Actually, I don’t think anti-candy messaging originates as a good-faith attempt to teach dietary wisdom; instead, it exemplifies preference inversion through moralized restriction. Rather than providing actionable information about metabolic effects, it constructs an idea of candy as a moral temptation, creating the very compulsive relationship to sweets it claims to prevent.
Take sugar. The standard message is “sugar is bad, candy will rot your teeth and make you fat.” But instead of preventing candy consumption, this attitude turns candy into forbidden fruit—literally, in the case of those chocolate-covered strawberries advertised as “sinfully delicious.” When dessert companies advertise their products as “decadent” or “sinful,” they’re not trying to warn you away—they’re banking on the fact that labeling some things as bad, or wrong makes them more appealing, by giving them the erotic charge of the forbidden.
(Many successful profit-seeking firms expect such descriptions to cause demand to increase rather than decrease. I’ve written elsewhere about flaws with the assumption that businesses are profit-seeking in the relevant sense, but I don’t think that advertising a dessert as “sinful” is intended as a voluntary equivalent to the Surgeon General’s warning on cigarettes.)
The question of preference inversion through moralization isn’t just theoretical for me, but a live practical problem. I tried to avoid offering my first child sweets for as long as I could, but when my toddler started becoming interested in sweets, mostly they served as appetizers that helped him become hungry for more substantive foods, the exact opposite of what anti-sweets propaganda had predicted. Even if he’s specifically excited about a sweet or other food I’d rather he wouldn’t choose, frequently he won’t finish it. I think this is at least partly because my reproductive partner and I have been careful to try not to force our food neuroses on him, even when this means he’s eating things we don’t think are the best.
There are exceptions, but they prove the rule. Sometimes when he’s stressed, candy becomes more appealing—but that’s less about the candy itself and more about needing quick calories to regulate emotions. Similarly, when he’s seeking comfort or trying to keep himself awake for longer at night, he might fixate on sweets. But notice how in each case, the “problematic” relationship with sugar emerges from external stressors, not from sugar itself. I do withhold sweets (and television) when I have the intuition that he’s asking for them for the wrong reasons, in a confused way, and won’t either get what he wants from them or learn efficiently from the experience.
I don’t think sweet-seeking starts out perverted; growing children need lots of calories. This turns into a maladaptive obsession with sweets when they are made into perverse fetishes by “healthy eating” propaganda. Likewise, children need a lot of loving touch, which should inform their later sexual development. Sex becomes a fetish when it’s a forbidden gateway to that missing love and touch. Cf Jessica Taylor’s All Primates Need Grooming, and Moshe Feldenkrais’s The Potent Self.
In both cases there’s enough work to be done learning contingent self-restraint without the distorting influence of a negative moral valence.
Actually, I don’t think anti-candy messaging originates as a good-faith attempt to teach dietary wisdom; instead, it exemplifies preference inversion through moralized restriction. Rather than providing actionable information about metabolic effects, it constructs an idea of candy as a moral temptation, creating the very compulsive relationship to sweets it claims to prevent.
Take sugar. The standard message is “sugar is bad, candy will rot your teeth and make you fat.” But instead of preventing candy consumption, this attitude turns candy into forbidden fruit—literally, in the case of those chocolate-covered strawberries advertised as “sinfully delicious.” When dessert companies advertise their products as “decadent” or “sinful,” they’re not trying to warn you away—they’re banking on the fact that labeling some things as bad, or wrong makes them more appealing, by giving them the erotic charge of the forbidden.
(Many successful profit-seeking firms expect such descriptions to cause demand to increase rather than decrease. I’ve written elsewhere about flaws with the assumption that businesses are profit-seeking in the relevant sense, but I don’t think that advertising a dessert as “sinful” is intended as a voluntary equivalent to the Surgeon General’s warning on cigarettes.)
The question of preference inversion through moralization isn’t just theoretical for me, but a live practical problem. I tried to avoid offering my first child sweets for as long as I could, but when my toddler started becoming interested in sweets, mostly they served as appetizers that helped him become hungry for more substantive foods, the exact opposite of what anti-sweets propaganda had predicted. Even if he’s specifically excited about a sweet or other food I’d rather he wouldn’t choose, frequently he won’t finish it. I think this is at least partly because my reproductive partner and I have been careful to try not to force our food neuroses on him, even when this means he’s eating things we don’t think are the best.
There are exceptions, but they prove the rule. Sometimes when he’s stressed, candy becomes more appealing—but that’s less about the candy itself and more about needing quick calories to regulate emotions. Similarly, when he’s seeking comfort or trying to keep himself awake for longer at night, he might fixate on sweets. But notice how in each case, the “problematic” relationship with sugar emerges from external stressors, not from sugar itself. I do withhold sweets (and television) when I have the intuition that he’s asking for them for the wrong reasons, in a confused way, and won’t either get what he wants from them or learn efficiently from the experience.
I don’t think sweet-seeking starts out perverted; growing children need lots of calories. This turns into a maladaptive obsession with sweets when they are made into perverse fetishes by “healthy eating” propaganda. Likewise, children need a lot of loving touch, which should inform their later sexual development. Sex becomes a fetish when it’s a forbidden gateway to that missing love and touch. Cf Jessica Taylor’s All Primates Need Grooming, and Moshe Feldenkrais’s The Potent Self.
In both cases there’s enough work to be done learning contingent self-restraint without the distorting influence of a negative moral valence.