Creating carrot cash

Image supplied by: By Adam Zunder

The bright and flashy packaging often used to wrap junk food and candy may soon be crossing borders to an unlikely new food item: baby carrots.

A group of carrot producers is launching an ad campaign that aims to make carrots into a “brand” item. These carrots will be sold in packaging similar to potato chip bags, and advertised as being edgy and desirable.

It’s difficult to assess this new approach to selling vegetables. As childhood obesity rates rise, any measure which encourages children to eat vegetables is a laudable one.

However, the attempt to sell more carrots by giving them a new image may be impractical. The type of advertising the carrot producers intend to use is more likely to influence children than adults. Children rarely take an active role in determining their diet, beyond refusing to eat certain foods.

If parents aren’t involved in encouraging their children to eat vegetables, those children are unlikely to develop a sudden interest in a less than popular childhood food. This problem is amplified by practical concerns; junk food is often cheaper than fresh produce, a major factor in guiding the dietary decisions parents make.

The nature of the plan raises troubling questions about how we relate to the food we eat. Dietary decisions should be based on an informed understanding of the health benefits of eating certain foods, not influenced by whichever food product has the neatest advertising.

As good food attempts to masquerade as bad food and vice versa, making informed decisions may become significantly more difficult for the average consumer. The possibly detrimental long-term effects of this process may be hinted at in a Twitter post made by the company, encouraging people to eat carrots “like there’s no tomorrow (maybe there won’t be) …”. This is the same sort of devil-may-care advertising that once made cigarettes popular.

Ultimately, it’s difficult to say whether or not the carrot branding plan will prove to be a good or bad idea. In the meantime, it’s probably best that we continue to eat what’s good for us, and avoid what isn’t as much as possible—however edgy it may be.

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