Get me some holy water and a priest, there's an Advertising Executive about!

[sparkindarkness]

As has previously been apparent, I am not the biggest fan of the advertising industry - especially in relation to "health" (using the term loosely) foods.

So it should come as no surprise that the latest special K advert caused the usual frothing fury


A resume of the advert (since I can't you tube it): you look at a series of photographs. In each is a woman in a red bathing suit. When she sees you are looking at her, the woman in the photograph instantly hides, especially trying to hide her stomach. The implication is that she's fat and ashamed to be seen in a swimsuit.

She is not fat. Not by any stretch of the imagination is she fat. She doesn't need to lose weight - and trying to get women to buy cereals to lose weight because THIS is the standard for what fat is? GRRRR

Then we wonder at anorexia. Well, we don't. But the advertising execs profess to have nothing to do with it.




Of course what's vaguely tangentally amusing is if you pull up their website and click on the little nutritional info: http://www.specialk.com/ you find out that one bowl of special k WITHOUT milk contains 9% Of your daily salt intake (and can I have another slap to whichever cunning person thought it was a good idea to hide salt content by only labelling sodium content?) and they've craftily not decided to tell you how much of your daily intake of sugar that 4g per 31g bowl makes up.


Which returns me again to my age old rant - how dumb are people. It's low FAT CEREAL. Since when does Cereal actually HAVE fat in it? We're talking toasted grains, fat content nil ANYWAY. Sugar is the culprit in cereals - and you'll find none of these wholegrain, high fibre (A cereal with wholegrains and high fibre! Well damn, who'd have thought it! Next they'll be selling us orange juice - now with vitamin C!) is screaming about sugar contents. Hmmm, funny that.

Comments

[logophilos.livejournal.com]

Actually, things like toasted muesli and so on are quite high in fat. But Special K is a loathsome food. Rolled oats should be good enough for anyone :) (in organic yoghurt, yummy!)

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

Reading a tabloid once, I saw an actress described as " at 5'6" and 130 pounds, a size 2".

When I was 5'6", and 130 pounds, I was a size 9.

Just a little more stupidity for you, in case you were running low.

[elrohana.livejournal.com]

I despair of a nation of people who cannot figure this shit out for themselves but need labels screaming 'low fat' and 'low calorie' to help them.

[kathminchin.livejournal.com]

Apparently the reason Special K is "better" than the average comparable cereal is because it's fortified with vitamins and minerals. However, if you compare it with a similar ceral (for example Rice Krispies or Cornflakes) it contains more salt and more sugar than the "high fat" varities.

The reasoning for the fortification is because "people on a diet may not get all the vitamins and minerals they need." The idiocy of this is amazing. All "sensible" diets (such as Weight Watchers" emphasise the "eat fruit and veg" - these are often foods which are considered to be "free" and not part of the calorie allowance, and dieters are encouraged to fill their plates full of steamed veggies. How, if you're following that advice, you suddenly need extra vitamins in your cereal is beyond me.

I recall also that Special K is higher in protein - like we need this fortified in the average Western diet.

As mentioned above, some cereals do contain a lot of fat. But they tend to be the ones packed with nuts; which makes the fats involved "good" fats anyway.

(I heard the rumour that the iron content was due to iron filings. There's a reason my cereal of choice is Weetabix, porridge or Shredded Wheat.)

It is indeed truly bizarre - and I hate the Special K adverts with a passion. I also hate the concept of "low fat" chocolate bars being needed to enable one to diet. I may be slightly biased about this as I'm currently trying to loose weight; but every food advert seems to either push some high fat / salt / sugar item of processed junk; or be promoting some low fat / salt / sugar item of processed junk. It's bloody annoying.

[suryaofvulcan.livejournal.com]

The one I find even more ridiculous is for Shredded Wheat. The ad goes on at length about how healthy and unadulterated it is, and then it's followed by a quick addendum promoting the 'honey-nut' version, which is of course loaded with fat and sugar.

Oh and someone up there ^^ mentioned the 'amount per 100g' - that's the legal requirement, and it allows you to compare products across a range of differing pack weights. Manufacturers can optionally declare an 'amount per portion' as well, but what we found happening there was that some foods were given ridiculously small portion size - for example your 125g yogurt pot might have been listed as containing 2 portions, not one. At least if you know the amount per 100g, ie the percentage, you can calculate how much fat is in the amount you're eating.

[ephemera.livejournal.com]

the single most annoying thing about that advert? Not only was she perfectly slim in the befores (and don't get me started on why not!slim =/= should hide in shame) she's *exactly the same size* in the afters.

[tinimaus.livejournal.com]

Yesterday I saw a girl that was clearly underweight (probably about a British size 6) referred to as a 'plus-size model' (no, I don't watch these modelling shows, but I was going round the horn to see what else was on).

I'm a British size 16. I suppose I'd be a exponential-scale model.

[seryan.livejournal.com]

Ads like that are why I just don't buy Special K. Just...just ugh!

[elrohana.livejournal.com]

I tend to find I don't have a problem with advertising because I don't watch TV. Only time I see adverts (I can mentally block them online and in newspapers/mags) is when I go to the cinema, and at that point I am always convinced that my not watching TV is a damn good idea.

[only-playing.livejournal.com]

This is one of the things that is wrong with this world. Because popular culture and advertisements put so much pressure on being beautiful, handsome, skinny, muscular, having white teeth, a tan, perfect hair, makeup, nails, powdered, perfumed, driving the perfect car, having the perfect house, 2.3 kids, white picket fence, dogs that won't shed, perfectly ironed clothes, $500 shoes, etc, etc, etc. Nobody looks like that and lives like that in the real world! And the people that do, have a $1000 a week cocaine habit cause they are under so much stress to be perfect.
/rant

[enigmatism75.livejournal.com]

A Chef where I used to work tried the Special K diet once. After a week she reckoned all it did was make her fart and that was why the advert at the time was women leaning against things to make a 'k'. They were all farting. :D