Food Project
The Power of Fast Food Advertising
“Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their product that they spend on advertising and they wouldn't have to advertise it.”
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
Ever see a nice big, fat, and juicy burger on a McDonalds advertisement? Have you ever wondered why the food in real life looks a lot less ravishing than the ad? Fast food advertisements have corrupted our eating habits because of their uses of photography techniques and fake food. When most people see a delicious looking food advertisement, they don’t even think to look at the real thing before they eat it; they just expect the food to be just like the ad. Advertisers have tricked us into thinking that our expectation is reality. Signs and billboards outside of cities and towns are always advertising fast food; the ads are always telling you “Burger King Next Right!” or always showing how cheap the food is. You rarely see a local food advertisement on a massive billboard as you speed down the highway. Advertisements have greatly evolved over time; the advertisers have become smarter, savvier, and have stopped targeting adults, and started aiming towards children.
The making of a fast food advertisement consists of hours of preparation, high quality cameras, and professional lighting techniques. Many fast food advertisers have informed the public that they use the same ingredients that are in the real product, but there are many non-food items that go into it, making it a very non-edible plate of food. Each ingredient of the meal has to be carefully selected and have very little to no flaws. As the meal is assembled toothpicks are used to support the food and make it look as big and scrumptious as possible. Syringes are used to inject ketchup, mustard, and/or other condiments into the food. If the condiment(s) were splattered on the meal it would not look very refined at all. Special sauces are carefully brushed onto the food to make it look as fresh and delicious as possible (Food Ad Tricks: Helping Kids understand Food Ads on TV).
When the food is completely done it is immediately placed in front of the camera and photographed. But the photographers don’t just snap one photo and stick it in an advertisement; they use light boxes, multiple light sources to keep the food well lit, and expensive, high quality cameras and lenses so the final image has no digital flaws or imperfections. But preparation and photography of the product is really only half the battle. Using computer programs like Adobe Photoshop, photo editors can effortlessly wipe away any imperfections or discoloration on the food. They can transform the product to make it look bigger, juicier, and more refreshing. Then for the final ad they digitally choose a proper color scheme, add a background, and add any other entities that might draw people in (McDonald’s Serving What’s Advertised? Fast food Secrets Behind the Big Mac’s Image). When making advertisements for beverages, almost all the work that goes into it is digital editing. The main point the advertisement wants to make for a beverage is the refreshing aspect of it. Sometimes the ad is completely made on a computer without any photography put into it whatsoever. Almost all the time the ad will show little droplets of water covering the can or bottle, making it look chilled and thirst quenching, one of the few products in which the advertisement looks like the real thing.
But there is a much bigger issue in food advertising than how the ads are made; they are only being targeted at children. Originally going out to fast food restaurants was a special treat, but now it’s just another American staple. Through this process of change, adults and parents have learned that fast food is high in sugar, sodium, and generally very unhealthy. So food ads being targeted at adults are no longer working, therefore the advertisers have turned to aiming ads at kids who are much less informed. But the scary part of this is it is actually working. The average American child sees on average 25,000 to 40,000 television commercials per year and spends an average of 44.5 hours in front of the TV, computer, and/or game screens per week. Food companies spend $15-17 billion on advertising towards children per year. In 2009 the fast food industry alone spent over $4 billion on advertising (Shah). The use of fast food advertising has shown some racial inequality as well, “African American kids and teens are exposed to 50% more fast food ads than their white counterparts” (Melnick). Advertisers have taken advantage of the children’s innocence and shifted almost all of their ads targeted at kids from billboards and signs to the Internet and television, where kids are at their most vulnerable. But are fast food companies really profiting from their advertisements being targeted at kids? In Glenn D. Braunstein’s article “Let’s Junk Junk-Food Advertising to Kids” he states, “Forty percent of children ask to go to McDonalds at least once a week, according to Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. Fifteen percent of preschoolers ask daily. In the end, 84 percent of parents acquiesced and took their kids, ages two to eleven, to a fast-food restaurant at least once in the past week”. So when fast food advertisers switched from targeting the adults (who are the ones with the money) over to kids (who have the power to provoke the adults to spend the money) it was a huge profiting breakthrough.
