Study Says: Fast-Food Logos 'Imprinted' in Children's Brains

There is yet another idotic study that claims fast-food logos are branded into the minds of children, and now they will all be obese.

New research is making the claim that the problem of obesity may be because fast food companies and their marketing campaigns are branding logos into the minds of children from an early age.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, childhood obesity has more than tripled over the past 30 years. 

The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the University of Kansas Medical Center, showed children 60 logos from popular food brands, like Rice Krispies and KFC and 60 logos from popular non-food brands, like BMW and FedEx. The children were aged between 10 and 14. 

Then, using a functional MRI scanner, which measures blood flow to different areas in the brain, they watched the brains of these children react to the different logos.

Does it shock anyone that the purpose of advertising is to imprint logos? 

What is it about advertising these researchers don't understand?

Over the years advertisers have tried everything, including subliminal techniques.

Advertisers have  attempted to manipulate our vulnerabilities since the 1940's, so this imprinting revelation is nothing new.

Anyway, when showed images of fast food companies, the parts of the brain that control pleasure and appetite lit up. The brains did not do the same when showed images from companies not associated with food.

Really? Our eyes light up when it's about food, like most food loving people.

Besides, how many kids buy BMW's or get involved with FedEx?

When the kids were asked to taste a hamburger from a box with no label, and a hamburger from a box labeled McDonald's, the children overwhelmingly preferred the McDonald's burger.

Researchers' concern is that marketers for these companies are tapping into the reward portions of the brain long before children develop self-control. In addition, most of the foods marketed to children are high in caloric content, sugars, fat and sodium.

"The brains of children are 'imprinted' with food logos," said Dr. Amanda Bruce, who led the study. "Without the necessary inhibitory processes to aid in decision-making, youth are particularly susceptible to making poor choices about what to eat."

We have decided that this study is really a stupid.

Over the years,all of us have been imprinted with logos like Tootsie Rolls, Coca Cola, assorted beer brands, Joe Camel, Hostess cupcakes, Sugar Pops, Bazooka bubblegum.

Marketing imprinting is everywhere, it's been around forever.

It's laughable to ask a kid to taste a hamburger from a plain box with no label, and a hamburger from McDonald's and to draw ridiculous conclusions when the children overwhelmingly preferred the McDonald's burger.

This whole study is really just a waste of time, but if we were going to suffer through this stupidly, we wanted you to join us.

 

There really was a time when kids rode bikes, played sports, watched television and movies that weren't loaded with pop culture trash.

There was also a time when we allowed kids to be kids.

Logo Stories

Just look around your kitchen and you'll find the faces to the world's most famous logos.

Now, here are their stories...

Morton Salt: The Morton Umbrella Girl

Morton Salt began as a small Midwestern sales agency in 1848. In 1889, Joy Morton bought a major interest in the company and in 1910, he changed its name to Morton Salt Company.

The Morton Umbrella Girl got her start in 1914. The logo concept was that Morton Salt was nothing like regular salt of the day.

It poured without clumps, even in damp weather.

The company added magnesium carbonate as an absorbing agent to ensure that its table salt poured freely, later it was changed to calcium silicate.

At first, the advertising agency suggested "Even in rainy weather, it flows freely" as the company's motto. Morton thought that was too long, so the motto was changed to "When it Rains it Pours."

Betty Crocker

In the early 1920s, the Washburn Crosby Company of Minneapolis (a milling company that later merged with other companies to form General Mills) received a lot of mail from customers asking baking questions.

In 1921, the company thought that it would be better to sign the responses personally, so they combined the last name of its director, William Crocker, with the first name "Betty" (chosen because "it sounded cheery, wholesome, and folksy.")  The Betty Crocker signature was signed by a company secretary who won some kind of a contest.

The whole Betty Crocker persona was carefully planned by a group of college educated women. 

On the radio, Betty was the celebrity chef who could speak to her followers. Cooking and Gold Medal Flour were central to the script. 

"If you load a man’s stomach with boiled cabbage and greasy fried potatoes,” Betty once told listeners, “can you wonder that he wants to start a fight, or go out and commit a crime?” But she also reminded women that their role as homemakers was important, and that their aspirations could be “as great as woman could have in any occupation.” 

In 1924, Betty Crocker debuted on the radio (on the nation's first cooking show). In 1936, Betty Crocker finally got a face: artist Neysa McMein brought together all women in the General Mills' Home Service Department and created a composite face. Over the next eight decades, Betty had several makeovers, facelifts and reconstructions.
We like the 1955 Betty best.

Gerber Baby

In 1928, Frank Daniel Gerber and his son Daniel Frank Gerber, yes, that's their name(s), of Fremont Canning Company wanted to promote their new baby food. The company had been a small packager of peas, beans, and fruits in rural Michigan. Daniel Frank Gerber managed to convinced his father Daniel Frank Gerber, to manufacture and sell strained baby food.

The Gerbers wanted a baby face to be the face of their their new baby food, and they held a contest. Amongst the many drawings and paintings submitted (including some elaborate oil paintings of baby portraits) was an unfinished charcoal sketch by Dorothy Hope Smith of Boston. Dorothy drew a five month old baby with tousled hair and bright blue eyes, using her neighbor's baby as a model. She offered to finish the sketch if she won, but the judges decided to use it as it was.

The Gerber Baby turned out to be so popular that over a decade later, the company changed its name to Gerber Products Company.

So, who was the original Gerber Baby? Her name is Ann Turner Cook, (photo above) a mystery author and former high school English literature teacher. 

Do Fast Food Logos make us impatient?

According to researchers, people who are exposed to fast food logos become increasingly impatient and lose the impulse to save money.
Volunteers who were shown the McDonald’s logo at a blink of an eye became agitated when they could not identify it, the study found.
Scientists, monitored the behavior of 57 volunteers, shown six logos from fast-food chains such as MacDonald s and KFC.
The speed at which they read a 320-word passage was measured before and after they were shown the logos, and was found to be significantly faster afterward.
In another experiment, the volunteers were asked whether they wanted to a take a smaller sum of money immediately or a larger amount in a week’s time. They were found to be more likely to opt for instant gratification after seeing the logos.

We are becoming agitated just trying to make sense of the research and these silly tests.

Chen-Bo Zhong, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Toronto University,was in charge of this study.

He said: “Fast food represents a culture of time efficiency and instant gratification. The problem is that the goal of saving time gets activated upon exposure to fast food regardless of whether time is a relevant factor in the context.
“When I sit in a fast-food restaurant, I find myself gobbling my Big Mac down at this incredible speed, even though there is no rush at all.”

Maybe it's just you Mr.Zhong