ABSTRACT
Let’s follow a typical American family – we’ll call them the Smiths – through an average day of food and beverage consumption. Emma Smith, aged ten, starts her day with a big bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch while her 14-year-old brother, Jacob, prefers Kellogg’s Apple Jacks. Their mom, Janice Smith, aged 44, is sometimes too busy getting everyone out of the door to have breakfast herself, but when she does sit down she tries to eat something she thinks is a little healthier, such as Chobani yogurt and a Nature Valley granola bar. Tom Smith, aged 45, has a cup of Folgers coffee before leaving home, then goes through the Starbucks drive-thru on his way to work to grab a white chocolate mocha and a slice of banana bread. Eating school cafeteria food is “not cool,” so both of the Smith kids take lunches from home. Emma loves Lunchables, the ones that come with a package of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and a Capri Sun. When work is especially busy, Janice and Tom sometimes give in and buy the Lunchables, but generally they insist on making Emma “real” peanut butter and jelly or cheese and ham sandwiches. Janice adds in a box of raisins, but the box is often returned unopened, unless she puts in yogurt-covered raisins. Jacob makes his own sandwich, slapping several pieces of ham and American cheese singles between two pieces of Nature’s Own Whitewheat®. A bag of Lay’s potato chips, another of
Oreos and a Gatorade fill up the rest of his lunch bag. Most days, Janice takes along a Lean Cuisine, unless she’s planning a lunch with colleagues. She keeps a box or two of granola bars in her desk for snacks. Coffee (with Splenda and low-fat non-dairy creamer) keeps her going during the mornings. For the afternoon slump, she perks herself up with diet Coke. Tom and his co-workers usually hit the Subway near their office for lunch, unless they have a big meeting, in which case the boss will order pizza or sandwiches from a nearby deli. Tom and Emma are hungry and thirsty when they get home from school. If either parent is home, they encourage the children to have an apple or a banana, but on the days when Tom and Janice are both still at work, the kids often open another bag (or two) of cookies, chips or crackers, or munch on Snickers bars or Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups from the convenience store they pass on the way home. A convenience store stop usually means that Tom and Emma’s afternoon snack will include a Pepsi or Mountain Dew. When they get home early enough – and when no one has an evening activity or meeting – Tom and Janice cook dinner, taking advantage of items such as prepackaged salads, frozen grilled chicken or beef strips and canned or frozen vegetables, when necessary, to speed up the process. When they’re rushed, they pick up pizza, barbecue or some other type of take-out, or perhaps heat up a frozen pizza or frozen lasagna. Dessert is likely to be some flavor of Blue Bell ice cream. Soccer practice for Emma or a chess club meeting for Jacob generally means stopping at McDonald’s or Burger King for dinner on the way. Overall, on a typical day, Emma Smith’s diet means she’s consuming about 1,700 calories – not bad on the soccer practice days, but 100 to 300 calories more than she needs on less active days. For Jacob, who isn’t involved in any sports, daily calorie intake is about 2,100 calories, which is actually within the normal range for boys of his age (2,000 to 2,400 for those who are inactive). But because Jacob spends most of his free time reading, watching TV or playing video games, he’s overweight. So is his father, whose daily food intake totals nearly 2,500 calories – 100 to 300 more per day than he needs, given that he rarely has time for exercise. Janice’s calorie intake typically hovers around 1,800 per day, which would be fine if she could figure out how to go to the gym regularly. Unfortunately, she finds little time to work out between managing housework, office work she often brings home with her, and chauffeuring the children to
extracurricular activities. When she does have free time, she tends to spend it watching TV with the kids, checking in with her friends on Facebook or shopping online. The Smiths are obviously a fictional family, but their diet and exercise habits are, in fact, typical for Americans. The research suggests that the epidemic of obesity and overweight currently facing the United States is not only a function of over-consumption of calories; rather, too little exercise, combined with too many calories and the low nutritional value of much of the food we consume, has tipped the national scales in a decidedly unhealthy direction. The question this chapter explores is this: What role do mass media play in our diet and exercise choices? Or, stated more bluntly, are mass media making us fat? The answer, of course, is complicated, given that weight status results from a complex interplay of genetics, diet and dieting, and environment. However, much of the research suggests that mass media may contribute to the problem in at least three ways: through advertising promotion of high-calorie, low-nutrition foods, through modeling of unhealthy eating behavior and through displacement of calorie-burning activity.
