There is no escaping these feel-good Budget adverts: they are everywhere with happy families, children who don’t whine and who never get grubby and with parents who always have their hair in their place.
They would warm my heart and make me want to skip with joy, if only I did not feel slightly miffed. Unlike the women in the adverts, I don’t seem to have time to put on carefully crafted layers of foundation and eye-shadow in the morning before I drop off my daughter to school; unlike the women in the ads, I cannot function about the house with art work masterpieces on my nails; unlike the women in the ads, I’m always sprinting to get to work on time and at 9am, I do not have a face of serenity which says: “Ah, lovely, I’m even ahead of schedule, isn’t the world a perfect place?”
But maybe it’s me, and I need to improve my perceptions. However, we’re in December, so more than ever, we cannot be negative. In fact, I am hoping that the next Budget advert will feature a Maltese extended family, sitting down in the shape of a human Christmas tree with candles in their hand singing: “I’d like to teach the world to sing/In perfect harmony/I’d like to hold it in my arms/And keep it company.” Does singing count as bżulija (hard work)?
This song actually brings me to the point I want to make today. It’s an age-old Coca Cola advert and I want to talk about Coca Cola because it stars in one of these Budget adverts, the one where a shopkeeper, owner of a mini-market tells us how happy he is about a new Budget measure. The shopkeeper is sitting round a table with his family for lunch, Barilla-style.
The only thing is, on the dinner table, there are no glasses full of fresh-iced water. Instead, the family downs its lunch (lasagne swimming in bechamel sauce, with no sign of fresh vegetables), with brown-coloured soft drinks.
If governments go through all the trouble of running adverts for each and every budget, could we at least try and kill two birds with one stone?
Can our happy families be seen drinking water with hearty nutritious meals, so that maybe, at some subconscious level, we would also be targeting the problem of obesity on this island?
Can our happy families be seen drinking water with hearty nutritious meals, so that maybe, at some subconscious level, we would also be targeting the problem of obesity on this island?
Soft drinks are a very serious problem in Malta. Most people grimace when offered water to drink, react with a ‘jaqq!’ and would much rather wake up guzzling fizzy, sugary drinks. The addiction starts from early childhood: dentists are continually attesting to the terrible state of children’s teeth and oral hygiene because of this.
Like elsewhere in the world, sugar-laden drinks are mini-health timebombs, causing dental diseases, obesity and an array of life-threatening illnesses
And for this reason, I wish for a budget to introduce a simple and easy-to-understand measure that would help save lives by reducing sugar in our diets and raising much-needed money to protect our health: a tax on soft drinks.
This is no new thing. It already exists in some parts of the US and it seems to be working. Just as we use fiscal measures to discourage drinking and smoking and help prevent people from dying early, a measure like this would be a move towards making the price of food reflect its true costs to society.
We got to know last week that 40 Maltese people develop cancer each year due to obesity. That’s the second highest rate in Europe, according to the acclaimed medical journal The Lancet. And good as it may be, I don’t think that encouraging mothers to breastfeed is going to solve the nation’s obesity problems. Some other kind of urgent action needs to be taken.
I’m not sure what Maltese doctors think about a soft drinks tax. But in Britain last year, 220,000 doctors urged the Chancellor of the Exchequer to introduce a 20 per cent increase in the cost of sugary drinks. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges said in a report that its doctors were “united in seeing the epidemic of obesity as the greatest public health crisis facing the UK. The consequences of obesity include diabetes, heart disease and cancer and people are dying needlessly from avoidable diseases.”
The potential annual tax yield could then be used to fund an increase in weight management programmes and education programmes for people to eat and drink better.
Until that happens, we can at least make good use of the Budget adverts and subtly suggest better lifestyle habits.
Now if you excuse me, I have some eye shadow to find and some nails to paint.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti