I was listening to the radio in the car today, something I usually don't do. For one, I haven't yet found a station that plays the songs I like (seeing as it would have a listenership of, like, me, I'm not exactly surprised), and two, I hate the ads. I have developed quite a music collection over the years and spent hours downloading my CDs to my iPod. Today, however, I was in my mom's car and lacked the high-tech paraphernalia I usually use. So radio it was.

This experience- about 30 minutes of radio in total- just confirmed my distaste for radio in general and ads in particular. Not just any ads, you see, but food ads. Specifically ads for foods that are considered the stereotypical female diet foods. Foods like yogurt.

This particular ad was for Kroger's lowfat yogurt, yogurt that was not just advertised as "lowfat." No, this yogurt was called "Kroger's Guilt No! Delicious Yes! Lowfat Yogurt." Which would have been bad enough, but, of course, it wasn't. I didn't get to write down the entire copy, but I did scribble down the line that absolutely had my jaw on the floor:

If you don't know that delicious comes with a serving of guilt, you're not a woman with a waistline!

Holy leaping stereotypes, Batman! I tried to analyze how many stereotypes were in that one little tag line, but I lost count. Just totally lost count.

I didn't know that one little ad--one thirty second slot of time--could so smashingly capture everything that is wrong with how food is advertised and conceived of in this country. Clearly, I was wrong.

Instead, I will leave you with my absolute favorite video segment on women and yogurt by Sarah Haskins. You will never (and I do mean never) think of yogurt the same way again.

A new proposal by French lawmakers would require that airbrushed photos are labeled as such. Similar laws have been proposed in the UK (two news stories on the subject can be found here and here), on the grounds that these ads can be "very damaging." Eating disorders are usually cited as one of these damages, along with more general body image woes.

Rachel at The F Word blogged about the subject here, and compared the issue of labeling airbrushed ads with the warnings on cigarettes. And to some extent, I agree with this line of thinking. These ads are damaging. Younger and younger girls are dieting. People think that they can actually look like the models in the ads. Body dissatisfaction is eerily normal.

All of these things are very bad. Even without mentioning eating disorders, I think we need to take a long, hard look at what our ads are teaching. A label, even just to identify that these images have been digitally altered, is a place to start. More and more people find smoking distasteful, less associated with the virile Marlboro Man and more associated with stink and lung cancer.

Via the Academy for Eating Disorders' email listserv, I found out about an upcoming game for PlayStation 3 called "Fat Princess."

From the text of the email:

The purpose of this game is to prevent the princess from being kidnapped by making her too fat to carry. To do so, the characters must navigate through a castle avoiding enemies and obstacles to find cake. They then must bring the cake back to the princess and feed her. When the characters feed her a piece of cake she significantly gains weight (as the announcer in the game preview states, she is no longer her light airy self).

As I am sure is obvious to each of you, the premise of this game sends a myriad of dangerous message to the general public as well as those at risk and suffering from eating disorders and/or body image concerns. It clearly does not promote the notion of size acceptance. Furthermore, advertising for the game has welcomed all sorts of puns such as "Fat Princess Worth the Weight" and "Fat Princess Let Them Eat Cake."

You can watch a brief 30 second trailer of the game below:



It is the longer preview of the game with its accompanying commentary that is the most inappropriate (with the highlights coming at 1:50 or so):



I will be contacting PlayStation directly, and am encouraging you to do so as well.

Sony Computer Entertainment America
Human Resources
919 East Hillsdale Boulevard, 2nd Floor
Foster City, CA 94404

The content of this game is inappropriate, discriminatory, and frankly inaccurate. It sends the wrong message to anyone that a single piece of cake will make you noticeably fatter, and that skipping the cake will turn you back into your "airy self."

The more I read, and the more I think, the more I'm becoming aware that the things I'm striving towards in recovery--a normalized, healthy relationship with food--don't exactly exist in our culture. Sure, they exist here and there, the occasional glimpse that temporarily restores my faith in the idea that such a thing is even possible.

