Believing the marketing hype

I’m a sucker to good marketing, and I don’t mean a good advertisement. I mean clever marketing that works its magic by changing a product to make it seem ‘healthy’.

In the 90’s I was fooled by anything that said ‘low-fat’. I never thought to check any other nutritional information, like calories or sugar.

I was never fooled by vitamin water (soft drink by another name) but I have been fooled by anything with the words ‘organic’ ‘goji’ or ‘acai’ in it. Like the addition of these ingredients to  salty and sugary treats makes them healthy.

More recently, I’ve been fooled by those low –carb bars.

Have you seen those ads on the back of busses, you know, the ones with the incredibly-flat- stomached-woman in the bikini who supposedly eats these bars?   Those ads must have really sunk into my head because when I’d reach for one (or two, or three –because let’s face it, they’re only a mouthful) of these during my 3pm slump, I actually thought it was good for me (“well if it helped incredibly-flat-stomached-woman …” etc)

The truth is, eat more than one and you may just as well have eaten that kit kat you really wanted to eat.  These little low-carb terrors that a friend  once described to me as a ‘chemical shit storm’ are now one of the best selling snack foods for women.

So from now on I’m committing to reading more labels and ignoring the marketing hype … or at least until the next one comes along.