There has been work in revoking fast food ads towards kids, though. By 2015 the corporation of Disney will ban all food and beverage advertisements promoted on: Disney Channel, Disney XD, Disney Junior, Radio Disney, and all Disney Internet Websites. They are the first company to promote healthy, active, and non-fast food lifestyles (Castillo). But this is not the only case of fast food advertisements being banned, “In Quebec, for the last 32 years, it has been illegal for fast-food companies to advertise to kids in print or electronic media. Researchers estimate that, as a result of this ban, children in Quebec consumed 13.4 to 18.4 billion fewer fast food calories per year, and spent $88 million less on fast food than they otherwise would have” (Imus). Think of how much thinner, happier, and healthier it would make the U.S. (or just any one state in the U.S.) if they did this. It would solve lawsuits against fast food companies for making people fat because without the presentation of fast food to the public the people would just forget about it and turn to eating at local and healthy restaurants.
Advertisers have used many tricks to draw us in and persuade us to buy the advertised product, but how does it affect our brain psychologically? When seeing ads on TV children have an attitude change towards food and different food products. They develop the desire for the taste of the food they are seeing in an ad. For example, from seeing the healthy presentations in a McDonalds ad they might believe that their food is incredibly healthy and they should eat it all the time. But the forces that are making kids want the product are having a major effect on them.
“In a recent study, 40 children from age four to six were given three pairs of identical foods (graham crackers, gummy fruit snacks and carrots) packaged either with or without a popular cartoon character. After tasting both items in each pair, they were asked which tasted better. Overwhelmingly, the item that featured a cartoon character on the package was selected” (Braunstein).
This is exactly why advertisers aim towards kids; they are young and still learning about the world they live in and are much more vulnerable to advertisements.
Once children get persuaded at a young age, it is very possible for them to have it embedded in their brains until they grow older and mature and learn about the uses of persuasion in advertisements. So when most people see a delicious, scrumptious, ravishing food advertisement, they don’t even think to look at the real thing before they eat it, they simply expect the food to be just like the ad. McDonalds always shows Ronald McDonald in their advertisements, kids always love him because of his bright, high contrasted warm colors on his clothing and face, a funny looking clown-type outfit, and a what seems like a friendly personality. The ads also show him healthy, skinny, and fit which can give kids the wrong idea about McDonalds’s food, and/or fast food in general.
One will notice walking down the cereal aisle in City Market that all the unhealthy, super sugary, and TV-advertised cereals are all placed on the very bottom shelf, extremely accessible to toddlers and small children. Then at the very top of the shelves are all the healthy and organic cereals, definitely inaccessible to anyone under 4ft 6in. All the unhealthy cereals have tons of bright colors and cartoon characters to draw little kids in. One will also see that TV and Internet commercials do not advertise healthy food options towards kids, or towards adults for that matter. A certain Fiber One Cereal ad shows two parents wanting their kid to try the cereal, but the dad had to cover up the word Fiber so the child only saw the picture of the cereal and the word One. So sometime in the kid’s life he learned that fiber is not a pleasing ingredient to some people.
So the forces of society have turned children away from healthy food options because of the way we advertise our food. In conclusion, fast food companies spend a large portion of money advertising and making their food taste good as possible, not on making their food healthy. When people see a fast food advertisement, go eat at the advertised restaurant, and realize how good the food tastes, they are unaware of the fact that it is extremely unhealthy. They get sucked in, and it all started when they saw the advertisement. Maybe someday fast food advertising will be eradicated from America, or the world completely. But for now all we can do is raise awareness about the misconceptions of fast food advertising and do the best we can to protect our children.
