Are Ads Making You Sick?

Ads shape thee choices you make in the marketplace. But how do they affect your health?

"Ads don't affect me in a conscious way," says Elizabeth, age 14. "I don't think I've ever reacted by saying, `Wow, I want that now!' after I saw an ad. It's more that it's in the back of my head. Sometimes I'll be walking through a store and see a product--and then remember somebody saying something good about it in a commercial. And the connection is already there, in my mind."

Then, almost before she's finished the sentence, Elizabeth remembers "a few times" when ads had a stronger effect.

"You know those pore-cleaning strips that are so popular now? The first time I saw an ad for those, it really made me want to do something right away--to go out and buy the strips and pull that stuff right off my face." Before the ads started, she doesn't remember worrying about "gunk" lurking in her pores.

"I do think one thing commercials try to do is make you feel self-conscious," says Elizabeth. "They want you to worry about zits and clean pores, about your hair being shiny enough, about how muscular you are, and how much you weigh. They push at me, bring it up more in my mind."

Elizabeth also realizes that she pays attention to ads for prescription drugs that could help her allergies ("Ask your doctor about ..."). She has been eating "way more Taco Bell" since that little dog turned up. And the Budweiser frogs make her think "those people are pretty funny, and so Budweiser must be kind of a fun thing to drink."

The advertising industry loves the term impressions. The more impressions (copies) of an ad (in any media) that go out, the more people it will reach. So maybe it's time to think about advertising's "impression" on you and your lifestyle.

"I don't pay attention to that stuff," you may say. But Michael Schudson, a University of California professor of communications, does. He writes in his book Advertising: The Uneasy Persuasion that "ads may be powerful precisely because people pay them so little heed that they do not call critical defenses into play." We may not pay attention, but we see and hear the messages all the same ... and, somehow, they find a way to "hang" with a few of our brain cells.

The fact is, advertising is so much the "wallpaper" of our world that most of us don't give it much conscious thought. Advertising is everywhere: in places we expect to find it (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, shopping carts, billboards), and in some new places, too--on the Net, on the sides of school buses, inside bathroom stalls, on hamburger wrappers, and even making a "special appearance" in movies and TV shows. And don't be surprised if the juicy apple you grab from the grocery bin has a sticker promoting the latest Jim Carrey video release. (It's already happened.)

Almost every big ad agency has a special team working on advertising aimed at children or teenagers. It's easy to see why. According to The New York Times, U.S. teens spent as much as $122 billion in 1998. What's more, various estimates say teens are a major influence on hundreds of billions more in family spending for food, clothes, entertainment, computers, travel--in short, everything from aspirin to zinc oxide ointments.

So, you're probably ready to believe that advertising has a big influence on your spending habits. Why else would all those advertisers be spending the Big Bucks getting their messages to you?

But do you believe advertising is also affecting your health habits? Not just the choice between the green cough syrup and the red stuff, but also the many choices you make that lead toward a healthy lifestyle ... or away from it.

With 20,000 TV ads whizzing past you every year, there's no way you can take them all apart for an in-depth analysis. But being street-smart in a media society (experts sometimes say "being media literate") is a skill you have to begin learning somewhere. Let's find some places where your health decisions and the advertising industry cross paths. Then you can think about the "real" health messages you're getting, not just the images on the surface.

Gotta Have Sweet? or Salty? or Fried?

The brown bear rampages through the room, tries on the old Scout hat, shoves an arm under the bed looking for ... what? Not the juicy sweet apple and orange he knocks aside as he roots around for ... Juicy Fruit gum, of course! As his mother pounds on the door and tells him, "Jimmy, you live like an animal!" he nods and grins, agreeing with her. "When you gotta have sweet, you gotta have Juicy Fruit!" says the voiceover.

OK, OK, so it is a funny ad. But under the humor, what's the message about nutrition and your eating habits? Here's another ad: A busy mom (about to leave on a business trip) is explaining the color-coded plastic containers she's left behind for Dad and the kids' next couple of meals. Sounds like good stuff--meat, veggies, salad. Mom's clearly put a lot of work into her "system." As the door closes behind her, Dad stares grimly into the fridge: "So, what do you guys want--blue or pink?" A perky voiceover chimes in: "Did somebody say McDonald's?" Of course they're not going to eat that homecooked, boring stuff. Happy Meals, here we come!

