Fast Food Nation: What the All-American Meal is Doing to the World

My general thoughts about Fast food advertising being aimed at families:

Focus is on families being able to feed their kids the 'fun' and 'exciting' food. Families are a target for the fast food industries because they bring about multiple customers, with a likelihood that they will return because families tend to follow certain routines. Companies also know that parents use food in order to comfort or reward children, as well as adults generally also using that system for themselves. There are certain ideas and loyalties formed toward brands that are reinforced each time there is a good experience surrounding them, and appealing to a positive family environment (families being associated with health, happiness, love, joy, support, trust etc) is a way of positively reinforcing these. 

I've been reading sections of this book, which I doubt would be classed as an academic source but is an interesting reference. It aims to point out what people don't notice 'behind the shiny, happy surface of every fast food transaction'. It's interesting to read parts of the history of fast food chains like McDonalds, and to read about some of the not-so-honest efforts to win over the hearts and stomachs of children and families.

I included a bunch of screen shots for reference.

Appealing to children in order to manipulate the parents and thus sell to whole families. There are a number of efforts made through advertising and campaigns to ensure that there is an emotional connection formed between a young child and the McDonald's brand to provoke sales and also adhere to the cradle-to-grave advertising strategies. 

Interesting points and quotes include:

"A child who loves our TV commercials and brings her grandparents to a McDonald's gives us two more customers"

A persons 'brand loyalty' may begin as early as the age of two

Quotes

Jenkin, G et al. (2008) Identifying 'unhealthy' food advertising on television: a case study applying the UK Nutrient Profile model [Online] Cambridge: Cambridge Journals Online. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1368980008003029 [Accessed: 29 November 2015]

This environment is defined as ‘the sum of the influences that the surroundings, opportunities, or conditions of life have on promoting obesity in individuals or populations’⁽¹⁾. One component of this hazard is the frequent exposure of ‘unhealthy’ food advertising on television^(2–4). Foods high in fat and/or sugar are the most commonly advertised foods in the UK⁽⁵⁾, the USA^(6,7) and Australia^(8,9) during children’s television viewing times. 

Recently there has been considerable dispute, between public health advocates and representatives of the food and marketing industries, over application of the term ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’ to particular foods. The food and marketing industries argue that there is no such thing as ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’ foods, only an ‘unhealthy diet’⁽¹⁹⁾. The food industry has also suggested that any system to classify single foods as ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’ is likely to be so complex that it would be unwieldy and unworkable. 



http://www.sustainweb.org/childrensfoodcampaign/junk_food_marketing/

BBC NEWS. (2008) Factory gloom worst since 1980. [Online] Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7681569.st m. [Accessed: 19th June 2012]. 
Stustain (20

Junk food marketing contradicts all the messages about healthy eating children receive, undermining their ability to choose better food and their parents' efforts to feed them healthily.  Given the crisis in children's diet, it is vitally important that children are persuaded to eat more healthily, not less healthily due to being bombarded by junk food advertising.

Studies by the Food Standards Agency and others into the effects of junk food marketing shows that it works directly by influencing children's food preferences, and also (more powerfully) indirectly by influencing what family and friends consider to be a 'normal' diet.


The Objects of Affection: Semiotics and Consumer Culture - Arthur Asa Berger

'...there is a question of the emotional pleasures of consumption, the dreams and desires which become celebrated in consumer cultural imagery...' Mike Featherstone: Consumer Cultures & Postmodernism 1991:13 (pg 35)

'Advertising works by generating dissatisfactions and anxieties in people and feeds on the alienation that pervades capitalist societies.' (pg 45)

'The aim of this advertising, it would seem, is to plant emotional cues in us that can eventually be utilised to sell a product' (pg 47)

McDonalds Christmas Ad Campaign

Totally not academic, but....

This sickening ad campaign for McDonalds fast food featuring the most cretinous family in the world aims to persuade families to record themselves singing in a chance to get onto an advert themselves. 

I feel like this is everything that is wrong with the world summed up in 60 seconds of vomit-worthy garbage. Who does this around Christmas? Why?

Essay Structure Session

I've neglected CoP for a while because I've been rubbish at splitting up my time. I keep getting carried away with 504.. I need to start thinking seriously about my essay because I desperately do not want it to all be totally last minute.

