Provocative Images Compare Kids Eating Fast Food to Suicide Bombers
This photo, “Sterling, 2015,″ shows a boy with McDonald’s food strapped around his body like a suicide bomb. (Photo: Warwick Thornton/Anna Schwartz Gallery)
A new photo exhibit in Australia shows images of children dressed as suicide bombers — but rather than explosives, they have junk food and alcohol strapped around their chests.
The images, part of artist Warwick Thornton’s series titled “The Future is Unforgiving,” are intended to highlight the harmful effects of sugar and other junk food, Thornton told the Australian. “The ticking time bomb is bad diet, bad stuff that we get fed every day, which is legal. That sh-t is killing us,” he said.
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One of the photographs shows a young boy with McDonald’s drinks and burgers strapped across his chest. Two others show girls with Coke and beer cans. They are all on display at the Anna Schwartz Gallery, in Melbourne, through August 22.
Soda and other junk food can have detrimental effects on health, conveyed in this image, “Luca, 2015,″ on display in an Australian art gallery. (Photo: Warwick Thornton/Anna Schwartz Gallery)
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, “In 2012-13, almost one-third (30%) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children aged 2-14 years were overweight or obese (20% and 10% respectively), according to their BMI.” Also, as compared with the nonindigenous population, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are “more than three times as likely to have diabetes.”
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Conditions in the U.S. aren’t much better. According to Kristi King, senior pediatric dietician at Texas Children’s Hospital and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, one in three children in the U.S. is considered overweight or obese. Sugar and other bad diet choices, as well as lack of exercise, is largely to blame. “We’re a very busy society, we tend to grab and go,” King tells Yahoo Parenting. “A lot of processed foods contain added sugar. We also are consuming more sugar-sweetened beverages than we were when I was growing up in the ’80s. It’s more readily available, and it’s in more products.”
Increasing research is showing the effect these changes are having on health, King adds. “In terms of overall health, we’re now seeing that sugar seems to be related not only to obesity but to Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some behavioral disorders,” she says.
This photo,“Shanika, 2015,″ is intended to show the deadly effects of too much alcohol. (Photo: Warwick Thornton/Anna Schwartz Gallery)
Thornton says he is trying to highlight just how deadly a child’s diet can be. “You can make bad decisions now that will have massive repercussions for the rest of your life. That’s what it’s about,” he told The Australian. “We’re all dying from bad food, not from terrorists.”
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