Nutrition experts say the biggest problems of the typical American diet include:

* too many "empty" sugar calories (in colas, candy, other snacks) that provide no real nutrition

* too little consumption of fresh foods, especially fruits and vegetables (which are chock-full of vitamins, fiber, minerals, and other good stuff)

* too many high-fat, "fast-food" meals

Why are we eating like this? In reviewing recent surveys, consumer researchers from the Yankelovich group found that over the past few years, more and more Americans told them that, even though they had heard all the health messages about sugar, salt, fat, etc., they "just didn't care" enough to change the way they were eating. This, said Yankelovich Partners, was a "180 degree" shift from the late 1980s, when a majority of people said they were "taking care of the problem" by trying to eat right. "Enjoy yourself and feel good" seemed to be the nutritional rule most Americans were following.

Should we blame advertising? Teens we talked to said advertising plays a part--but that there are lots of reasons why we're all grabbing "bad" food on the run.

"You're in between three activities you do after school, you're starving, you don't know if dinner will be there when you get home at seven," says Rachel, age 18. "It's just easier to grab something that's close. Advertising may affect where you go to buy the burger, but the reasons for eating fast food are already there: It's convenient, and we're all so busy."

Paul, age 17, says he likes to go to Subway "because it's the only fast food that isn't fried. It's more like a sandwich at home, and they run those ads about sandwiches under 6 grams of fat, or whatever. Of course, they mean without cheese or mayo--and I want the cheese and mayo!"

Paul is basically Mr. Clueless about nutrition. But he cares enough to have heard Subway's pitch about being the low-fat alternative to burgers and fries. He admits to eating "spicy fries, a Coke, and a bag of Doritos" for lunch at school every day. Yet he wishes the school cafeteria wouldn't imitate fast-food places. "It's all chicken nuggets and fries. I'd just like a good apple and something that's been cooked fresh, not reheated."

Cafeteria managers say, though, they have trouble getting teens to eat anything but a fast-food-style menu. "Our lunch is only 23 minutes long," says Paul, "and it's the one time of the school day when you want a little fun--and I guess we think of fast food as fun food. Maybe that's advertising."

So, we're back to the central questions: How much of how we eat is shaped by advertising--and would we eat differently if ads were different? (Say, dancing tomatoes and green beans instead of burgers and fries ...) Advertising didn't cause an economy where most parents need to work and nobody's at home cooking. Ads didn't create a world where teens bounce from school to job to "extracurriculars" without a break all day. But advertising pulled us toward a different style of eating over the past quarter-century. Smart advertisers knew we were crunched for time, and looking for a little "fun" from our food.

Lookin' Good: Advertising and Your Self-Image

What's wrong with ads for diet programs and exercise equipment? Nothing, as long as you know how to tell fact from fantasy. (See "Fact from Fantasy" on page 11.) You could argue that without advertising there'd be no "just do it" ads urging us to get up and work out (in the right shoes, of course). And we might not have nearly as much info about how to get smoother skin, bigger muscles, cleaner complexions, and such. But wait a minute: Is that health we're thinking about ... or something else? Does advertising push you to shape up and live well--or just to worry about all the ways you can never measure up to those superhunks and supermodels on the screen?

"In the last year, I've done much less aerobic exercise and much more weight lifting and situps," says Michael, a high school sophomore. "The exercises are to make my body look better; they're not about being healthier."

Rachel agrees that her "healthy choices" are spurred by worries about how she looks, too. "I don't deliberately do anything that's bad for my health, like smoking," she says. "On the other hand, I don't do anything much that's healthy unless Ithink it will make me look better. I wouldn't eat right if I didn't think it would make me look better."

Kate, age 19, agrees. "If cosmetic things--looking good--and good health overlap, that's all good. But if they don't connect, we'll do the cosmetic thing, because looking good is more important. That's the message we've been bashed over the head with for so many years, that even though in our heads we know we're perfectly OK looking, on some level we believe our thighs are too fat and our arms are flabby and we should be a size 4. I've never met a girl who was satisfied with her appearance, and I think that's advertising, a lot of it.

"And then," she adds, "the other thing is that we just don't believe anything we do is going to hurt our health much. There's plenty of time to be boring and eat tofu when we're 35. Some of us are serious good health types, but not many."

Teenagers, writes University of California advertising expert Michael Schudson, have a "floating, unformed sense" of who they are. "They may," he says, "try on several selves for size, and they are notoriously open to suggestions from peers, teachers, other adult role models, and the media.... They devour advertising, and may be more than usually susceptible to it while their identities are in flux."

