Sanity Check: Food Porn

To: Manufacturers of Healthy Foods

From: Concerned Consumer

Re: Food Porn

For quite some time, I’ve noticed a trend in food advertising that can only be called… food porn.

Examples abound. Hot chicks selling hamburgers. Or spicy chicken sandwiches, albeit for burger chains. Female office workers ogling cute guy drinking a soda. Semi-cute men attracting hot chicks simply by showing up at a local hang out and ordering a beer.

OK, it’s more than a trend. It’s a deluge. And I’m not exactly unique in noticing. Who hasn’t? That’s because sex sells.

Never mind that the burger tastes like seasoned cardboard between sponges—and it’s not that difficult to create a much tastier version at home. (And quicker too. Everyone knows those fast food drive-thru lines are slower than a deep fryer set on “low.”)

These commercials appeal to the most primal part of our brains, encoding their messages until they become an almost subliminal part of our psyches, like so: sex, soda, sex, soda, sex, soda… Hey, I want a soda!

Now, why do I bring the obvious to your attention, ye suppliers of low-sugar, high fiber cereals; vendors of fresh fruit and vegetables; merchants of lean meat?

Because just the other day, in my mailbox appeared a nutrition newsletter, citing several products that advertise themselves as healthy but which actually contain unhealthy additives and high amounts of saturated fat.

And the newsletter condemned the products as… food porn.

As if being called food porn is a bad thing!

We’re in a nutritional crisis in this country. Why, a U.S. government survey just recently out says that 2/3 of adults in our country are overweight or obese, and 1/3 of our kids are either overweight or on the borderline of becoming so—the most ever.

Meanwhile, you healthy-eating proponents keep trying to appeal to our frontal lobes with logic and reason about healthy eating habits… all the while our reptilian brains are humming: sex, soda, sex, soda, sex, soda…

Hey, I want a soda!

Anyway, it’s time to turn fresh fruit and veggies, whole grains and lean meats into food porn.

Now, stop retching at the thought. I know you can do it.

Think a modern-day Eve in a luxurious garden, munching an apple.

Or can you get the clip of Clark Gable playing Rhett Butler, replace his pencil thin mustache with a sexy skim-milk mustache and dub him saying, “Frankly my dear, I don’t eat fatty foods?” Or something like that?

Salsa dancers, promoting salsa… served with whole grain, baked chips, of course?

A hot blond on a mechanical bull, eating a turkey sandwich on whole wheat?

OK, that last one’s overdone, I realize.

But I’m sure you get the point. Give up trying to appeal to our reason about why we should eat healthily. Instead, give us some ads that have our reptile brains humming: sexy, celery, sexy, celery, sexy, celery…

Hey! I want some celery!