. Fanta is clearly rubbish.

It’s the ham that is of genuine concern.

The state of South Australia has registered a long list of noble firsts – female suffrage, native title legislation, decriminalisation of homosexuality. Now it’s registered a really stupid one.

An Adelaide bus before the state realised the perils of public transport ads. Picture: Matt Loxton

It is now illegal to advertise ham in SA on buses, trams, or any government-owned asset.

The food fascists in the health lobby have finally got their way, with the SA Labor government kowtowing to their demand that all processed meats be treated as group one carcinogens.

They have been designated as such by those funsters at the World Health Organisation, who seriously believe ham, salami, mortadella, capocollo (try it – it’s sensational), and all those other porky, salty, fatty, tasty creations should be listed alongside asbestos, benzene and diesel exhaust, as the worst of the worst when it comes to causing cancer.

Surely there is a question of proportionality to be considered.

We all know thanks to the medical research and the advertisements that every cigarette is doing you damage.

Is this assertion true in relation to every slice of ham?

Is it possible that if you feed your child a ham stacker every couple of days – five very thin slices of ham weighing less than 30g – they can somehow battle through this terrible nutritional abuse and still make it to a ripe old age?

Especially if the ham stacker is consumed on the same day they eat two apples, a banana, some yoghurt, a bowl of cornflakes, two lamb chops, some carrots and broccoli?

Also, is the ham advertising ban based on the same philosophy which underpins the ban on cigarette advertising, in that there is now evidence that, like cigarettes, ham is really addictive?

If only he hadn’t seen that bus … Picture: iStock

You’ve all heard those pitiable stories.

“I was only 11 when I had my first slice of ham behind the PE shed on the school oval. By the age of 13 I was doing a pack of ham a day. Because ham’s a gateway drug, by the time I was 18 I was eating pretty much any cured meat I could get my hands on.

Pepperoni, rillettes, guanciale, nduja, fritz. I was a wreck. I eventually wound up in Barcelona living with other addicts behind La Boqueria market in a dosshouse filled with gnawed jamon bones. The ham took control of me, turned me into someone else.”

This proposal deserves nothing but ridicule.

I would make the same criticisms of the fact the advertising bans also covers potato chips and snack foods such as Toobs or Burger Rings, which are totally harmless unless they’re part of a crap-only diet, and eaten in the small quantities they come in as part of a lunch box snack for recess time.

All this feels like a massive guilt trip on parents – mums especially – who’ve got better things to do with their time than be made to feel that a slightly salty and sugary diet is tantamount to child neglect.

The people advocating these changes are spectacularly detached from the realities of parenting in any practical sense.

It’s hilarious to read their suggested food alternatives, none of which can have been road-tested on a focus group of normal seven-year-olds.

Back in 2022 the Cancer Council decreed that muffins, muesli bars, ham sandwiches and savoury biscuits should all be banned from school lunches, saying that unflavoured popcorn and roasted chickpeas would make excellent alternatives.

They’d make excellent alternatives if you want your child to die of starvation.

If I tried to give any of my children a roasted chickpea they would have run away from home. I wouldn’t give a roasted chickpea to any of my friends so why would I give one to the people I love the most, my own flesh and blood?

It should be pointed out that all this officious health paranoia is backed across the board by the major health groups, such as the AMA, who also believe a sugar tax should be part of the arsenal against bad dietary habits.

There’s a real casualness to the fact well-paid medicos think the best way to achieve a positive policy outcome is to make the poorest members of the community pay more for things. Only for their own good, I suppose.

You have to wonder what our agricultural shows are going to look like in 50 years time.

All the kids giddy with excitement about hitting the showbag pavilion, now stripped of Chokitos, Bertie Beetles and Crunchies, where they can instead buy the Bumper Pulses Showbag featuring roasted chickpeas, lentils of every hue and packets of unsalted trail mix. Then they can take their bag and munch away while watching the entertainment at the main arena, which is now sponsored by nobody.

Originally published as Ham ban damns Aussie poor as high-paid anti-junk food warriors detach from reality | David Penberthy