Identity Crisis

Carol Moog, a psychologist and advertising consultant, was even more blunt in a recent interview with Current Health 2. "Teens are coming up with an identity based on the images they see in advertising," Moog says. "Teens are more vulnerable every year, as the ability of parents to be around and provide a mature presence at home is eroded by the economic picture. There's no place [for teens] to pull back to. You have increasingly rootless, disconnected young people, and advertising is growing in power because too often, nothing much else of value is happening in many kids' lives."

Moog says that even though teens may be aware that advertisers are manipulating them, they still want to imitate the "cool" or "pseudo-adult" social behaviors they see in commercials. "They may be saying `Advertising, right, trying to get me to do stuff? I make up my own mind. I do what I do.' But you still have the 6-year-olds buying makeup, people younger and younger getting plastic surgery, the 10-year-old boys who tell me they see beer commercials as a definite influence on how they want to be seen as guys, and the unbroken pressure to think about sexuality or to be sexual. And the reach and influence of advertising has been magnified so much by all the electronic media."

In her book Are They Selling Her Lips?, Moog says studies show young people often learn from and imitate the behavior of people on film or videotape (including commercials) just as much as if they were "real." She relates a story about a 16-year-old named Cynthia who had just wrecked her parents' car while driving drunk--and comes out of the accident physically unhurt but suicidal. Moog asked her why she'd been drinking beer since she was 14:

"I guess I'm just a party animal," she says with a half-laugh, half-hitch in her voice,

"Right. And you've just had the time of your life."

Cynthia sends me an icy stare. "Look, I'm sick of jerk doctors and my parents' --. I'd love to make them suffer."

"Do they drink?"

"Only at `Happy Hour,' as my mother calls it. Which for her is any hour she wants. And never beer. That's my drink."

"OK, why is that your drink?"

"I like it, that's all," she shouts back. "I just like action."

"And beer means action ?"

"Yeah"--Cynthia smirks--"unless you're an old bag."

"Cynthia's beer drinking," says Moog, "wasn't caused by advertising ... but images of frothy fun and frolic helped reinforce a direction of escape that nearly did her in. In a later session, she laughingly asked me if l thought she could ever be as happy as the `Beer Bunnies' looked on television.... Her bitterness about the illusion was obvious." To Cynthia, living with alcoholic parents and constant fights, the young-and-fun world of the beer commercials gave her the wrong message at the wrong time: Here is a way to escape from your troubles, to create a new self-image.

What Do Ads Do to Your Head?

"At a time when teens are dealing with all kinds of profound questions about themselves," Cynthia Moog says, "advertising promotes lack of discipline. An ad that shows `centeredness' is boring. It's the edgy, off-center, wild stuff that is used to attract and stimulate, to put teens in an emotional state." Advertising, she says, portrays "primitive" behavior as a good thing.

"Let's take the snack food category," she says. "How many products are positioned with the idea that they're so good, you can't stop eating them. If you like it, you'll lose control. And `being out of control' is part of the joy."

"Feed the rush," says the Surge ad. "Once you pop, the fun won't stop," says Pringles, as the entire stack of chips is (almost literally)inhaled by party goers.

"Why does society need to promote that kind of wild, out-of-control, off-balance behavior?" asks Moog. She sees "hyper" advertising as one more side of an "overstimulated, overscheduled, overintense, overpressured" world that leaves American teenagers ... very tired.

"It's a major characteristic of teenagers today," says Moog. "They're exhausted." When Moog gets going on the subject of advertising, she seems to see it not as a series of "pitches" for products, but as an overall mental health issue for the country. Advertising, she seems to be saying, is one of many players in a culture that just won't shut up and turn off ... and give us time to reconnect with our real selves.

"You can't just tell teens to `just say no' to advertising--that's a joke," says Moog. "But teens are intrigued by scientific things. Maybe one way for teens to start thinking about the effects of advertising is to talk about how things like sound effects, cutting techniques, music and composition in ads affect your body, not so much your thinking about a product.

"Advertising is designed to resonate [play off] existing feelings," adds Moog. "Perhaps if teens can learn to relax, get in touch with themselves, and then think about how watching an ad makes them feel--the stimulation, the agitation, the ranting--maybe they'd begin to get beyond `Boy, that's really cool' to `It makes me feel ... what?'"

It's an approach, says Moog, that might be worth your time.

Keeping an Independent Mind

Are you a Daria, or a Quinn? They're the sisters on the MTV series Daria, of course. Daria is suspicious of mainstream society and doesn't buy into the idea of being cool. Quinn, on the other hand, is into every fad diet, skin cream, and fashion trend that comes along.

Where do you fall on the spectrum between these two extremes? Are you naturally resistant to the lure of most advertising--or, frankly, pretty darn attracted by it?

