So we talked a little bit, a lot actually, about individual responsibility and the obesogenic environment which now rules out the question of, "Okay. What might we be able to do at a policy or public health level?" So now I want to talk though first, about this other element of the obesogenic environment mix and talk some about food marketing and how do this, in addition to portion changes that have occurred, there's this other element of the priming environment, and that is food marketing, which is really also blown up in recent decades, a lot more saturated messages now. So is this a big deal though? Does this actually matter much? Are people really affected so much by food marketing and advertising, and whatever shows up on the phone? Can we filter this stuff out? Let's see what it actually happens. What we know about food marketing is that, it increases awareness. We did that little on, think outside the bond or whatever, and you know what these are/ you guys missed it because you're too young, but I was a rattling off the McDonald jingle from the '80s or whatever it was. To all-beef patties, special sausage, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, sesame seed-bun. That's the Big Mac. Yeah and that's ingrained because that's what was on the commercials for all those years. But this also improves people's food marketing, affects people's attitudes towards a food, "This must be good. Everybody seems to be enjoying it on these ads, I bet it's tasty." But then also influences people's willingness to purchase a product obviously. Then all of these factors contribute to consuming a specific product. So this is how the marketing world works. It's how it drives our individual selections and preferences. Maybe we should make some commercials eating kale. We can all laugh and have a good time. Like a salad eating commercials. Yeah, we think of this as being an absurd notion, but hey, people will enjoy themselves on the beach playing volleyball and eating Cool Ranch Doritos or whatever. So why wouldn't they be eating oranges or whatever else? Okay. So here's what we know, this affects all these things. But then is also like, "Really? Am I going to see a food advertisement and is that really going to drive me to eat something like right then?" No, all it does really is remind me of that food. That's it? I don't know, let's see. Let's see. Here are some experiments that investigated exactly that question. So what we see here is that there was a lab paradigm where n people watch TV. Just like a regular television show, there were commercials interspersed throughout the program, but the experimenters manipulated the type of commercial that was shown. So people either saw snack ads, nutrition ads or car ads as the control. What they found were observed differences in the amount that people eat of the snack food that was provided in the lab. There was actually a really strong effect with respect restrained eaters. So restrained eaters are actually those who are trying to diet, to lose weight. We see that when people who reported being in the state of actively wanting to lose weight or trying to reduce their intake, they were the ones who are the most susceptible to the infusion of view snack food ads. Speaking of the vulnerable populations, this effect is actually also demonstrated among young children. So these were school, elementary, toddler age, I think the kids were four to six. We see that the kids who were exposed to food advertisements consumed many more Goldfish crackers. Are you buying it? I can see it. I heard that in grocery stores, they have junk foods at children's eye level. So then the kids can see it more easily and then they can persuade their parents to buy it. It's they really want it badly or maybe they saw this advertising too. I will tell you that taking a small child to the grocery store is one of the most unpleasant experiences in my day-to-day personal life. They know what they're doing and boy, yeah. It used to be when he was little, he would just try to grab a melon or an avocado. Then TV happened and now it's all the- Candy bar, screaming while you're trying to check out. Yeah. Also the little celebrity endorsements who are actually cartoons. So there's a whole lot of Sponge bob on the cereal boxes or always wants whatever the character is, type of fruit roll-up or whatever else. So they've actually done experiments around that too, of attaching a cartoon character to something like a banana and the kids will choose the banana over the chips, or the goldfish, or the preferred food, as long as they're bringing in that cute sticker set and who are the characters. So yeah. Interesting. Very interesting. There's a lot of knowledge from the marketing world, the advertising world that the flip side, the nutrition experts have not drawn in and aren't capitalizing on the same sorts of knowledge in terms of what primes and motivates people to make certain food choices.
