George Orwell described advertising as the rattling of a stick in a swill bucket. This metaphor is even more pertinent to food advertising because often the product is little more than sugar laden swill. However, food advertising clearly works because the major food manufacturers spend billions promoting their junk food products. Food advertising has moved on from the traditional billboards or television adverts aimed at brand awareness. More recently a trend towards a more subtle form of advertising has occured. In particular, food advertising has shifted to product placement in films and the sponsorship of sporting events. It is important for the food manufacturers to blame the individual for weight gain, and obfuscate the real cause of obesity that is their sugar and salt laden junk foods. By associating with sporting events food advertising creates the link between exercise and health and promotes the idea that their foods are acceptable if exercise is performed. This viewpoint is now ingrained in most people despite it being complete pseudoscience and propaganda.
The food manufacturers know many of the sugar laden foods they sell are addictive, and they therefore target children in their advertising. This is a great strategy for the food manufacturers because creating a lifetime addict to their products ensures future profit, although the strategy has catastrophic effect on the health of the consumer. Studies have investigated the effects television advertising has on children and generally it is known that such adverts increase the consumption of such products. For example, in one study researchers assessed the impact of adverts within video games at increasing the consumption of high energy snack foods and fruit amongst children1. Children, aged 8 to 10 years, played the games containing adverts for energy dense snacks (sweets and chocolate), fruit (juice and whole fruit) or non-food products, and their subsequent ad libitum consumption of these snacks was monitored. The results showed that intakes of food increased irrespective of the type of food adverts displayed, compared to those children who did not play the games or were exposed to non-food products.
In this study food advertising caused a general increase in food consumption for both fruit and energy dense snack. The increased food intake was highest in those children who reported feeling hungry. Therefore food advertising targeting children may increase food consumption generally, but this study does not suggest that the food advertising causes specific desire for particular foods. However, this may relate to the design of the adverts used or the age of the children and so the results should be treated with caution. Another interesting finding of this study was that adverts for fruit can actually increase consumption of energy dense snack in children, suggesting that promoting healthy food to this age group of children may be counterproductive. An explanation as to why adverts for fruit increase energy dense snack consumption may rest on the cephalic phase of digestion, whereby the smell, sight or sound of food causes physiological changes that prepare for the consumption of food. In this way, food advertising may boil down to making people hungry by showing them food.
RdB