Most of us are somewhere in between. But with advertisers doing research into teenagers' dreams and fantasies, and targeting ever-larger budgets to develop brand loyalty among young consumers, you need to be alert to advertising that tries to push your "hot buttons."

Because sometimes it's only a matter of shampoo or jeans.

But sometimes it's a matter of health.

for more information

Food and Drug Administration---Chicago District

300 South Riverside Plaza

Chicago, IL 60606 Brochure: "Quackery Targets Teens," single copy free.

Federal Trade Commission---Chicago Regional Office 55 East Monroe, Suite 1860 Chicago, IL 60603 www.ftc.gov

Brochures: "Fraudulent Health Claims: Don't Be Fooled," "The Skinny on Dieting, single copy of each free with self-addressed, stamped business-size envelope; or access Web site.

RELATED ARTICLE: Keep an Advertising "Log" for a Day

You'll need a small notebook and a pen, and some patience. Spend one day keeping track of every advertisement you see or hear.

* Where did you see it (on TV, in a school lunch line, on a T-shirt, poster, etc.), and what was it for?

* Put a check mark or star beside any ads that are directly or indirectly related to health.

* Think about it all at the day's end. How many ads did you list?

* Were you surprised by how many places you found ads? Was there any ad-free zone--someplace you spent time where there were no ads at all?

* Did you get tired of the project because there were so many ads to notice?

* Did you start to expand your idea about what kinds of ads "connect" with your health decisions? (It's not just about ads for medications and exercise equipment, but also ads for food, beer, diet programs, running shows. And it's also about ads that show behaviors/lifestyles that put teens "at risk.")

A question to think about: If you could arrange a day without advertising, what would it feel like to you? peaceful? boring? free? empty? Choose your own words....

RELATED ARTICLE: Fact from Fantasy: How to Think About "Miracle" Products

The first rule for evaluating a health claim--in print ads, "informercials," or any other forms--is that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Here is a short list of typical strategiees and phrases used to pull consumers in:

* The product is advertiseed as a quick and effective cure-all for a wide range of problems, not a specific one.

* The advertisers use words like "scientific breakthrough," "secret ingredients," "ancient remedy," "exclusive product," "miraculous," etc.

* The promoter claims "they" have been conspiring to keep this wondeerful product away from the public.

* The product is advertised as available only from one source, and payment in advance is required.

* The ad or informercial includes personal case histories claiming amazing results.

For example, ads that claim herbal products can "melt away" body weight are simply not true. To lose weight, you have to lower your calorie intake and increase your activity level through exercise.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

RELATED ARTICLE: Are Ads Selling Risky Behavior?

What are music videos, fashion layouts, beer and tobacco ads selling?

Music videos are advertisements for CDs and the musicians who make them. Critics say they also sell risky behaviors--smoking, drinking, drugs, sex and sexual violence, reckless driving, etc.--by linking them to the "cool," celebrity-filled worlds of rock, pop, or rap music.

Some fashion layouts try to connect their products to casual sexual relationships, the anorexic body, and the drug culture (love that "heroin chic" eyeliner!).

Beer ads tell young guys (the prime targets for these campaigns) that "You are your own dog." A tequila ad talks about a "Cuervo nation" where you can "let your inner lizard run free."

Ads for violent video games announce that "the line between life and death is a fraction of an inch." Healthy attitudes to carry around? Maybe not.

Tobacco companies have been under fire for years, accused of using "cool" advertising techniques to lure younger and younger teens and preteens to start smoking. From the Marlboro Man to Joe Camel, say critics, the industry made a concerted effort to create brand-related characters to attract teenage attention.

Does advertising seek to shape your health decisions?

Yes.

RELATED ARTICLE: Try This Short Experiment

Spend half an hour in silence, TV set off, getting in touch with your body and your feelings. Are you hungry? tired? Need a drink? Have a stomachache or headache? Feeling ... what? mellow? bored? amazingly tired? up? down? Close your eyes and just feel.

Now, tune the set to MTV (if possible) or another teen-heavy channel. Keep the sound off and don't really watch until the commercials come on. Then turn it up, and absorb it all.

Any reaction to the sudden change--from quiet room to "ad blitz" noise? After a couple of minutes, how are you feeling? Do you think Dr. Moog is correct in saying ads "agitate" your thoughts and emotions or "hyperstimulate" your body? Is it possible that ads make you focus on things "out there"--things to be wanted, lifestyles to be imitated--instead of on how you're feeling inside your own skin, your own life?