As implied in the previous post, supplements aren’t the only products that are marketed using deceptive ads and label claims. The food industry often uses similar tactics… it’s just more subtle. The PR people for most food corporations are Jedi Masters when it comes to manipulating images and telling selective truths; so while they don’t actually tell\u00a0lies, it’s often hard to see the difference.<\/p>\n
For example, back in my grad school daze, Campbell Soup started an ad campaign based around a catchy slogan: “Soup is good food.” The television ads, in particular, used\u00a0images of home cooked soup\u00a0to lead viewers to a logical fallacy:<\/p>\n
As we all know, of course, soup isn’t necessarily good food – depends on what you put in it. But that’s where all the soft-focus “home-cooked” imagery came in, ’cause everyone knows that homemade soup is loaded with good stuff.<\/p>\n
So it was a neat trick, particularly since the print ads were embellished with factoids extolling the vitamin\/mineral content of the soups. I recall one ad, for example, that solemnly proclaimed Campbell’s tomato soup contained as much vitamin C as a serving of apricots.\u00a0 This was true enough, although\u00a0the company conveniently failed to mention\u00a0that apricots are NOT a particularly good source of vitamin C. The irony is that Campbell was proclaiming for all the world to see that their product was – at best – a mediocre source of Vitamin C; but doing it in a way that would\u00a0leave the opposite impression. After all, most people know that fresh fruit provides vitamin C, right? And if apricots weren’t a good source of vitamin C, why on earth would the company be bragging about it?<\/p>\n
The point is that images and\u00a0virtuous-sounding claims can create a “halo effect” around products. So\u00a0manufacturers don’t have to tell lies… why bother\u00a0when\u00a0subtle manipulation of people’s expectations and assumptions will do the trick?<\/p>\n