Overweight Santa 'needs a makeover'
Press Association
9 hours 15 mins ago
Santa is a public health hazard - promoting obesity and drink-driving, experts have claimed.
Images of a fat, jolly and somewhat tipsy Father Christmas send out the wrong message and could damage millions of lives, they said.
Instead of sitting back in his sleigh and breaking the speed limit, Santa should get off and walk or jog.
Obese Santa also needs to swap the brandy and mince pies left out by hopeful children for carrots and celery sticks stolen from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
Dr Nathan Grills and illustrator Brendan Halyday, from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, said the current image of Santa promotes obesity, drink-driving, speeding and a general unhealthy lifestyle.
Santa's universal fame means he is used by companies around the globe to sell all kinds of products, including unhealthy foods, they went on. For example, there is very high awareness of Santa among young children - higher than the McDonald's fictional character, Ronald McDonald.
Writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), the authors said Santa used to also sell cigarettes but that has now been banned.
They went on to provide a full list of Santa's unhealthy behaviours, including encouraging fathers to step in and eat leftover mince pies, thereby expanding their own waistlines. With billions of homes to visit, Santa is also soon over the drink-driving limit due to too many brandies and sherries.
The authors conclude there is a need for Santa to undergo an image overhaul - one that promotes healthy living.
"We need to be aware that Santa has an ability to influence people, and especially children, towards unhealthy behaviour," they said. "Given Santa's universal appeal, and reasoning from a population health perspective, Santa needs to affect health by only 0.1% to damage millions of lives. We propose a new image for Santa to ensure that his influence on public health is a positive one."
OMG .. I HAVE HEARD IT ALL NOW !!!!!!
How pitiful & pathetic can some people be?
Get a life, by the time kids are into fitness & health etc etc they know the stories of santa are stories ...
Its no wonder people say that kids are not allowed to be kids any more with idiots coming out with things like that ... what they going to do next ban the easter bunny & easter eggs cos of chocolate being bad for you ??
or maybe ban the fairy tails cos Rapunzle makes fathers want to lock thier daughters in towers & grow thier hair so long it can be used as a rope?? & sleeping beauty promotes men kissing women they have never seen before when they are asleep ??
So that's why I'm overweight and have a drink-drive problem, I knew there was a reason. hick.
And wouldn't stealing carots and celery from Rudolph condone theft? I'd rather my kids be fat than be theives
Are these the same experts who came up with the idea of stopping kids (under 16's) from being to childish and destructive after school and told the education committee to hand out more home work to keep kids indoors and not outdoors to reduce the gang factor and bad behavior because an uneducated child is a destructive child, and the same one's that now say kids are obese because the don't exerciser enough and spend to much time indoors on pc, xboxes, ect, ect, or do you think this is a new spices.
Santa-slammer defends public health 'spoof'
An Australian researcher who blasted Santa Claus as a bad role model for children defended himself Friday as a believer of the man in red and said his study was a festive "spoof".
Monash University's Nathan Grills said his study claiming Santa Claus promoted obesity, drink-driving, speeding and an unhealthy lifestyle had been written in his spare time for a bit of "comic relief".
"Most of my 'Santa - A public health pariah?' article was meant to be tongue-in-cheek... It's a Christmas spoof," Grills told Australian Associated Press.
"I hoped to spread a bit of Christmas cheer, but with a tinge of seriousness to provoke a bit of healthy Christmas dinner table conversation."
Instead, Grills said his study, which was published in the British Medical Journal, had attracted a barrage of criticism from all over the world accusing him of being a humbug.
"To clarify, I am not a Santa researcher. The article was written in my spare time for a bit of comic relief," said Grills, who declared himself an avid "Santa believer and lover".
Epidemiologically, Grills had claimed there was a correlation between countries that venerate Santa Claus and those with high levels of childhood obesity.
Instead of wolfing down mince pies and brandy and idling in his sleigh, Grills suggested Santa should go on a diet and swap his reindeer for walking, jogging or cycling to deliver his presents.
His respect for road rules and safety when undertaking extreme sports such as roof surfing and chimney-jumping also left a lot to be desired, the study said.
It also bemoaned the potential infectiousness of Santa impersonators, saying if they sneezed or coughed around 10 times a day, all the children who sat on their laps could end up with swine flu.
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