But then I read articles that talk about Frito-Lay's new ad campaign geared at women,* I pause and begin to doubt that I have a chance.

Though Frito-Lay had often tried advertising snacks as guilt-free, this led to the conclusion that “we’re not going to alleviate her guilt,” Ms. Nykoliation said. “This is something in her life. So the question for us was, how do we not trip her guilt?”

Part of the strategy was to follow the success of SunChips by toning down the packaging and showing off healthy ingredients in the snacks.

“She wants a reminder that she’s eating something better for her,” Mr. Jones said.

So basically, the new premise in food advertising is this: our foods will make you feel less guilty for eating. What's next: an oxygen tank to make you feel less guilty for breathing? A toilet that makes you feel less guilty for taking a leak? What this tells me is that people (women in particular, since this is the segment of the population at whom the campaign is directed) are expected to feel guilty about eating. It's standard. Normal.

This has literally become normalized eating- and it's not my goal. I've lived this life for too long, and it SUCKS.

Jezebel had this to say about the new Fling candy bar, marketed as a low-calorie (well, lower anyway) indulgence, just for women. And in case you missed the girlie stuff, the package is pink and the bar contains sparkles**.

What the candy companies don't quite understand is that for those of us who truly love candy, we don't see it as gender-specific. And for every bar like the "Fling," which CandyAddict.com described as "a wanna-be Twix, minus the caramel," that arrives, the idea that candy is something women should feel guilty or careful about is perpetuated, leading to a public perception that some things are "bad" and "good" for women to eat. It's already happened with frozen dinners: you never see a man sitting down to eat a Lean Cuisine in a commercial; the men are always marketed a Hungry Man dinner, complete with "one pound of food!"

Even kids are being sucked into this madness, as highlighted by a wonderful NY Times article today titled "What's eating our kids? Fears about 'bad' foods," featuring our very own Laura Collins. With the health and obesity hysteria that's being promulgated just about, well, everywhere, kids are picking up on the messages and some of them take it to extremes.

Part of it has to do with cognitive maturity: young kids think in black and white. They haven't yet developed the brain functioning to discern between shades of gray. The other part has to do with the way some kids' brains are wired. Some kids will obsess about every detail, fearful of doing something "wrong," of being "unhealthy." Because unhealthy and fat are bad.

“We’re seeing a lot of anxiety in these kids,” said Cynthia Bulik, the director of the eating disorders program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “They go to birthday parties, and if it’s not a granola cake they feel like they can’t eat it. The culture has led both them and their parents to take the public health messages to an extreme.”

On a side note, the article does an excellent job looking at orthorexia, and whether it's a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or it's an eating disorder.

We've truly lost our grip on what's healthy. I would easily argue that a steady diet of fast food isn't healthy- you're missing fruits and vegetables that are very tasty and have lots of good vitamins and minerals. I'm not saying Ho-Ho's for breakfast every day. But jeez, if you wake up with a hankering for cold pizza and chocolate milk, remember, it's just food.

From Jezebel again (a different article this time, on servers being conspiratorial about dessert):

I choose to believe it's of a piece with the unhealthy relationship our society has cultivated between women and food, where matter-of-fact enjoyment has no place at the dining table. This is not the fault of any server - most of whom are not even guilty of conspiring - but rather of centuries of creepy marketing, a pernicious diet industry, and six seasons of Sex and the City. In answer to your question, yes, I will have that piece of pie. A la mode. And without a side of knowing winks.

Eating is not a crime. It's not a moral issue. It's normal. It's enjoyable. It just is.

*h/t Sarah for the link
**Okay, ew? Sparkles? Really? It might be safe and all, but still...
***But I bet I could get a 10 year old boy to try it and check to see if his poo is sparkly later.

