Intuitive Eating

5 Secrets food advertisers aren’t telling you

November 17, 2015

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A Certified Eating Disorders Registered Dietitian (CEDRD) with a master's degree in dietetics & nutrition. My passion is helping you find peace with food - and within yourself.

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  1. Their end goal is to make money.  Everything they do revolves around this.
  2. They don't actually care about your health.  No matter how much fiber they add in or "superfoods" they include they primarily want your money, and if making you believe this product is healthy is what sells it then that is what they'll do.
  3. They are invested in making you eat more.  When you eat more you buy more. 
  4. They use food packaging to trick you.  Marketers do a lot of research on what type of packaging is most appealing to their target consumer.  There's a reason that cartoon characters are on the boxes of kiddie snack foods and breakfast cereals.  They also package the food so you'll eat more.  Did you realize that a serving size of Poptarts is 1 pastry.  That's what the nutrition info on the back of the box is based on.  Yet they package it as sets of 2 pastries.  But they don't want you to see the calories in 2 of them because it might scare you away.  Sneaky.
  5. They spend a lot of money figuring out how to increase your desire for their food.  Everything from the photoshopped images of the food on the package or advertisement to the celebrities that endorse it is designed to make you want to buy it more.  Have you ever noticed the way a person eats the food in commercials is always very dramatic and suggests the food is insanely delicious?  Or how about the smell of the bakery in the shopping mall.  (Double bonus for the mall is that studies show that the smell of cookies also makes you buy more retail goods.) 

So you can see that food advertising, just like any form of advertising, is about making money.  It influences us in ways that are both obvious and subtle.  I'm not mad at the marketers for this.  I just want you to be aware of the ways in which you are being influenced in your decisions.

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