I saw an advert yesterday that was marketing a food product directly at children saying that it released it's energy slowly.
No that the advert went into much detail about how it does, but by the use of very clever marketing, the message was delivered to create a notion that this food (used loosely) is healthy.
The truth is that food companies, like any other enterprise want to make a profit, they wouldn't exist otherwise.
In my opinion this must be factored in when deciding what is healthy and what isn't.
The easy thing to do is to swallow what these companies market and then feed children the products they suggest.
The problem is that the particular product in question is full of sugar and won't help kids or anyone else for that matter.
Childhood obesity is a problem and it is difficult to make correct choices when there is so much rubbish out there, what chance have we got is rubbish is then packaged as healthy? The main issue with marketing these types of products is that no one talks about sugar, it's all fat and "whole grain".
This means that we could replace a chocolate cereal with a "whole grain" cereal that actually has more sugar.
I have checked labels on products and seen this with my own eyes.
It becomes very easy to become hooked on sugar especially at a young age so having this type of marketing really doesn't help.
My advice is always to check labels and sugar is the thing to watch out for.
The use of the phrase "releases it's energy slowly" is referring to how quickly blood sugar levels are raised and then crash back down again.
A mass produced chocolate product cannot back up this as it most prominent ingredient listed first on the label is sugar! The problem is that profit doesn't care for health, it is difficult enough to prevent childhood obesity but with companies trying different angles to get us to buy products we must be very careful indeed.
Always check the label and do your research!