So I'm not-so-secretly a bit of a health nut. It's a feeling that comes in fits and starts, not enough to have me begrudging myself a warm bowl of macaroni and cheese on a snowy winter evening, but certainly enough to give at least a passing glance to most of the food labels that come into my hands.
Here's one thing I've learned: The food industry is a dirty low-down cheater.
For sure, it isn't that hard to manipulate people in such an addictive market, when a little extra salt and a little extra fat literally makes the brain malfunction in how it handles the desire to eat. But there are laws that are supposed to at least force companies to give the reasonable part of your cognition correct information, right?
Well... depends on how closely you look at it. I, an addict to salted almonds, have to admit that the labels are laughably manipulative. The calories, they say, are 170. Not too bad, right? But wait, that's per serving. There are seven servings in a bag. Um, yeah.
People can walk into a snack store and walk out with a little bag that's worth more than half of what they should eat in an entire day.
That's not even getting into other types of food labeling, either. The labels low-fat, low-sugar, and other such things are often ambiguous and mean pretty much nothing. Furthermore, you can say totally true things and imply totally false things with the ads that you put on a box of food. One XKCD comic parodies this by showing a picture of a box of cereal with the phrase "ASBESTOS-FREE!" in blazing letters on it. Such is true, but so is every other cereal on the planet (we hope).
The problem with food is that the people who label and advertise know where the gaps in perception and nutritional literacy are in a population. There are a lot of people who don't care about calories or vitamins or minerals and just eat what they want to eat, and more power to them, although even what you're in the mood for can be manipulated (as I'll come to with my final anecdote). However, parents who may want to choose a healthy snack for their kids or college students who want to stop feelings of sluggishness that occur from poor nutrition may only look at the food label or the advertisement long enough to get one good face-full of manipulation. To know which label of "ARSENIC-FREE!" actually is the novelty it claims to be, or whether or not something is really "Low-fat", or to realize that your glorious bag of salted almonds is actually 1,190 calories, requires a familiarity with both the food and the system that most people probably don't really have.
Now, for the promised final anecdote: I had an acquaintance from high school whose family started a major food chain. She talked to me once about how she had seen people photograph the foods for advertisements before, and since things like a tomato might get gross underneath all of the bright lights that they use over the long period of time that they need, there's a good deal of the time when the fruit you see in an advertisement is plastic with some water spritzed on it. Yum yum, right?
I like laughing to myself whenever I notice one of these little manipulations, even though I know that for every one I notice there are probably two that end up directing my daily life. It's tricky to maintain a good sense of what's going on in a market where people experience such disconnect from where the foods they want are coming from. Even for a health nut like myself, it's definitely one of those things where you win some and you lose some.
But at least as a health nut your friends can seem to find endless amusement trying to talk you into eating another piece of chocolate pie. I do what I can.
This is a really interesting post, and something that definitely affects all of us! The idea of purposeful manipulation in the food industry is widespread, as we witness more and more books and documentaries coming out about it. The food industry is not concerned with our health; they’re an industry, so their major concern is profit. Therefore, like you said, they add labels to foods that make them seem more appealing and healthy, when in reality they aren’t. Grocery stores are manipulative in this way as well, strategically placing certain items at eye level, pressuring you to consider a choice you may not have thought of initially. So whether we’re shopping for the food or eating it, it seems we cannot escape these outside pressures. Like so many other things, it seems that a solution may just be awareness; recognizing that you’re being pressured, or learning more about food, health, or the food industry. The more educated and aware we are, the more our choices will be our own. But this is only true to a point, because as you say, even a health junkie like you often falls prey to the manipulations of the food industry.
ReplyDeleteWhat also interests me separately is the connection between the health and food industries. In the US, we’re known for our fast food and poor health, which are definitely correlated. The manipulations of the food industry perpetuate the manipulations of the healthcare industry. In a non-direct way, your post is connected to Kurt’s comment on another post. He noted the long list of side effects of medications listed in commercials. Say there is an individual who has been diagnosed with diabetes due to his poor eating habits. He then is pressured by these advertisements or a doctor to “choose” a certain medication. He was probably continuously manipulated by these industries that have no consideration for his well-being as an individual, but rather only a consideration of the profit. We have to be very careful then to recognize when we may be being manipulated, whether it’s by large scale commercial companies, or by a novel we’re reading in class!
There's something about the advertising/marketing part of food that always seems to get to us. We all want to feel good about what we eat because it makes us look better and can even boost our self confidence. Advertising people know this (and they've taken a psychology class about it). They play upon what makes us feel good.
ReplyDeleteThere's also the way that they present the information. It's like a nation-wide survey: would you rather hear that a few thousand out of a bigger thousands of people like a product, or 2 out of 3? There's an appeal with the small number because it is more tangible for daily life. The way information about calories works the same way. They're not lying, per say, but they are hoping that people don't read the fine print (and many of us don't, so at least they got something right). They want us to eat their product, and they know that making us feel good about it is a way to go. It's not to say we wouldn't have made the same choice, but it's a push in that direction.