Does Food Advertising Contribute to an Unhealthy Diet? The United States food industry spends billions of dollars per year to market and advertise products; in fact, the Federal Trade Commission found that in 2006, $1.6 billion was spent on marketing to children and adolescents alone. Unfortunately, most of that amount is used to promote highly processed, highly packaged foods and much of it involves cross-promotional campaigns that tie products to movies, television shows, and animated characters.

Do food ads compel consumers to eat junk food? Do food companies and advertising agencies have a responsibility to help people eat a healthy diet? After you’ve read the arguments for and against, answer the critical thinking questions and decide for yourself.

34.1 Yes

• Food advertising, particularly ads targeted at children, is pervasive. Every day, children view, on average, 15 TV food advertisements,  and an overwhelming 98 percent of these ads promote products high in fat, sugar, and/or sodium.

• Sugar-sweetened breakfast cereals, soft drinks, confectionery items, and savory snacks are the most frequently advertised categories, with fast-food promotion continuing to gain marketing share. Promotion of unprocessed foods, such as fruit and vegetables, whole grains, and milk, is found to be almost zero.

• There is evidence that limiting children’s exposure to food advertising will reduce the prevalence of childhood obesity.

• Food ads cause people to consume more than just those foods that are advertised. In one study, adults consumed more of both healthy and unhealthy snack foods following exposure to snack food advertising. These effects were not related to reported hunger or other conscious influences.

34.2 NO

• Children and adults are active consumers of advertising from an early age and they interpret critically what they see and hear rather than being passive recipients of advertising messages.

Further, most people are smart enough to know that fruits and vegetables are better for them than cookies and chips. If they’ve made the conscious decision to eat healthfully, television commercials aren’t going to bring them back to pizza and doughnuts.

• Regions like Quebec and Sweden that have banned all advertising to children still have high obesity rates.

• Americans are actually very healthy. Our life expectancy continues to reach all-time highs. Deaths from heart disease, cancer, and stroke-the country’s three biggest killers-have been in decline for 15 years.

• If Americans truly want to eat a healthy diet, companies that produce healthy food will flourish.

• In recent years, many major food manufacturers have significantly re-formulated their products to reduce salt, fat, or sugar content. In many cases, the product being advertised is very different from previous versions.

34.3 What do you think?

1. Do you think people are more likely to buy less-healthy foods because of food advertising?

2. Has an ad recently influenced your own purchasing habits?

3. Are food companies ethically obligated to help us eat healthfully?

4. Why are fruits and vegetables less advertised than processed food?