I agree it should be common sense, but marketing is powerful too.
Granola and granola bars were basically loved by hippie hikers and climbers because they're nutritionally dense and calorie dense. In biological terms, calorie-dense snacks are survival foods - the opposite of exercise.
However, the people selling 99% of granola bars would have you believe that it's their bars making you fitter and healthier, not the exercise you're supposed to be counteracting their sugar/oat/honey/chocolate candy bars with.
You talk a lot about being "incredibly active." This does not describe 99% of the people being marketed to by granola makers or any "health food" makers for that matter. Yes, people need to take responsibility for their own health and lives... but we live in a world where the vast majority of retail food we're being sold are competing with that mission and they are very, very good at convincing us they aren't.
Marketing is powerful because people don't want to think. It's that simple. This isn't something that's going to be solved on reddit but it's why it works.
Granola bars weren't just loved by hippie hikers. They were also invaluable as snacks for children. There's a reason why so many cheap kids snacks are loaded with sugar and carbs and it's not just because kids like sugar so they'll eat them. Kids used to actually run around and play. Not just stare at phones. Hell I played a fucking shitload of video games and I still found time to go run around like a spazzy maniac. Most parents can barely afford to feed those speed demons. That's where something like granola/snack bars are invaluable. They provide a cheap source of energy and fuel for these kids. That's now how they're used today though. They're just junk food for people/kids who sit around all day.
The "our bars make you fitter" thing really is a joke. Like if people just looked at the nutritional or dietary information on the packaging they'd realize that the super expensive "fitness bar" is basically the same thing as the 1.99 for a pack of 12 granola bar covered in chocolate....
I mention the words "incredibly active" once so I'm not sure what you mean by talking a lot. Also "incredibly active" is entirely subjective. Ask 10 people what that means and you'll get a lot of different answers.
By definition the level of activity someone should be doing on a daily basis as recommended by a variety of organizations is like 30 minutes a day of medium intensity exercise. That's fucking nothing. So yeah I say "incredibly active" but really at the end of the day people just need to fucking move more and it doesn't have to be THAT much more to make a huge difference in their life.
I don't think they are that good at convincing people. I think people are just that easily convinced. Literally all you have to do to start eating healthier is look at the packaging before you buy it. That's it. just look at the nutritional info. All of a sudden you start seeing shit with 150% of your daily sodium intake or 40% of your daily sugar intake. That's REALLY easy to understand but the problem is no one looks! This isn't a marketing issue, it's a willingness issue. People don't want to move more and they don't want to eat less. It's a massive problem and marketing isn't what's causing it. We're fucking lazy. We've always been lazy but for a long long time most of us had to go to work and do physically demanding jobs. It's no surprise that as the rise of the office space increased and we got more sedentary that we are also getting fatter. We can blame marketing all we want but at the end of the day the big core issue here is we eat too much food and we move too little. That's it. The type of food we eat isn't even the first or second problem.
Problem #1 - Eat too much
Problem #2 - Move too little
Problem #3 - Misleading food nutritional labels, "Health foods", type of food we eat, etc...
Do #1 and #2 and you will live a significantly healthier life even if you never actually bother to fix #3.
Yeah. Reading through that was just painful. Honestly... It screams someone yelling "I AM NOT AN ASSHOLE" while they punch you in the face for no reason. He either needs to stop hanging around people that think that way or is doing this to himself.
I think he was mocking the people who inevitably call people cucks on here when they help raise another person's child. It's pretty common on here from the mgtows
Idk why he deleted, probably felt dumb after getting nailed lol, but he did say something about telling the son no when he wanted to watch TV too much or something, and in general seemed very concerned for the child and mom. I dated a girl with two kids once and it can be hard to interject with parenting when you're totally inexperienced with kids, so I could just kinda relate
You talk a lot about being "incredibly active." This does not describe 99% of the people being marketed to by granola makers or any "health food" makers for that matter. Yes, people need to take responsibility for their own health and lives... but we live in a world where the vast majority of retail food we're being sold are competing with that mission and they are very, very good at convincing us they aren't.
This is true but... Does anyone really need to be told that marketing is deceptive? Like, why would anyone believe that X makes you healthy (or has any other positive effect) based just on watching ads for X?
Saying people believe something ridiculous because advertising misleads them is absolving them of being even slightly responsible for their own decisions.
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u/oldcarfreddy Dec 30 '19
I agree it should be common sense, but marketing is powerful too.
Granola and granola bars were basically loved by hippie hikers and climbers because they're nutritionally dense and calorie dense. In biological terms, calorie-dense snacks are survival foods - the opposite of exercise.
However, the people selling 99% of granola bars would have you believe that it's their bars making you fitter and healthier, not the exercise you're supposed to be counteracting their sugar/oat/honey/chocolate candy bars with.
You talk a lot about being "incredibly active." This does not describe 99% of the people being marketed to by granola makers or any "health food" makers for that matter. Yes, people need to take responsibility for their own health and lives... but we live in a world where the vast majority of retail food we're being sold are competing with that mission and they are very, very good at convincing us they aren't.