The Deception of Healthy Food Products: Part IV

(A Blog Series by Chef Maika)
What consumers want is not really what they are getting. I remember watching a little segment on Good Morning America when a Registered Dietician co-hosted a news segment made an example of how confusing shopping could be for a mother who cares a lot about buying the right products for her children. He pulled out of her cart a box of spinach pasta. He says “Why did you buy this?” She replies “Well, it’s made with whole grain and a fun way to have my kids eat pasta and their vegetables too.” He shook his head and turned the box over. Slowing guiding his eyes with his pointed figure on the box he directs the ladies attention to the ‘list of Ingredients’. “Did you know that this pasta is not even made with whole grain, but just enriched wheat, green food coloring and with just a little amount of spinach?” The lady smiled and chuckled nervously, “I guess I’ve been fooled.” How many Americans have been fooled like this today? All the manufacture’s marketers want was for you to buy that product by knowing your desires and what you need. For instance, Frito-Lay a snack company had a dilemma, they found that women only snacked 14% on salty foods, compared to 25% on sweets and 61% on fruits and vegetables. So they have gone as far as to change their packaging, develop new flavors and come up with a whole new campaign ad just to draw more women in to eating more of their snacks by using pop neurology (Clifford, 2009). Just the other day I was on YouTube.com and was watching a bunch of short little clips of this hilarious new cartoon series with a group of women who were having issues with their weight and other women stuff. Surprisingly, not paying attention to the writing at the end, while I would eagerly click on the next button to watch a new video of the series, I found out that at the end of each clip it was an actual statement that the clips were from Frito-Lay! I didn’t even know I was watching an advertisement! Frito-Lay stepped out of the box and decided to research how the female brain works, what attracts them? Ha! It worked! On me! Hey, there is nothing wrong with this concept, however when you put potato chips in a pretty beige bag and say it’s healthy cause it’s a Fat-Free snack, even though when you finish munching on the whole bag, you find yourself looking at the bottom of the bag to find numerous salt crystals. Did you really get what you wanted? Nope, but the marketers certainly did!