Please join me in petitioning Tesco CEO Dave Lewis to pull its Food Love Story ad, Carl’s “all change” casserole, in which a father responds to his ten-year old daughter’s concern about eating animals by serving her a vegan sausage casserole.  Why does this ad have no business being on TV?
 
Number one, because the ad is in breach of accepted guidelines: The Advertising Standards Authority and the Committee of Advertising Practice specify that “marketing communications addressed to or targeted at children must not make a direct exhortation to children to buy an advertised product or persuade their parents or other adults to buy an advertised product for them.”
 
But more importantly:
 
 
Because any young girls who take the ad’s message to heart and become vegetarian will likely become deficient in vitamins A, B12,D,E, F, and K, as well as iron, omega 3 and zinc. They’re also more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression and psychiatric disorders.
 
Because vegetarianism in young girls is associated with anorexia and other eating disorders.
 
Because the vegan sausage in question contains palm oil (the production of which is destroying habitats and contributing to climate change), sunflower oil (unstable and toxic) and about 7 weird chemical compounds you won’t like the sound of, in addition to caramelised sugar syrup. None of us should be eating these things. A ten-year old definitely shouldn’t.
 
Because by promoting its vegan sausage,  Tesco just struck another blow against real food and in favour of the interests of a global processed food industry that already exerts criminal levels of influence over dietary guidelines around the world and whose high sugar products are implicated in the escalating incidence of diabetes, obesity and other metabolic diseases.
 
Because the ad is plays into the hands of all those who play fast and loose with the facts in an attempt to persuade us that eliminating meat and dairy from our diets will save the planet. For the record, US EPA stats put the emissions from meat at 3.9% of total emissions, which is less than emissions from agriculture. Global livestock emissions are 14.5%, but emissions from agriculture are not far behind at 10%. Rather than demonising meat, we should be looking at cutting emissions by reducing our consumption of wheat, corn and soy, ending the practice of feeding grain to livestock, and returning cropland to wetlands, forest and grazing.
 
 
If you don’t think corporations like Tesco should be allowed to manipulate our children and damage their health and wellbeing in the course of their quest for profits, please sign this petition. Let’s get that Tesco ad off our screens.