Dude, what’s your responsibility ?

Virat Kohli, Ranbir Kapoor and many other celebrities promote Pepsi. Aamir Khan promoted coca-cola. Akshay Kumar and Salman Khan promote(d) Thumbs Up. … All of them are fitness freaks and also show off their six or eight packs. Not one of them could have got those packs if they had been drinking packs of any of the cola brands they endorse. So, you dear gullible “consumer” who thinks of them as idols and role models, go on gulping down Pepsi and Coke and continue to suffer the consequences, and your idol continues to rake in the moolah. Super !

Whether any of the colas have pesticides or not, they certainly have no health giving ingredients. Why can’t these stars say no to the endorsement ? Isn’t it their responsibility to help children stay healthy ? After all, those very children are their biggest fans. 🙁

Ok, if you feel colas are an easy target, let’s go to a mundane thing like “Saravana Stores” .. The Big Bazaar equivalent in Chennai. There is a movie in Tamil called “Angadi theru” that depicts the atrocities that the owners of Saravana stores commit. The employees are treated like slaves and made to live in hovels. They are village boys and girls who are brought to Chennai with the lure of working in a big shop and treated poorly. Now, you have Suriya, a Tamil superstar endorsing Saravana Stores. He is an intelligent man, he even has setup a charity to help children study and his father, a yesteryear actor is a principled man… He doesn’t need the money, then why endorse this brand ?

Celebrity Chef Sanjeev Kapoor endorses Sugar Free, a sucralose based sugar substitute. So feed your sweet tooth with something worse than sugar and don’t feel guilty because you ate zero calories …. Health be damned. Bipasha Basu the healthy diva also endorses this product. There is enough research on the terrible side effects of sugar and sugar substitutes. Do either of them feel it’s their responsibility to not endorse a product which has negative side effects ? Bipasha also promoted yoga, but Sugar Free negates all the health that yoga gives.

Kurkure advertisements, showing how you can’t have a great time without them. Maggi advertisements to eat Maggi when you are hungry… Mr. Bachchan too saying it’s good for you. Whole wheat, oat or any variant just fools you into believing you are eating “healthy” food – anything that has refined flour and has been processed in high heat, is “non-food”. Period. So Maggi is pure unadulterated junk, and yes a one time comfort food for me :(.

The new big space in health that’s opening up is supplements – everyone is peddling them, Amway, Complan substituting a complete breakfast, Horlicks, Boost is the secret of my energy, Kellogg K to lose weight in ten days, Tropicana “real” fruit juice – awesome. Why not try eating just what the advertisers peddle as health food ? Our demographic dividend will dwindle and our illness dividend will zoom, then we can make health insurance lucrative and medical bills that are already inflated can further get inflated…. Make living so expensive that one chooses to die !

Am not even going to the Pizza adverts… Disastrous food and as a “non-food” group singularly responsible for obese children, if not singularly, big part along with the friendly diet cola.

Yes the responsibility of living healthy, eating right, buying from the right place, managing finances is the individual’s. But advertisements make you aspire and dream of doing the same things your idols do and because they are so fit, you assume the products they endorse make you fit too. A picture is worth a 1000 words … Remember ?

My friend Raghavan once remarked for a software, that people will adopt what’s useful for them. A software that needs to be pushed down people’s throat basically means it’s not useful. Who doesn’t want to make their life simpler ? Extend the thought to advertisements – you need to advertise more to peddle a product that is “not necessary”… You don’t advertise for water, or air but make money off “purifying” them. You don’t advertise Mangoes, but Frooti or some other chemical broth made to taste like Mangoes and they never can. You don’t advertise walking everywhere and staying healthy easily but the next fancy car that is “spacious”.

Gullible consumers, wake up. Smell the real coffee, not Nescafé and get responsible. Celebrities, please take some responsibility and stop peddling stuff that don’t promote health. Atleast that much money you needn’t make. Think of it as your “giving back” amount, which also you do silently. I don’t intend this blog as a criticism of celebrities, but as a nudge for them to act more responsibly. If I upset some of them or you, why not try one of the products they endorse and stay calm ? Won’t work though. Try Pranayama or just go out for a walk to get rid of that irritation or eat a “real” banana, the fruit that has a peel and doesn’t come out of a tetrapak. You will get my point.