archive for the 'Advertising' Category

Missing the middle: French fries do get fat

by Marc R. aka Mental Masala @ Friday, October 10th, 2008.

The McDonald’s billboard pictured above sent the needle on my BS-o-meter into the red when I saw it hovering atop a row of sparkling Victorians in San Francisco’s Mission District while out on a walk with the San Francisco City Guides (one of the finest local history and culture organizations in the nation).

Sick to our stomachs: Food industry spent $1.6 billion to influence children in 2006

by Marc R. aka Mental Masala @ Tuesday, July 29th, 2008.

On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a report (PDF) showing that 44 major food and beverage marketers spent $1.6 billion in 2006 to convince children under 17 to buy their products. The FTC reports that food marketing appears in many forms: as direct TV or print advertisements, on the internet, in contests, as “advergames”, or as a tie-in to a movie or television program.

I can read you like a cook: A review of “Kitchen Literacy”

by Jennifer M. aka Baklava Queen @ Friday, June 27th, 2008.

Somewhere along the line, the knowledge base surrounding food dwindled as more home cooks turned to processed and even pre-prepared food. What influenced this loss of basic understanding? How did we become so estranged from the natural environment and the food web that supports us? Ann Vileisis spent a great deal of time researching those questions, and in “Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and Why We Need to Get It Back” she offers a complicated weave of historical events that persuaded us to adopt “an unspoken covenant between shoppers and an increasingly powerful food industry.”

Safeway’s unintentional commentary on modern tomatoes

by Marc R. aka Mental Masala @ Tuesday, June 10th, 2008.

Safeway is running ads declaring that their tomatoes are “robust,” a word that makes me think of strength and resilience, two qualities that should have nothing to do with burstingly juicy red orbs.

Bringing a wet noodle to a gun fight: The USDA’s Brian Wansink vs. Big Food’s ads

by Marc R. aka Mental Masala @ Sunday, November 25th, 2007.

The other day I got a press release from the USDA (PDF) announcing that Brian Wansink had been appointed the Executive Director of the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP):

Dr. Wansink will be responsible for overseeing the planning, development and review of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the food pyramid known as MyPyramid.gov […]

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