Hope's Edge_ The Next Diet for a Small Planet - Frances Moore Lappe [80]
Another reason processed foods have taken over is that they require less imagination. (There are no instructions on a raw potato, says Michael Jacobson, but there are on a box of instant potatoes.) While I believe people are inherently creative, so much in our culture stifles creativity. Uniform images of what is beautiful, acceptable, and of high status bombard us. And the easiest way to be sure that we don’t deviate from those images is to buy what is prepackaged and prepared. In cooking and eating whole foods, however, we break loose from these standardized images. By taking charge of our food choices, we gain confidence in our judgment and creativity. Feeling less like simpleminded followers of instructions in one area of our lives can help us feel capable of assuming responsibility in unrelated areas.
A Right or a Privilege?
The man I met at the party who claims that Americans are getting what they ask for also was concerned about any attempt to interfere with corporations’ “right” to advertise what they want, to whomever they want. “We can’t violate their First Amendment rights,” he said.
He got me thinking. When they advertise, are General Foods and Coca-Cola exercising their First Amendment rights? A lot of Americans would agree that they are. But, I wondered, should we include in the definition of “free speech” the capacity to dominate national advertising? Isn’t there something amiss in this definition of rights?
Perhaps the concept of “rights” should be limited to those powers or possibilities which are open to anyone. For example, our right to say what we think, to associate with whom we please, and to practice whatever religion we choose. These are rights. But actions such as advertising on TV, open only to those with vast wealth, should be called something else—perhaps “privileges.” For how many of us could spend $340 million a year for advertising, as General Foods does? The $20 million spent just to promote one new sugared cereal amounts to more than 40 times the entire budget of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which has provided vital information for this book.
Ideally, I suppose, there would be no such privileges in a society. If it were impossible for everyone wanting to participate in an action to do so, some would be selected on the basis of merit or some other fair system open equally to everyone. But that is pretty dreamy. So what can we do in the present, when there are privileges because some are incomparably more wealthy than others?
We can work to limit the privileges of wealth and to make those with wealth and power accountable to us all.
In campaigns for public office, for example, we have already limited the privileges of wealth by limiting the size of any one contribution. Why not regard access to TV advertising the same way? If we placed a low ceiling on the amount of money that any one company could spend on TV advertising, this would diminish the privileges now held by a handful of giant corporations. As we have seen, it’s because the biggest corporations can spend such enormous sums on advertising that they can squeeze out the smaller producers—and then charge us more.
Once we realize that advertising is a privilege, not a right, isn’t it reasonable to grant that privilege only on certain conditions? An obvious condition would be that the advertising—with its proven power to influence—not be used to promote products that threaten our well-being. Society has already banned cigarette advertising on TV. There is virtually unanimous opinion in the health community that high-sugar, low-nutrition foods—those which monopolize TV advertising—threaten our health. So why not ban advertising of candy, sugared cereals, soft drinks, and other sweets?
As long as