If you're a fan of fructose replacements and agave syrup, look away now. Yesterday while researching, I found these rather, er, interesting interpretations of dieting advice from the mid-1960s. These advertisements were created by Sugar Information Inc., who for starters list their P.O box at Grand Central Station which is a little suspicious in itself. As you can see, the messages in text are worded in a way that is persuasive and clear, but by today's standards it is a little unorthodox!
"Sugar can be the willpower you need to under eat." Sure, except that sugar causes a release of dopamine in the brain, making it addictive and causing an increase in appetite. But that model is enjoying an ice cream, so it can't be a lie, right? By presenting the "ruining lunch" scenario as an appetite-queller, the message is subverted into a diet-friendly one. In reality, while an ice cream before lunch would make a person eat less at lunchtime, it would likely mean they got hungry before dinner time and snack in between meals.
Mary is all grown up now and probably has health complications from her crap teenage diet. But doesn't she look full of beans here! Using images showing youthful and energetic teens who are so jazzed to be sugar-fuelled makes sucrose look like some elixir of youth. Probably best they left out the part where a high-sugar diet causes lethargy, weight gain and bad skin, then. What is really interesting about the messaging in this poster is the note at the bottom, addressed "To Mothers:" which reads "Exhaustion" (from all that running around Mary does, evidently) "opens the door a little wider to the bugs and ailments that are always lying in wait. Sugar puts back energy fast - offsets exhaustion. Synthetic sweeteners put back nothing. Energy is the first requirement of life." The concealed little dig at the artificial sweeteners industry hints at the economical power struggle between the two at the time.
"Energy is the first requirement of life" appeals to the emotional side of the audience and implies that a diet based on artificial sweeteners would cause a decrease in life satisfaction and wellbeing.
Inputs of humour such as "…like a kangaroo needs a baby buggy." disarm the viewer and make them feel as though they can relate to the statement more. A more drastic statement like "Cut out artificial sweeteners" would be too blunt, and also hint at the real aims of Sugar Information Inc., which we can probably guess is to emotionally manipulate the public into buying more sugar.
"The spoonful of prevention" - language like this implies that by not eating sugar a person is susceptible to more diseases. The poster also displays other uses for sugar, such as a flavouring for soup (excuse me?) and a replacement for artificial sweeteners. By mixing some actual facts in (sugar IS better than artificial sweeteners, but only in small doses) and 18 calories per teaspoon, Sugar Information Inc makes a covert advertisement which aims to boost the sugar industry look like a public health campaign.
The people in the posters are happy, smiling and look energetic. Their faces are an "emotional anchor" which draw people in - in artworks people identify most with other faces. By placing sugar as a "willpower" booster, men and women are led to believe that sugar will make them stronger emotionally as well as physically.
Altogether the images are well-crafted and multi-layered in their message. At a time when the public were still learning to question government advertising, awareness of health issues relation to sugar were not known by the public as they are now, and tumultuous changes in politics and socialism were taking place, it is easy to see why people could be lured into thinking that sugar was a way of ensuring physical and emotional wellbeing. The people in the posters looked happy, healthy, slim and carefree - the idealistic goal for Americans of the time. If sugar was the key, then why not add it to their diets more? They had no idea that the posters were a product of spin doctors working for the sugar industry, who wanted to gain the monopoly of the market over artificial sweeteners which had been popular at the time. This is a prime example of semi-covert, or grey, propaganda, the definition of which is "ambiguous or non-disclosed" according to Zbynek Zeman (1978).
References
Zbynek, Zeman, 1978. Selling the War. London: Orbis Publishing
All images by the Sugar Corporation Inc, 1960s, USA
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