Advertising Food

"...advertising directed toward children is inherently deceptive and exploits children under eight years of age."
The American Academy of Paediatrics

In the world of profit and loss, no corporation aspires to financial greatness without a strong marketing and advertising plan. As any pinstripe apostle knows, the well-crafted sales pitch is sacrosanct. Those crafted by the biofood industries are no exception. These corporations spend more than a half billion dollars each year on advertisements for processed biofoods and their target audience is our children.

Pediatricians are witnessing an astounding jump in dangerous, diet-related ailments in our children such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and asthma.

The weight of evidence is pointing to the increased consumption of processed biofoods.

While this type of advertising campaign drives massive revenues for Gucci farmers and their pals the food producers, the collateral damage has been to our children’s health. Given all the media and medical attention given to the epidemic of childhood diet-related disease, one would think they would show a little concern and redirect their marketing efforts. Not a chance. This messaging is intentionally propelled by a sophisticated and pervasive advertising machine aimed at children who are too young to understand the difference between marketing and facts.

Fast Food Nutrition and Marketing
In November, Yale University carried out the most comprehensive study of fast food nutrition and marketing ever conducted. Researchers discovered that preschoolers were exposed to 21 percent more fast food advertisements in 2009 than in 2003. The Yale/Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity concluded that large fast food chains only offer parents healthy alternatives for their children 15 percent of the time. They are not alone in their findings.

The peer-reviewed journal ‘Pediatrics’ reported that children significantly preferred the taste of food when it was packaged with cartoon characters which intentionally magnified the calorie-dense, nutritionally vacuous foods. Five years before the Yale/Rudd studies, the Institute of Medicine, concluded that television ads sponsored by food and beverage corporations succeed in getting children to consume large amounts of unhealthy food, leading to a dramatic increase in childhood obesity and diabetes. The Institute recommended that Congress should step in if the food and beverage industry doesn't change its ways. Advertising Age called the report "a watershed on the scale of the 1964 surgeon general's report on tobacco."

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Resources

Rethink Food

The average consumer believes they are not very powerful - but the exact opposite is true. Corporations deliver what the consumer demands. The average meal purchased from your supermarkets travels 1500 miles to arrive at your dinner table. You can change the industrial food system with every bite.

  • Vote with your purchasing dollar
  • Read the food label
  • Buy only from companies that treat workers, animals and the environment with respect.
  • Choose foods that are in season and locally grown.
  • Buy organic or naturally grown food
  • Shop at farmers' markets
  • Cooking is fun and easy. Make the time to cook a meal
  • Our government agencies are supposed to protect us. Tell them to enforce food safety standards.

Citizen's Science - Be Involved

Wildflower Initiatives
There are over 20,000 species of wildflowers in North America belonging to 300 different families. Kissing cousins to the flowering food crops that end up on our dinner table, their colour and beauty grace our landscapes. From the delightful eye candy of wildflower fields to a groaning board full of culinary delights, honeybees make it all happen. Today half of the world-wide honeybee population has vanished.

Often there appears to be a great divide between ecological problems and probable solutions. Not in this case. Without honeybees diversity rich food sources which are naturally grown are in jeopardy. But we can turn things around using practical applications that are accessible to everyone. We just have to shift perspective - abit. Please join us.