Unfortunately I was not able to come to class last week, and it sounds like I missed some great presentations- the guest speaker and extra credit article presentations. So my post this week will be mainly on the article reading.

I thought Freimuth's article, Health Advertising: Prevention for Profit was really interesting.
Learning about the collaborative campaign efforts of Kellogg and the NCI in 1984 showed us the beginning of the use of food labeling to emphasize health benefits in food products.
Nowadays, it seems like almost every food product tries to advertise some important health benefit in it's product- I agree that often times this is misleading, because they fail to give us the big picture. For example they mentioned the Campbell soup campaign that states it has more Vitamin C than an apricot (Apricots have little Vitamin C)
It's unfortunate that this type of misleading information will have consequences on the consumers who believe that they are purchasing quality, nutritious products for themselves and their families.

In spite of the use of misleading food labeling, the collaborative efforts of Kellogg and NCI set the stage for emphasis of health benefits in advertising. Its proper use can definitely have a huge influential impact on the public. It was interesting when they noted that a non-profit source (i.e. NCI) was seen as more credible than a for-profit source (i.e. Kellogg), but that their collaboration made their credibility as high as a non-profit source alone. I think this was a huge finding in public health advertising. They can change the public perception of a particular brand of product, making it extremely beneficial for the for-profit products to team up with a non-profit. Reading this article made me more aware of food labeling and products that I am exposed to each day.
It is important not to believe everything you see or hear, but to look at the nutrition facts and the product itself.