5 Sneaky Ways Companies Market Junk Food
From iPhone apps to Webinars about exercise, food companies are working hard to make sure junk remains a big part of the American diet.
The Pop-Tarts store in Times Square is only the loudest example of innovative food marketing to come out recently. I’ve been collecting more subtle examples:
Using social media (and getting customers to pay for it): For 99 cents, you can buy an iPhone app that gives nutritional information for products at Jack-in-the-Box or at McDonald’s. As Mark Douglas of Culinate explains: “They want $0.99 to tell you what you probably already know… Watch Out!”
Co-opting health professionals: Michele Simon (author of Appetite for Profit) writes on AlterNet about how PepsiCo hires distinguished health professionals and experts to give a company that sells snack foods and soft drinks an aura of health and wellness.
Co-opting professional organizations: Lisa Young (the Portion Teller) points me to a Webinar on August 25 run by the industry-sponsored School Nutrition Foundation and the Milk Processor Education Program on what is surely an urgent issue for sellers of chocolate (sugar-added) milk: “Keep flavored milk from dropping out of school!”
Deflecting attention from diet: Lisa sends another Webinar notice for September 14, this one for “skills & tools to enhance change in physical activity behavior.” Its sponsor?
The Coca-Cola Company’s Beverage Institute For Health & Wellness is a Continuing Professional Education (CPE) Accredited Provider with the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR) – provider number BF001.
Plain, old-fashioned lobbying: Food Safety News has a nifty report on food company lobbying expenditures (huge), mainly on the food safety bill but also on many other bills that might affect labeling or sales of food products.
I reviewed these methods in my book, Food Politics. A revised edition came out in 2007. Not much change, alas.
Addition: Attracting school kids: Michele Simon sends this Pepsi partnership with Hy-Vee stores in Iowa. Parents buy five Pepsi products; Pepsi buys backpacks for their kids.
Marion Nestle
Noted author Marion Nestle is a Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University. She is the author of What to Eat.read full bio.
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What To Eat: Expert advice on food, health and nutrition issues that are in the news.
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