Was reading today about a group who have “shamed” companies such as MacDonalds, Kellogs and Krispy Kreme for using apparent “healthy” messages to promote their unhealthy products.
It’s true.
Many companies spotlight one aspect of their product, *low in fat* but make no mention of the seventeen spoonfuls of sugar per bite.
It’s called marketing.
Shaming companies into utilizing a more ethical way of appealing to the young minds of our children is perfectly fine, admirable in fact.
But it doesn’t absolve our duties as parents to teach our children to be media savvy.
I don’t see the point in bringing up our children in a cotton wool community because we don’t live in a cotton wool world. Advertising of children’s products is the first way in which we can teach our children to read between the lines. It’s the equivalent of media pull-up-pants.
My kids can beg and plead and show me their best rendition of sweet puppy-dog faces but I still will not buy them Fruit roll ups. Ask them why and they dutifully reply: “Because they are not as healthy as they pretend to be.”
If we sanitise all children’s advertising how will they cope with the big, ugly, truth of the grown up world? Ever wondered why all those lovely old people believe everything that’s spouted on those commercial Current Affair programmes? It’s simple, they grew up without media training. Let’s face it- most of them grew up without media. They see the news as having a voice of authority, and like a Doctor’s, it’s one that is never questioned. It would be nice if everything on these current affairs programs was honest and real and we were safe to believe. Sadly that will never be the way. Business is business and no program on television or article in a magazine is without it’s bias. In one form or another.
Krispy Kreme’s school fund raising campaign seems to take the biggest battering of them all.
How dare they entice families to purchase super sweet, high fat donuts in the name of school sponsorship? This isn’t encouraging a healthy lifestyle at all. Yet there’s no public outrage over all the chocolate fundraising that Cadbury has done over the years?
But maybe it’s because Cadbury has a glass and a half of real dairy milk in every block. And we all know that milk is very healthy for you.
Isn’t it?