Bibliography
· "Children as Consumers." - Global Issues. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2013.
· "7 Highly Disturbing Trends in Junk Food Advertising to Children." Alternet. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
· Braunstein, M.D., Glenn D. "Let's Junk Junk-Food Advertising to Kids." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 29 Mar. 2013. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
· "Limit Fast Food Advertising toward Kids, Lower Childhood Obesity Rates." Fox News. FOX News Network, 20 July 2012. Web. 27 Apr. 2013.
· "Study: Fast-Food Ads Target Kids with Unhealthy Food, and It Works | TIME.com." Time. Time, n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2013.
· "Disney to Cut Junk Food Advertising from Its Platforms." CBSNews. CBS Interactive, n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2013.
· "Protecting Children from Junk Food Advertising." Australian Psychological Society :. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2013.
· "Food Ad Tricks: Helping Kids Understand Food Ads on TV." YouTube. YouTube, 04 Feb. 2008. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
· "McDonald's Serving What's Advertised? Fast Food Secrets Behind The Big Mac's Image." YouTube. YouTube, 23 June 2012. Web. 06 May 2013.
Food Project Reflection
The goal of the Food Project was to raise awareness about where the food we are eating comes from, how it is made, and how it compares to other food options. We started this project with preliminary ad background information on food in general and the differences between industrial food and organic food. Then we went onto choosing our research topic from a very long list that we as a class made. I decided on food photography, which tied in closely with food advertising. We had to do extensive research on our topic in order to as much information as we could. Considering I had several pages of researched information writing my essay didn’t really seem that hard to write.
Before this project started I only knew a small amount about food, I knew that MSG was bad for you, fast food was unhealthy for you, and that healthier foods were more expensive than unhealthy foods. But through this project I was able to learn what MSG was actually made of, why and how fast food is unhealthy for you, and the cost of healthier foods affects people with a lower income. So after finding the truth behind many food dilemmas I feel that I still will go on eating industrially processed foods and not think much about it. But the project was still very enriching and contributed to my knowledge of food.
The most challenging aspect of this project was turning all my research into an essay. But not actually writing my essay, that was easy, but sorting pages of information into an essay outline, that was hard. I went through several essay outline drafts before I came to a complete and solid piece. Another but not as challenging aspect of the project was revising my essay, after I finished writing my first draft I just wanted to be done with it and not have to change anything. But after having my peers revise it and catch some mistakes I was glad that I could change it so I could turn in a beautiful refined piece of work.
Through my personal writing process I learned that I like to state the facts and give supporting and concluding information for them. But I lack giving my own personal analysis on the facts, and that was something that Mike gave feedback on, so I hope to work on that in future projects. Something I would do differently to improve my project would be to make a research outline. When I started researching I didn’t have a plan on what different things to research, which in turn made my research unorganized and somewhat hard to understand. The final thing I would do differently is have a more positive outlook on revising my paper, because of this I feel that my paper wasn’t as strong as it could be.
Now that I have finished my study of food, I would answer this essential question: “How does one navigate their own personal omnivore’s dilemma in a world of abundant eating choices?” by saying that it really depends on the person, if one craves for the taste of sugar, salt, and fat then they probably will follow an industrial and fast food path. As well if one enjoys the taste of fresh and rich produce they will probably follow an organic food path. So it really all comes down to the person, and their different desires for taste.
Shakespeare Shadow Puppet Project
The William Shakespeare’s Macbeth Shadow Puppet Show Project was incredibly awesome. So much work, collaboration, and effort went into it. The project was a shadow puppet show of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. I had multiple jobs/roles. My biggest job was as a documentarian for the play. I filmed and took pictures of the production process of the play as well as filming both the morning and afternoon classes’ performances. I was also part of the stage and lighting crew during the production process. My character in the play was Ross, which was a medium role in the play.
