My guess is that the socks are a nod to the old porn-law, where people weren't naked if they were wearing socks... (porn-movie myth perhaps?)

As someone who is really interested in fact not rhetoric I really don't think this point is that difficult to understand. Let me try it again; Sweden has a toothless law that exists only on paper which states that advertising to children is banned.

In reality, Sweden's TV channels with advertising are, and have been since 1987 when national ad-TV became a reality, aired from a country without such laws in place ; the UK. So, the national TV channels follow UK advertising laws and have ads aimed at children before, during and after the children's programming. All day and all night, and there ain't nothing Sweden's 'law' can do about it.

As a funny coincidence, the obesity rate among children in Sweden has skyrocketed in the past 15 years.

You can say "Sweden has a ban" as much as you want, in reality, the ban does not exist and never has. Any Swedish kid who turns on his TV these past 18 years will have seen ads targeted to them. Anyone who has kept up on the Swedish advertising news knows that the non-functioning ban is a matter of constant battle between the advertisers, the lawyers and the politicians - it's always in the tradepress around our parts. The advertisers always win, they have the right to air as many ads as they wish, whenever the hell they please, aiming at targets as young as 1 years old if they want to.

Please note, this "fact" is the only thing in the series of facts you have listed that I am objecting to and trying to correct. It's not a fact see, it's just an imagined utopia which people outside of the country of Sweden believe is true. So if that is bullshit, one might wonder how many of your other facts on which you base your arguments, are true? One might not too, i'm just saying that one could. Ever heard that annoying old expression lies, lies and statistics?

So my end point still stands, while it might be only one thing in a lot of factors that affect peoples behaviour, advertising can not be excluded from the blame when it comes to our obese and unhealthy lifestyles around the world today, in my ever so humble opinion. After all, we charge clients a lot of money for the ability to convince people to buy stuff - saying that our ads didn't make people buy stuff is just a tad off isn't it?
We never forced people to smoke either, yet tobacco ads are banned all over Europe these days, and the consumption of these legal products has been banned from all public buildings and resturants, starting in the US and spreading all across the world. Funny that, first they stopped the ads.. Then they tried stopping the habit (in public at least).

Cheers Yaksox. It's easier when you have a really good reason to (like the little passenger in my belly).