Posts tagged sunfitness

Hi there team, and welcome to the latest “SFB” (Sun Fitness Blog). In the ongoing crusade for health, well being I find my self some times over whelmed at the amount of things that are presented in the media to be the “latest in advancement in weight loss” shortly followed by an average Joe or Jane proclaiming “I lost 15 kgs and I didn’t even have to do anything” (true story, I’ve seen the ad).What is also distressing and hilarious at the same time is the constant barrage of the latest fitness equipment that comes on to the market and our TV screens that will turn you from “Flab to Ab” just by using the product for 3 minutes a day. Distressing for many reasons, one being the false promises and unrealistic expectations portrayed in the ad. Hilarious because some things are just funny, (Anyone seen the “Shake weight?”)   

Have a look here…..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXHUdvvHTkw&feature=channel   

This is quite possibly the funniest thing ever!! C’mon people, get on board with the shake weight!!   

Anyway, at the risk of my head exploding at the endless jokes that can be made about the “Shake Weight” the point of all this is a little bit more general. I want to have a look at Advertising on our food packaging, now I’m not talking about an ad for “Packed to the rafters” on a tub of yoghurt, but the advertising that manufactures use to help sell their product, generally these are claims plastered on the front of the product to make it more appealing, I’m sure you have all seen the stock standard “99% Fat Free”, “No artificial colours , flavours or additives,” type of marketing, it’s actually quite hard to find products without something like this on the front.   

My crusade began with the attempt at hitting the entire supermarket and collecting as much info as I could but realising the magnitude of this undertaking I decided to limit myself to one aisle. “Which aisle?” I hear you ask, well…….. what about the breakfast cereal aisle!!   

So I grabbed my favourite trench coat, magnifying glass and looking a dodgy as possible, and with some awkward sideways glances from disturbed shoppers I hit the Breakfast aisle! Before we get into specifics about particular packaging, claims and actual nutritional information one thing really stood out. This was the amount of cartoon characters, bright colours, and snappy marketing all directed at children. Now we all know that the kids do not buy the products, the parents do. So why market to kids?? Well, because kids make great targets. They are innocent and impressionable. Now as parents it’s our job to help our kids to see the bigger picture, to do this we need to stay sharp and aware of the differences between Marketing and Facts! I like to call it a “Bull sh*t Filter”   

The best way I think to do this is to compile a list and you can make your own mind up. I have put it into a table which will make them easy to compare. Please take a close look at the Marketing “Claims” on the front of the box and the subsequent nutritional information   

Here we go, for the sake of the supermarket closing time I just took a good cross section of cereals, im sure you will know most of them, One thing i want you to have a look at on this table is that the overall amount of kilojoules in all the cerials are quite similar, but the way those kjs are made up is another story. I will also highlight a few things on the table that are worth having a look at.