“(T)his milk product promises: children who drink their milk will be 100% nourished, provided they also have a balanced diet.”
by Ducky Paredes
Is there something in powdered milk that makes the ones who handle its advertising dumb?
In their advertisements, these milk companies that promote their products as brain food that deliver intellectual growth in children turn out nt to have any intellectual skills and are as much as math dummies.
Some time ago, a milk company’s advertisement that ran in various publications, purported to show a brainy youngster (having drank the milk product) tackling a complicated math problem; but, the answer to the math problem of the youngster who had drank of the product was just plain wrong. The copywriter and all those who checked the ad copy obviously forgot the simplest math rule that we learn in grade school – PEMDAS. In doing one’s math, the way to go is by doing the processes involved in the following order: Parenthesis-Exponent-Multiplication-Division-Addition-Subtraction (PEMDAS).
The same manufacturer committed yet another error when its commercial on television featured a celebrity who proclaimed that as a child, she so loved to drink the milk product she was now endorsing. No problem with that, except for the fact that when the famous female endorser was still a child, that brand had not yet been manufactured! These were subjects of earlier columns.
Now, another milk brand again leads consumers, mothers in particular, to the path of erroneous math. In their ad placements on top rating programs on the two leading networks, their commercials encourage mothers to rally behind the product. Backed by inspiring images, this milk product promises: children who drink their milk will be 100% nourished, provided they also have a balanced diet.
That is a ridiculous statement! A child who eats balanced meals is already 100% nourished. Again, in their eagerness to arrest consumer attention and ensure product loyalty, it looks like the copywriters ignored the concept of percentages. I mean, how can one improve on 100%? Isn’t being, say, 200% nourished means being overweight and horribly fat?
The milk company exploits the anxiety of mothers about giving their children the right kind of meals. The ad wants to turn this rightful concern into paranoia..
To the company, providing a wholesome, balanced diet is no longer enough for kids. No, mothers now have to buy their product to boost their kids’ health. The brand’s intentions are apparent. Their goal isn’t to unite concerned mothers under the common cause of proper nutrition, but to mislead these mothers into making the company’s cash registers jingle.
The statement ‘100% nutrition with three balanced meals’ also raises an interesting conundrum. Should people now believe that children who were born before the brand came into being were not properly nourished? Imagine, thousands of years of human history, and only now will kids be able to receive sufficient nourishment! The next time you see a footage of boxing legend Muhammad Ali and other athletic greats in their prime, keep in mind that (if you are sold to this product’s ads, the world’s all-time greatest athletes were malnourished!
By implying that a balanced diet is somehow inadequate, the brand’s adverts contradict the science of nutrition. But, I am not only getting hot under the collar over nothing. Section 15 of Republic Act 3720, otherwise known as the Food, Drug and Cosmetic act, explicitly states that “A food shall be deemed to be misbranded … if its labeling is false or misleading in any particular.”
Furthermore, Art. 85 of Republic Act 7394, also known as The Consumer Act of the Philippines likewise deems food mislabeled “…if its labeling or advertising is false or misleading in any way.”
There is a reason most of these products are called “supplements”. What makes them “supplements” is that these are meant only to supplement, or enhance, an imbalanced or nutrition-deficient diet. It’s a noble intention, of course. Any busy parent will tell you that a product designed to bolster their kids’ nutritional intake is a godsend.
Should a parent accomplish the admirable goal of providing a wholesome, appropriate diet, then there is no longer a need for supplements. In fact, providing the milk in question to an already 100% nourished kid may result in a dietary imbalance, putting the child at risk of obesity. The irony of ironies is that over-nutrition is actually a form of malnutrition!
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The so-called facts that this milk company is trying to promote just don’t add up. Its ad campaign is as full of holes as the simplistic ads that promote presidential candidates as good material because they were born poor or ride in pedicabs or provided free movies to seniors in his city. Heck, if someone didn’t have the sipag at tiyaga to fix a leaky roof or to take a jeepney or taxi of his own private chauffer-driven car or to provide more solid benefits through his city’s extra-rich resources, why do they think that qualifies them to the presidency?
Is the electorate so dumb as to fall for such gimmicks?
Apparently, that’s what these intellectual dwarves who want to be our president think. Sadly, they may again be proven right. I mean, what sort of brain do our politicos have that the parties choose candidates even from outside their party based solely on the idea that the more popular in the surveys posses the “winnability” that is the one trait that Philippine political parties seem to value in candidates. In other words, it is not whether the person can do the job, the one trait they look for is simply popularity.
God, this country needs some sort of brain food that will get our electorate thinking right. Sadly, it is not any milk brand – whether powdered or liquid. And, as has been proven in the number of dumbos we have placed in our Senate, the popular do not always make the best senators. In fact, what may be wrong with our Senate is that the people who are there represent nothing but those who, at the time of their election, were temporarily popular and captured the electorate’s fancy on the day of the election.
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hvp 06.29.09)
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