The combination of marketing, junk food, and kids has interested me for a long time. Joel Bakan's 2003 book The Corporation addressed it in terms of the food industry's skill at taking advantage of children. Researchers like Marion Nestle have been highlighting the health and ethical aspects of marketing food for many years. Most of their criticism has problematized the aggressive marketing of junk food or fast food specifically to children. Think Disney toys in McDonald's Happy Meals, cartoon characters on sugary cereal boxes, brightly coloured candy packages, and Taylor Swift starring in Diet Coke ads.
A few years ago, I came across some really weird ads for baby carrots with the slogan, "Eat 'em like junk food." I had mixed feelings about that – why does something need to be junk food to taste good? But, at least they were pushing vegetables. Something has to compete with all those ads and fancy packages in the stores.
This new approach of reduced [insert the latest demonized food component like sodium, fat, or sugar, here] processed foods is, to me, an entirely different issue. It gets at the way we as a society view food.
How do we eat? (Hint: Rarely by sitting down to a shared meal.)
How do we define what constitutes a "food"? (Hint: Things called "food" often contain substances we are more likely to find on a lab bench than in a kitchen.)While Campbell's Disney Princess Healthy Kids soup or Kellogg's Scooby-Doo cereal may be less bad than their "adult" counterparts in terms of some component like salt or sugar, they are not, by most definitions, healthy foods. By my definition, they are not even foods. And there's the rub. What are we teaching children by defining healthy as "less of something bad"? We're showing them what harmful things to avoid, but not what they actually need to eat to be healthy. Probably worse, we're teaching them that healthy food comes out of a package instead of the garden. We're not teaching them about the joy of cooking, the pleasure of nurturing loved ones with good food, or the value of sharing meals with others. We're helping them to develop a taste for processed princess-shaped pasta products instead of an appreciation for the crunch of a pepper or the juicy goodness of a fresh, ripe tomato.
And none of this even begins to address the issue of selling the princess life to little girls.
