Four large manufacturers of processed beverages—The Coca
Cola Company, the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, Pepsico and SunnyD—have joined
forces to fight a common enemy: those small-minded people who worry that
Americans are taking in way too many calories through the consumption of the
sugar- and chemical-loaded concoctions.
Their weapons of choice are the typical rhetorical devices
of advertisers around the world: false comparisons and misleading statements.
These four and the American Beverage Association have been
sponsoring full-page print ads that tout how healthy and low calorie many of their
products are compared to a few years ago, meaning that collectively, they’re
selling fewer calories per container
The headline expresses the theme line of the campaign: AMERICA’S BEVERAGE COMPANIES ARE DELIVERING.
Embedded in the text, each line of which is separated from the next by very
wide ledding, are the three things that the beverage companies are delivering,
in green caps so they stand out: MORE CHOICES… SMALLER PORTIONS…FEWER
CALORIES…
The copy brings to life this assertion by describing actions that the sodapop-mongers have recently taken to make portions smaller and provide lower calorie beverages.
At the bottom are three white delivery men and a black
delivery woman, each standing behind a hand truck loaded with beverage products
of one of the four sponsoring companies. Pepsico, by the way, has the black
woman deliverer. Below that, in the same order as the deliverers, are the four
company logos.
As usual with attempts to
manipulate the public, the print ad’s call to action is to visit a website: DeliveringChoices.org,
where you see the same image of deliverers united below the following legend: “America's
Beverage Companies Are Delivering For You, Your Family And Community. We're
making it easier for people to choose a beverage that's right for them with
more choices, smaller portions, fewer calories and clear calorie labels.”
Actually, I saw the ad in the New York
Times and it told me to go to DeliveringChoicesNY.org, but it’s the
same website as DeliveringChoices.org.
The website gives more details on
how those who deliver soft drinks are helping to reduce obesity by offering
beverage products with fewer calories and in smaller portions.
The obvious rhetorical problem is
the use of the comparative: smaller, fewer.
They don’t say small. They don’t say few. And with good reason. Soft drinks are for the most part empty
calories, except those that don’t have calories, but instead provide chemicals,
about which we know little except that they probably create the craving to eat
more calories. In other words, no soft
drink is good for you. Smaller is still bad, and so is fewer.
I’m not excited about the choices
that the beverage behemoths are offering to children—fruit and vegetable juice—either!
The fruit and vegetable drinks are spiked with sugar, while the real juices,
healthier than the other fare offered in vending machines to be sure, are not
as healthy as eating a piece of fruit or a vegetable. There’s that
comparative—healthier—again! They’re also selling water, but I understand that
most tap water is pretty healthy for you, and the money saved from buying the
bottled water could buy a real piece of fruit.
Subtler even than the use of the
comparative to make soft drinks seem healthy is the ad’s focus on “more
choice.”
On the narrative level, the pop
purveyors want us to thank them for adding smaller sizes, diet versions and
juice drinks to their mix of offerings.
Below the surface, however, lies a message we have seen before from
people wanting to foist shoddy goods on the American public: People should have
the choice to smoke in public or not.
People should have the choice of buying unhealthy foods. People should be able to have an unlimited
choice in doctors even if, by limiting that choice a little bit, we can cut
healthcare costs by 10% or more. People
should have the choice of charter schools, even if they have been proven in
many studies to do a worse job of educating children than the public schools
they replace. Employers should be able
to choose if they can impose their narrow views on birth control on their
employees.
Of course, more choice applies to
television stations available in a cable or satellite TV package, beers on the
menu and types of phones sold at your neighborhood electronics store.
Through the steady drum beat over
decades of advertising that touts the benefit of more choice, we have come to
think of more choice as a benefit in and of itself. When the beverage barons
tell us they are offering more choice, they are depending on this association
to rub off on the other messages. In its
barest form, the thought process I think they want to engender goes like this: More choice is good. Healthier beverages are
good. More choice therefore makes for healthier beverages. It’s a false syllogism, but the world of
propaganda is filled with such creatures.
Let’s take the more choice
principle one step further. Every single time we eat a meal or snack, we
exercise choice. We are told and have
come to believe that exercising choice is good. Therefore we have done
something good whatever choice we make, even if the choice is to have a 12-ounce
can of Coke or Pepsi for breakfast, with or without the side of toaster
tart. It is this thought process that
the beverage companies want you to have. They want you to feel good about
eating their crap. If you have that can of pop and feel guilty about it enough
times, pretty soon you’ll stop.
Unless, that is, you like to feel
guilty, in which case we have a lot of products for you to buy.