Advertising is making us fat. Great! That’s just great. I appreciate that the 2008 Yale study says that awareness will help, but I also agree that we have a lot to learn about how we can protect ourselves and our children. The lengths that food advertisers will go through to entice us, according a Media Awareness Network handout, are amazing. If anyone ever told me that motor oil or glue would make me want to munch, I’d beg to differ. But I see now that I’ve been duped! The idea of mindless eating was verified in a HealthDay News article. It’s less about will power and bad choices and more about responding to stimuli; the fact that adults and kids are both susceptible is not encouraging.
The article did say that the junk food ads led viewers to snack on unhealthy foods. Perhaps if we replaced those ads with images of healthy foods and mealtimes, we’d begin to have more respect for what we put in our bodies. That’s the silver lining I suppose. It appears that we’re pretty willing to accept what we see, so we need to gain more control over what we’re subjected to.
I really enjoyed the burger dressing video in class. It’s all subtle stuff, but there’s a lot of it and it adds up.
In a perfect world, the values of corporate America and the people would align. Our society would be for the people by the people. But, clearly, idealism is far from reality. The need for a shift is strong, though, and I think our overall health and wellness are weighty enough to warrant a shift. Some markets have more "fair" advertising, but we need to put the gloves back on; without them, things are too ugly.
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