Reference no: EM133286534

Assignment - Vance Granville Food and Culture Essay

Purpose - How food is marketed to us plays a huge role in what we consume. There is a lot of research that shows that health or health-like claims on food products increases the likelihood of a person purchasing that food item. But these are marketing strategies, not health policies. These health or health-like claims can be found on a wide range of products. The purpose of this assignment is to evaluate and compare two products that make these types of claims.

Skills and Knowledge:

Upon successful completion of this assignment, you will be able to:

Distinguish between health claims, nutrient content claims, and functional claims.

Analyze some food marketing strategies.

Reflect upon how food marketing strategies around health and health-like claims impact consumer beliefs and potential purchasing decisions.

Task - For this assignment, you need to select two similar food items for analysis. By food items, I mean something that people typically consume as food (to satisfy hunger and gain energy/nutrients) rather than medicine (e.g. people typically do not consume multivitamins as "food"). By similar, I mean that both of these items should be considered within the same general category (e.g. breakfast cereals, nutrition bars, yogurt, fruit, vegetable, canned soup, bread, frozen dinner, nuts, crackers, etc.). You cannot select any Cheerios product for this assignment.

One of these food items must contain at least one health claim on the front of the packaging or in an advertisement. The second food item must contain nutrient content claims but no health claims. By "health claims" I mean claims about health effects (e.g. "strengthens bones," "lowers cholesterol," "promotes digestive health") and not simply claims about nutritional quality (e.g. "high in fiber," "low in saturated fat") or general claims (e.g. "contributes to good dietary health"). Often a food product with health claims will have more than one of these types of statements which is fine, however, the health effect claim must be present. The health claim can appear on the packaging of the food item or in an advertisement for the food item.

Please note that there are basically three types of claims that you will see. The first is the type that, in the US, is evaluated and authorized by Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This type of claim has significant scientific agreement (SSA) (e.g. "adequate dietary calcium and vitamin D may reduce the risk of osteopororis in later life"). The second type of claim is called "qualified" by the FDA. These types of statements are allowed in the US when there is a lot of scientific evidence to support the claim but the evidence does not yet meet the threshold of SSA. These types of claims must, in the US, have a disclaimer (e.g. "Some scientific evidence supports, but does not prove, that..."). The third type of health claim are called functional food claims. These claims do not name a specific disease but make broad claims such as "improves memory" or "builds strong bones." In the US, the FDA requires that these types of claims be accompanied by a disclaimer ("This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, mitigate, cure or prevent any disease."). This latter type of claim is what I mean by "general claims" and should not be used in the selection of your first food item.

By nutrient content claims, I mean a claim that describes the level of nutrient in the food item (e.g. "high fiber," "40% less fat than regular potato chips," "5g of protein." The first food item can have both health claims and nutrient content claims but the second item can only have nutrient content claims and no health claims.

Both health claims and nutrient content claims typically appear on the front of the packaging (this is about what you see on the shelf and so we are not talking about back of the package Nutrition Facts labels) and so likely the easiest approach to take for this assignment is to select packaging, rather than advertising. Again, the focus of your analysis in this scenario is the front of package labeling. One way to approach the assignment is to go to your local grocery store and look for these types of claims or search food items online and look at the images of their packaging. However, another approach is to evaluate advertisements of the food products that highlight health claims and nutrient content claims. You need to select the same approach for both food items (so compare packaging to packaging or advertisement to advertisement, not packaging to advertisement).