WIN Wyoming

Thought Bullets
for
October 2004 

I can still remember the first time I viewed Jean Kilbourne’s video called Killing Us Softly. Jean began the video by asking her audience to do something no one had probably asked them to do before; and that was to take advertising seriously. In all her videos and books, Jean has done a masterful job of demonstrating the power of advertising in shaping thoughts and behaviors of people who continually insist they are not influenced by advertising. With Jean Kilbourne’s assertion that advertising is a powerful force on human thoughts and behaviors, consider this: The nutrition promotion budget for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) soon-to-be released revised food guide pyramid is $1.8 million. In 2002, the beer industry spent more than $1 billion on advertising, and during the same year, about $240 million was spent advertising chewing gum.

• The U.S. food industry now spends an estimated $34 billion a year on advertising. Beer advertising leads the way for promoting a single food product with $1.2 billion in annual sales, followed by soft drinks at $768 million, cereals at $571 million, and candy at $545 million (based on 2002 annual advertising expenditures).
• Fast food companies out spend beer companies when it comes to advertising. According to a TNS Media Intelligence survey, in the first nine months of 2003, McDonald’s spent $465 million on advertising, followed by Wendy’s with $238 million and Burger King with $221 million. During the entire year of 2002, approximately $51 million was spent advertising fruit, and $47 million was spent advertising vegetables.
• John Webster, of the USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, states the government will not rely on media advertising alone to promote the new food guide pyramid. He says the government relies on "information multipliers" like educators, nutritionists, and government officials to disseminate nutrition messages.
• The VERB campaign, released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control, comes in as one of the most generous media funded projects of the federal government with a one year budget of $36 million. The program encourages children to be more physically active.
• The recently released government healthy living campaign called Small Step — www.smallstep.gov — was developed in cooperation with the Ad Council as a series of public service announcements. Many critics of the campaign, including those who embrace the healthier at every size approach, criticize the campaign’s reliance on weight loss as the marker for healthy living. Also, the campaign puts a heavy emphasis on personal responsibility while not addressing issues surrounding environmental influences that encourage Americans to overeat and remain physically inactive; such as advertising campaigns for high calorie/low nutrient dense foods.

Sources:
Kilbourne J. Killing Us Softly (video), Cambridge Documentary Films, 1979.

TNS Media Intelligence/CMR. Survey of restaurant advertising, 2003.

TNS Media Intelligence/CMR. Analysis of advertising spending by the food industry, 2002.

Martin A. Critics: Obesity fight starved for cash, U.S. relying on media generosity to promote goals. Chicago Tribune, March 14, 2004.

Compiled by Betty Holmes, MS, RD

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