Friday 25 July 2014

Food advertising

Beware adverts that tell you certain cereals are healthy. I have just read about a particular brand of cereal which is aimed at people who want to lose weight. So you should eat this when you are trying to lose weight, yes?

Wrong

In Britain this cereal is 17% sugar. (It has different amounts of sugar in different countries). That's a lot of sugar. It won't satisfy your hunger for long or make you slim, in fact it is very likely to make you hungry shortly after eating it. Because you will be more than peckish, you will eat anything you can get your hands on. That's probably a doughnut, crisps, or a 'healthy' piece of sugar laden flapjack. The sugar in the cereal will make you fat and the snack will make you fat. (That's fat, not thin).

I've got to drum it into my poor brain that the main motivation of the people behind adverts is not people's health but money. They will tell you whatever makes you buy their stuff. They can't tell a blatant lie, so they imply things, they omit information, they present an image you associate with the product without having to say the lie. Which, in the case of today's specially chosen cereal is:

'If you eat this sugary carbohydrate, you will get a great figure, a red dress and lots of beautiful friends.' 

It would be laughable if thousands of us didn't fall for it every day.

 (Do you know what it is yet?)

No comments:

Post a Comment