We had a session discussing how to structure the essay.
We need to be able to demonstrate that we can read, summarise and analyse academic texts
Discuss the topic or theme of my choosing
Look for ways to explore the question


Research question
How is the family unit represented in fast food advertising today?

Academic Sources

I've found on loads of occasions that I've found academic sources but have to register with a site or pay to see them which is really annoying. Also I need to reactivate my OpenAthens account somehow to access some of them. I'll update this section:

Livingstone, S (2005) Assessing the Research Base for the Policy Debate Over the Effects of Food Advertising to Children [Online]. London: LSE Research Online. Available from: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/1012/1/FOODADVERT.pdf [Accessed: 28 October 2015]
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/1012/1/FOODADVERT.pdf

Jenkin, G et al. (2008) Identifying 'unhealthy' food advertising on television: a case study applying the UK Nutrient Profile model [Online] Cambridge: Cambridge Journals Online. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1368980008003029 [Accessed: 29 November 2015]

Not academic, but will look at 'Fast Food Nation: What the All-American Meal is doing to the World' by Eric Schlosser

Illustration (No more than 3)

Map of structure (4 main arguments)
- The nuclear family vs adverts that try to focus in on current social issues, relationships etc. How advertising aims to manipulate our emotions / get an emotional response.
- Conflicting messages about healthiness and happiness. Showing a happy, fit looking family eating the kind of food that we all know is proven to be unhealthy?
- Do we buy it? Does this kind of advertising work? Do people relate to this? Are these brands supporting the family ethos or is just an attempt to create the illusion of a particular set of morals? Is it an attempt to cover up the downfalls of the fast food industry? Does featuring these kinds of relationships in adverts put pressure on people to respond by acting in the way that they are told they should? Is it purely a convenience to not cook, and just buy cheap fast food?
OR
- Core issue is that it is appealing to children which puts parents under pressure. Childhood obesity and links to the amount of fast food and junk food advertising aimed at families and also at children.
- The fast food industry; likening to the tobacco industry in the way that it is unhealthy and aimed at families, children etc. Just how much damage is the industry doing to our health, our understanding and education about food, and the environment?

Peer Feedback
I didn't actually get a whole lot of peer feedback from the group session. However I'm aiming to get some feedback in a house crit soon which will hopefully raise some questions and help me to consider some things I might not have already.

Books that I have taken out of the library:

The Objects of Affection. Semiotics and Consumer Culture by Arthur Asa Berger

The Essence of Consumer Behaviour by Jim Blythe

The McDonaldization of Society by George Ritzer

Family Studies, An Introduction by Jon Bernardes

Panopticism - Institutions and Institutional Power Lecture

- 'Power' that certain groups in society have over others
Existing as physical institutions or as institutions as a form of organisation.
How these effect our thoughts, feelings, behaviours and attitudes.

Michel Foucault

- Discipline to shape and control us - creating what Foucault calls 'docile' bodies, aka passive people
- His 2 most famous works charting the rise of prisons and asylums
- Traces the point in which mad and sane are discovered
- Starts historically:
'Madness & Civilisation' book
Madness didn't always exist in society. In the Middle Ages, madness wasn't seen as negative (the happy idiot)
As society develops, this was no longer endearing. Industrialisation brought about the rise of new social attitudes about who was 'useful' and who was 'useless' in society.

'The Great Confinement' starts
Giant workhouses/prisons - anyone deemed useless to society was locked up and made to work to help to 'improve their character'.
Forced people to be productive to society under the threat of being beaten and punished

Eventually this began to be seen as corrupt. Rather than correcting deviants, it accelerated them.

So, specific institutions were created to correct specific deviants, aka, the formal creation of:
Hospitals
Asylums
Prisons

Asylums operated under a different disciplinary tactic. Instead of threatening punishment, to control the insane, the inmates were regularly treated like children. Positive behaviour was reinforced.
Different than just forcing people to behave - different than the society that represses.
Now using more subtle forms of mental control.

With the birth of the institutions, new forms of knowledge were produced e.g. off the back of the asylums, psychiatry was formed. Legitimises and reproduces this practice.
Criminology from prisons
Institutional experts were created.

