Week 6: Blog Post #9: Media & the Perception of Food

Advertising is a very sly business, on average a total of 5,000+ advertisements and brands are exposed per person (Crazy, right?). Food is one business which is heavily advertised, from organic foods to fast foods, on billboards to magazine pages they are everywhere but how much of this advertising influence ones perception of food? I believe the whole advertising business does. McDonald’s “McPick Two” commercial shows how enjoyable it can be to have two products for the price of Five Dollars. People are eating with their friends, their perfect teeth are shining, it is diverse. The reality is when you buy two McDonald’s meals you will without a doubt feel guilty about the fat intake. Well I certainly do hence why I dislike these advertising schemes. 

Food marketing is a large business and does influence the health of the nation, there are many fast food chains and alternatives to check out, and with advertisements looking so perfect it’s no wonder why food chains are earning big bucks whilst people are earning collective calories. It takes “several hours” to create a burger that is perfect on a poster whereas it takes minutes in real life within an unpleasant environment. People are unaware with what is happening beyond the advertisements and are only seeing what is visible to them. More denotations over connotations. Dominos Pizza released a commercial this year revealing their new “DXP” …except the only thing they were advertising was a delivery car rather than the actual product itself which is the pizza. Food marketing are looking outside of the box and are looking for another avenue to appeal to a wider customer range. Personally I thought that commercial was decent, it had a concept of how pizza deliveries should be however the message still remained which was that they are enticing you to buy their product despite talking about a whole new topic. It is scary to think how these campaigns gather customers to buy food regardless of health and what is worse is that we follow. People are ignoring the health factors and are seeing enjoyment over wellbeing. We need to look at food in a whole new manner.