Women, chocolate and stupid (but probably effective) marketing

Special K! Now with chocolate! For the ladies! Because ladies love chocolate! But ladies still want to be slim! And Special K will help you stay slim while still indulging your love of chocolate!

Yes, that would be Special K, the breakfast cereal that has been marketed in a patronising manner for as long as I can remember as the breakfast cereal of choice for those who want to be slim and fabulous. That would be the same Special K that has more sugar than a slice of McVities chocolate cake - and that is before Kellogg's adds the chocolate.

Ugh. It's all part of a whole load of idiocy when it comes to marketing food to women and in creating myths that people end up believing. Special K is one of many foods marketed as a ticket to slenderness, even when it is not particularly healthy.

But this isn't about health, is it? It is about looking fabulous. And while there is nothing wrong with looking fabulous, Special K, now with chocolate, is a stupid way to try and attain the weight loss that is associated with all this fabulousness.

If you are an adult and you want to eat Special K with chocolate for breakfast, that's fine. That's your choice. But if you are deluding yourself that it's a healthy breakfast, it's not an informed choice. If you know it's not healthy but you eat it anyway, again, that's your choice but at least you have some awareness about it.

Sadly, when it comes to food, smart women make dumb decisions with alarming frequency. Cue the rise of diets that cut out entire food groups (usually carbohydrates, despite not all carbs being created equal), for example. Or any sort of quick-fix weight loss solution that does not involve exercise or permanent lifestyle change, for that matter. Lifestyle change is boring but it's not as marketable as sexy simple solutions. Or Special K with chocolate.

The marketing of Special K with chocolate as some sort of indulgence (while still keeping you all slim...) is just part of a mass unhealthy relationship with food that is all too common. This is the attitude that labels chocolate or cheese or a dessert as "naughty" - rather than it being something to enjoy as part of a normal diet.

It is rare for a man to say he is being naughty as he tucks into a sticky date pudding. The culture of naughtiness surrounding certain foods infantilises women, creates guilt where none needs to exist, and results in obsession. But companies like Special K need this mentality to continue if they are to sell food under the false guise that it is both healthy and an indulgence. Then again, when it comes to Special K, we shouldn't expect too much from the cereal that was sold with this lame advert: Australian Special K advert from 1991
   

Seven things that should be bloody obvious

1. High school students should not be playing with their phones during lessons. Teachers, on top of having to actually teach, are now being told to keep an eye out for students sexting in class. Call me old-fashioned if you will, but when you are a student in class, you are meant to be there to learn things. If I was a teacher, I'd make all students hand in their phones at the start of the lesson and I'd give them back at the end. And I'd fully expect some spoilt moron to accuse me of a human rights breach. Which is bloody insulting to people who have really had their human rights compromised.

2. The "Baby on Board" badges, as seen worn by women on the Tube in London, are to alert people that the woman is pregnant and would appreciate a seat. This concept was a little bit beyond the Duchess of Cambridge last week when she was given one and asked how they work. She then said she'd wear it at home. Because her house is overrun with people who are sitting on all her chairs?

3. For first world countries, water is readily available. The designer water/energy drinks industry is a money-making scam. The latest idiocy is "ionised water" achieved by fitting a device to your taps. There are parts of the world where there is little or no access to clean drinking water or the water that does come out of the taps is of poor quality. I lived in one of these countries and it was annoying to buy water from the shops all the time so that I wasn't risking kidney stones from the local supply. If you are not living in one of these countries and you are still buying all your drinking water from the supermarket, you are an idiot.

4. In the same food fad vein, if you are not gluten-intolerant, you can eat food with gluten in it. Eating a whole loaf of bread in one sitting is, obviously, stupid but if you're not suffering from coeliac disease, you don't need to cut all gluten out of your diet. Seriously, have you tried gluten-free bread? Truly horrible stuff. Why anyone would eat it by choice is a mystery. Cutting out gluten for no medical reason is not a pathway to instant slenderness. But it is a way for a lot of people to make a lot of money.

5. Frankie Boyle will probably make jokes that will offend some people if he returns to the BBC. If you don't like it, turn it off. If it doesn't rate, he won't get another series. People who throw their toys out of the pram every time something appears on TV that isn't quite to their taste are self-involved morons.

6. Boris Johnson is a man who is economical with the truth and doesn't cope well when interrogated, as per the interview with Eddie Mair on The Andrew Marr Show. Why this is a surprise to anyone is baffling. We have a man who has built his whole public image on being a lovable, bumbling buffoon. No shock then that he folded like a Gap T-shirt when the questions got a little spiky. So what if he was asked questions about stuff that happened in the past? It's not as if he, or his party leader, is above blaming the past for the present.

7. If a kid at a school, throws food, the problem is with the kid, not the item of food. Despite this glaringly obvious statement, a school in Essex had a review "of the texture and shape of the flapjacks" after a kid was hit in the face with a flapjack of the triangular variety. Or you could just tell the kids that throwing food is a dick thing to do. Easy!