Foucault aimed to show how these forms of knowledge and rationalising institutions affect people. They make us internalise our own responsibility...

They teach us to self regulate and control ourselves.

Pre-modern society where we had a king. The goal of punishment was to be as grizzly as possible in order to teach other people. Control through this visual, scary punishment = displaying the power of the king.
Being hung, drawn and quartered did nothing to teach one person, but effectively controlled everyone else.

Disciplinary society and disciplinary power in Modern society.
- Creating certain techniques to control us rather than just punish us
- Discipline is about monitoring and surveying people to make them more productive as Foucault says.

Panopticism as a disciplinary technique

Panopticon was designed by Jeremy Bentham 1791

Design for an institutional building. He was a philosopher trying to create a multi-functional space that would be as effective as possible for whatever use anyone wanted Could be a school, prison, hospital etc.

Specific layout with cellular units around the outside where individuals could be kept. Never built in his lifetime, but has been now. Supervision tower in the centre.
Building ensures maximum visibility.
From central observation tower, supervisor can see everyone.
Everyone in cells can only see supervisor - the face of the institution.
Exact opposite to dungeon where deviants are locked away out of view. It is placing them on permanent display and scrutiny.

Foucault thinks this is a metaphor for the way that society treats its people. Always being watched and every action is monitored. This sensation of permanently feeling watching is internalised. This begins to alter your behaviour. You are gradually trained to start disciplining yourself.
You take responsibility for your own actions.
Process assures automatic, self reproducing power. People end up willingly submitting to power.
E.g. Prisoner - no possibility to escape
Workhouse - no slacking
Makes people more productive.

Fear of being caught out
Panopticons are so effective at internalising. Eventually a supervisor isn't even needed, people regulate themselves.

Identity Lecture

30/10 Session

Research Question needs to be focussed and specific

Practical work needs to be general and broad

When starting to think about the practical work, it should be:
Explorative
Speculative
Relative
Open
Playful

We spent the session drawing in order to begin conjuring up ideas and ways in which we can begin thinking more about our sketchbooks. The first task was to quickly draw ten things to do with the words political and NHS together.
Then we had to take one of these drawings and come up with another ten to do with a social issue reflecting on that.
Following this, we took one drawing from the first ten, one from the second, and combined them along with something to do with our theme in a way that it would link in with our essay.
Whaaaaaat...
I did some really terrible drawings of some equally terrible ideas that are barely worth blogging:

I found this really tricky for a bunch of reasons:
1. It's hard to come up with ten different ideas in such a short amount of time
2. Drawing with no reference at all means ideas don't always come out right
3. Drawing about something I know little about is a challenge
4. Trying not to go for the obvious is hard
5. Combining the ideas of images without just creating a bizarre hybrid image that makes no sense is difficult
6. It was friday afternoon and my brain was not functioning

This task introduced us to the idea of instinctive drawing in order to think through the process.
- Trying to conceptualise
- It wasn't to do with the quality (thank god) but the ideas

The last task asked us to draw a bunch of hats reflecting the themes: Historical, social, cultural, technological and political
Then we had to draw a hat relating to our theme

I definitely think the session helped. It clarified that the drawing side of the module can be really loose, general and it can go off on tangents (to some extent) as long as its about getting ideas down 


Research Question Feedback with Pete

I also had a chat with Pete at the end to narrow down on my research question and I'm now going more down the path of researching the representation of the family unit in fast food advertising. 
I was told to look at advertising from the 50s up until now, and look at the similarities of the nuclear family

I can look at the adverts of McDonalds and KFC who have continuously focussed on social issues, relationships, emotions etc for their ad campaigns. Using new issues for branding. Adoption, step parents. Now focussing in on the 'less typical' family in order to relate to more people. 

- Look at Naomi Klein - No Logo
One chapter in particular - The Brand Expands

I need to come up now with a specific question. 

Research & Practice - Find, Observe, Record images

Walking around Tesco Express today helped me to collect images in support of research for my essay. The way in which junk food and unhealthy foods are advertised and marketed throughout the shop was really over the top. I'd noticed it a bit before, but I'd never actually realised that there is chocolate/confectionary on EVERY aisle. As soon as you enter the shop, at the end of the first aisle there are always deals on unhealthy foods like crisps, chocolates and fizzy drinks. 