I do quite enjoy shopping at Trader Joe's. They have a lot of unique stuff that's reasonably priced, and that you won't find at a lot of major supermarkets. It's also a nice break for me from the grocery shopping grind. I can explore and try and have fun picking out new things. And I liked that, although the store is pretty health conscious, they didn't throw the anti-obesity schtick in your face the second you got in the door.

Nope- they greeted you with alstromeria and firewood.

Until now.

I don't usually get their monthly "Fearless Flyer," but someone thought to stuff it in my mailbox (let's hope it was the postman). I brought it up to my apartment to look at while I was cooking dinner.

So there I am, cooking raviolis and sauteing parsnips and carrots, when I see a little description box that stops me cold. "Reduced Guilt Whole Grain French Onion Pita Chips."

I don't have a problem with products labeling themselves "reduced fat." It's a description. I don't necessarily like the fact that they are, in fact, made and consumed so widely, but it's a fairly neutral way to say what's in there. There is, of course, the matter of what, exactly, "reduced fat" means, but still. That's a battle for another time.

But reduced guilt? Is there regular guilt? Mother-enriched guilt? Guilt-trip snack mix?

I know some people will laugh at the clever pun and think, "It's good so many people are tackling the obesity epidemic head-on." Or go and eat the whole damn bag because they won't feel guilty afterwards.

What this implies is much more dangerous. It implies that we should feel guilty after eating. It doesn't matter what we're eating, we should feel guilty. And these pita chips will reduce that guilt so you feel better about what you eat. Which sounds exactly like the anti-obesity rhetoric that is drummed into our skulls.

If they come up with reduced-guilt celery stick, I'll shove the stalk up their...

...where was I again?

Ah, yes. The Fearless Flyer. So, after finishing my dinner (the veggies were starting to burn), I looked at the flyer more closely. On the second page, there was a little cartoon next to the ad for "Pretzel Slims." One lady says, "These pretzels have absolutely everything: garlic, onion, sesame seeds..." And the other lady says, "Then how do they maintain their slim figures?" Right, because garlic has so many calories.

At least they won't be plagued by vampires.

Then, on page 5: "Organic Moral Fiber Cranberry Orange Bran Muffins." Emphasis mine. The description opens with "There's lots of talk these days about one's moral compass. But what about the fate of one's moral constitution?" Because you can't be a good person if you don't eat the perfect diet. Eating is our new measure of moral fitness, just as gender and skin color were not all that long ago.

It ends with "Fiber is considered a 'weight loss winner,' in that fiber fills you up, so you eat less, reducing calorie absorption and curbing cravings." Wouldn't they want a "weight loss loser"? Secondly, I don't know that fiber decreases your absorption of calories. And if a food really did make you eat less, it wouldn't make a whole lot of economic sense. Just like weight loss centers: it's not a profitable model is you don't eat as much, or if you lose the weight and keep it off.*

*Results not typical

There are more transgressions in the Fearless Flyer, but the last one is on page 6. It's the "Complete Body Cleanse Internal Cleansing System." The Flyer said that "it refers to a method of internally cleansing one's body of impurities." It consists of a "fiber formula, a digestive formula, and a liver formula."

So let's not kid ourselves: this is just a very high-priced laxative. Except along with all of the "toxins" that leave your body with the massive quantities of diarrhea (let's also not kid ourselves here) are the helpful bacteria in your digestive tract. The ones that help you absorb vitamins. Some supplements- not the ones at Trader Joe's- say that these detox systems will give you a flatter abdomen. That's called water loss and dehydration. And the second you drink or eat next, all of the roundness will come back with a vengeance as your body clings to every last drop of water.

At the end of the day, I don't know that Trader Joe's really has the health of the customer in mind. They do, however, have the health of their pocketbooks.

Will I continue to shop there? Probably. I don't go very often anyways, and if I were to boycott every food that advertised purported health claims, I wouldn't be able to eat much at all. But I do think there's some value in knowing what we're up against.