It caused a bit of a stir some years ago and now it’s back – the Weetbix advert which asks ‘How many do you do?’ The downfall of this advertisement however, is that all of the celebrity faces are athletes and obviously eat (and should eat) more carbs than the average person. Think of their routine, they train all day long and burn off massive amounts of carbohydrates and need more for the energy that they burn during sport.
They are in essence encouraging a child to eat as much as they do, to take in as many carbs as they do, and ultimately not burn them off. These characters are also idol figures for children, which means it’s far more likely that what they say on these adverts will be taken extremely seriously by children and undoubtedly be emulated.
And if you think this isn’t quite true, or an extreme, we did a little forum searching around the subject and found a mum’s forum talking about their kids’ reaction to the advert. Their children wanted to challenge their parents to see ‘how many they could do’. One woman’s little girl could eat as many as her father! This is shocking as there’s absolutely no way that the little girl will burn off as much as her Dad. However, what’s even worse is that the family in mention didn’t see anything wrong with this, it was simply a family challenge and they found it funny just how much the little girl could eat.
It’s understandable that children with a limited knowledge on food will be sucked in by these adverts but when parents are too, it becomes extremely worrying.
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