Down that first aisle is full of high sugar and high salt foods like chocolate bars and crisps. 

All of this is opposite the sandwiches to tempt people to buy them around their lunch time. 

Then a small section is dedicated to fruit and veg, before you have to work your way through the rest of the shop to get to the tills. 

Chocolates are positioned next to bread, cereal, tinne meat/vegetables/fish and alongside bottled water. It's impossible to avoid. 

It's in your face constantly, begging to be bought. 

No matter where you are in the shop, there will be some junk food in your eyeline I swear. 

And of course it's right before the tills incase you want to grab some cakes and pies at the last minute for a quid. 

I'm also planning on looking at how advertising and marketing is aimed at children and how important it is that kids are properly educated about food, diet and exercise from an early age. 

Not only am I wanting to look at obvious junk food, but the issue of added sugar in what we think should be low sugar foods, like bread, cereals/breakfast bars and some ready prepared meals, even savoury foods like soups etc. 

I've always thought that schools should educate the children better about food groups, important aspects of diet and healthy lifestyles, and also what to look out for when checking the ingredients of our food. 

I did GCSE food tech and still didn't really feel like I knew that much. It's only over the past 5 or 6 years when I've been cooking all of my own food for myself and doing my own shopping that I've taken the time to research things myself. 

It's a confusing industry though, full of conflicting information and recommendations. I'll look into this further.

Sketchbook work: 

Added Sugar Label Article (US)

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/07/24/425908798/no-more-hidden-sugar-fda-proposes-new-label-rule

No More Hidden Sugar: FDA Proposes New Label Rule

Sixty-five grams of added sugar. That's how much you'll find in a 20-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola.

But can you picture 65 grams? It's about 16 teaspoons worth of the sweet stuff.

The Food and Drug Administration wants to make it easier for Americans to track how much added sugars we're getting in the foods and beverages we choose.

So, in addition to a proposed requirement to list amounts of added sugars on the Nutrition Facts panels, the FDA is now proposing that companies declare a daily percent value, too.

What this means is that, instead of just listing the 65 grams of added sugar in that Coke, soda companies would be required to list that it represents 130 percent of the recommended daily intake. In other words, that one bottle contains more added sugar than you should be eating in an entire day.

The percent value would be based on the recommendation that added sugars should not exceed 10 percent of total calories. In a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet, that works out to a daily maximum of about 12 teaspoons.

i

Left: The current Nutrition Facts panel on foods. Right: The label changes that the FDA proposed in 2014 would list added sugars. Now the FDA wants the label to list the percent daily value, too.

FDA

Added sugars include all the sweeteners that food companies put into their products. That limit does not include sugar from fruits and other foods that are naturally sweet.

In announcing the new proposal, the FDA says it has a responsibility to give Americans the information they need to make informed decisions.

"For the past decade, consumers have been advised to reduce their intake of added sugars, and the proposed percent daily value for added sugars on the Nutrition Facts label is intended to help consumers follow that advice," wrote Susan Mayne, director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, in a release announcing the proposal.

When sugar is added to foods and beverages to sweeten them up, it adds lots of calories without providing nutrients.

And as we've reported, over the last several year, evidence has been mounting that consuming too much sugar can increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

The FDA proposal expands on changes recommended in 2014, when the FDA laid out a template for a new overhauled Nutrition Fact panel.

The FDA will take public comment on the new proposal for 75 days, and the agency says it "will consider comments on the original and this supplemental proposed rule before issuing a final rule."

It's likely the agency will hear from food companies. The Sugar Association has already weighed in, questioning whether the move to limit added sugars to no more than 10 percent of daily calories is backed by adequate science.

Reading Texts & Writing About That Reading

Essay Research References

Some links to information / articles about the Sugar Tax

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2015/10October/Pages/Controversial-sugar-tax-report-published.aspx

http://www.northantstelegraph.co.uk/news/top-stories/could-a-sugar-tax-help-curb-child-obesity-1-7028223

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/24/sugar-tax-poll-obesity-cameron-oliver

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34603118

Public Health England report - Good for looking up statistics and plans for action etc
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/470179/Sugar_reduction_The_evidence_for_action.pdf