When the project first started I wasn’t that interested in Shakespeare. The year before when I was at Mountain Middle School we studied Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in theater class, but all we did was read it, we didn’t perform it or doing anything special with it. So when we started studying Macbeth I wasn’t too interested. But when I heard that we were going to perform it and what we were going to do with it I was very enthusiastic. My favorite part about the project was the fact that we were producing a shadow puppet performance. I had never done anything like it before and the process that we were going through to produce the show made it extremely fun. My best moment during the project was a day when everybody was working hard and not whining about how much work they had to do and just having fun producing Shakespeare.
This project was difficult in multiple ways. For one, when some people were working and some were just hanging out and not contributing to the project it made other people’s jobs harder. Such as when we were recording our voice for our characters an when one person made some noise or something we had to start all over again, which was really not fun. Another reason this project was difficult was because it was such a huge project. I was flabbergasted when I found out just how big this project was. I thought we would never be able to pull it off. But through the collaboration and hard work we all persevered through it and created an awesome show.
During this project I learned that I am actually a great collaborator. The documentation group I was in had only two people (myself and another documenter) so there wasn’t really a leader between us. But we had to collaborate together so we each could get the proper camera angle and lighting to fit what was best for the final production process video that we made. I also had to ask the people that I was filming to see what was best for them so they could keep working effectively on their production area in the project. So I feel that collaboration is a very big skill of mine.
At the start of the project when Jessica talked about the essential question: Why, 400 years later, does the English-speaking world still gravitate/celebrate the works of William Shakespeare? I had no idea what the answer was. But after studying and working with Shakespeare’s plays for over a month the answer is clear to me. I have studied and performed other plays that are not by Shakespeare and after comparing them they don’t come anywhere close to being as good as Shakespeare’s plays. Coming to know how unique his plays are is just mind-blowing. If Shakespeare was alive today I think he would be the wealthiest person on the planet, and I don’t wealthy with lots of money but wealthy with lots of love. So many people would worship and adore him, and that is why we still worship him today
When the project first started I wasn’t that interested in Shakespeare. The year before when I was at Mountain Middle School we studied Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in theater class, but all we did was read it, we didn’t perform it or doing anything special with it. So when we started studying Macbeth I wasn’t too interested. But when I heard that we were going to perform it and what we were going to do with it I was very enthusiastic. My favorite part about the project was the fact that we were producing a shadow puppet performance. I had never done anything like it before and the process that we were going through to produce the show made it extremely fun. My best moment during the project was a day when everybody was working hard and not whining about how much work they had to do and just having fun producing Shakespeare.
This project was difficult in multiple ways. For one, when some people were working and some were just hanging out and not contributing to the project it made other people’s jobs harder. Such as when we were recording our voice for our characters an when one person made some noise or something we had to start all over again, which was really not fun. Another reason this project was difficult was because it was such a huge project. I was flabbergasted when I found out just how big this project was. I thought we would never be able to pull it off. But through the collaboration and hard work we all persevered through it and created an awesome show.
During this project I learned that I am actually a great collaborator. The documentation group I was in had only two people (myself and another documenter) so there wasn’t really a leader between us. But we had to collaborate together so we each could get the proper camera angle and lighting to fit what was best for the final production process video that we made. I also had to ask the people that I was filming to see what was best for them so they could keep working effectively on their production area in the project. So I feel that collaboration is a very big skill of mine.
At the start of the project when Jessica talked about the essential question: Why, 400 years later, does the English-speaking world still gravitate/celebrate the works of William Shakespeare? I had no idea what the answer was. But after studying and working with Shakespeare’s plays for over a month the answer is clear to me. I have studied and performed other plays that are not by Shakespeare and after comparing them they don’t come anywhere close to being as good as Shakespeare’s plays. Coming to know how unique his plays are is just mind-blowing. If Shakespeare was alive today I think he would be the wealthiest person on the planet, and I don’t wealthy with lots of money but wealthy with lots of love. So many people would worship and adore him, and that is why we still worship him today