Fat Fight: Visual Communication Addressing Obesity

The public must be in denial or ill informed about personal nutrition and health because our nation is witnessing an explosion. With 64% of the population diagnosed as overweight/obese, deaths related to diet or physical activity now close in on those caused by smoking cigarettes. Children ages 8-13 face health problems such as type 2 diabetes that were previously experienced by only adults. Is it what we're eating? Is it how much we're eating? Do we exercise enough? Many questions surround the problem, and we need to communicate solutions.

A lot of emphasis has been placed on food itself with fast foods and junk foods the primary targets. Recently, sodas have been scrutinized and even banned from school cafeterias. That's a good place to start. We must concern ourselves with children, who represent the future. When they arrive at home, it's not schoolwork they jump in front of, it's the television. Children over the age of 8 watch over 4.5 hours of television per day and nearly 90% of the advertisements they watch are for junk food. They're on the couch for afternoon cartoons. They're snacking. They're looking at even more options to snack on, cookies, sodas, “sport drinks”, and hamburgers flood their vision. Those brands imprint fun and exciting messages that stimulate choosing those foods in lieu of healthy ones. They're sensitized to sugary cereals and high calorie sweets that become substitutes for meals or worse, snacks in addition to their daily caloric intake. Fruits and vegetables seem boring and uncool in comparison. Brand loyalty comes before nutrition: “Coke is cooler than Pepsi. McDonald's tastes way better than Burger King does. I love Krispy Kreme.” How can anything compete on that level in order to sell the idea that healthy eating habits are awesome? The National Cancer Society spends $1mil on its 5-A-Day fruit and vegetable campaign compared to M&M's $80mil. Got Milk spends $130mil compared to Coca-Cola's $569mil. It's no wonder we don't eat enough of the right things; the most heavily advertised foods are consumed the most.

The colors, characters, and entertainment that compose a brand like McDonald's, aim precisely at young, uniformed consumers who become brand conscious early. Most children recognize the golden arches before they can even speak. Ad executives target their messages to the tweens-the consumer group made of children before they become teenagers, also known as preteens. The results led McDonald's to buy large spots of time on Saturday mornings, now known as the Saturday a.m. buy. In the 90s, parts of Canada and Australia reduced the amount of promotional time used by junk foods. Now it seems the U.S. will follow. But until Ronald McDonald disappears into the twilight zone, children will be watching campaigns like the Center for Disease Control's “what's your verb?” that encourage exercise, sports, and activity to balance their health. Already, the ads can be seen in comic books and magazines frequented by children ages 6-12. Television spots appear here and there during the Saturday a.m. buy, but are no where as prevalent as fast foods. In 2003, the CDC spent nearly $60 million on advertising moguls Saatchi & Saatchi, who will revise the entire campaign in 2004 because of complaints that it failed to deliver a concrete message. A similar campaign is underway by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services called “Small Steps.” Their ads use humor and motivation as messaging devices, getting out the word that you can take small steps to be healthy. Taking the stairs will help lose those love handles, more fruits and vegetables rid you of the double chin. The television spots are quite entertaining.

Long before the U.S. embarked on these public service campaigns, a research experiment took place in Montreal, where a middle-class neighborhood was observed after an 8-week period of informing them on proper diet and exercise. The control group did not receive any campaign material. The intervention group received one pamphlet per week. After the 8-weeks of pamphlets, the researchers noted a reduced intake of high fat and junk food, with a better overall diet and increase in exercise for the intervention group. The control group had shown no changes in eating habits and gained an average of 1 kilogram (approx. 2 pounds). It seems that information design has power.

According to David Satcher, the former U.S. Surgeon General, “Left unabated, obesity will overcome smoking as the number one cause of preventable death.” So much of the media is looking to set the blame for these matters. So what can we do? Graphic designers and advertisers have great power, capable influencing behavior. With the epidemic overcoming our nation, we have a responsibility to not merely talk about the problem. Let's educate the public about ways they can help themselves. Public service campaigns are one way to start, but a lot more can be done. Designers are fond of donating their time and energy for worthy causes like arts organizations, AIDS research, or Cancer fundraising. Doesn't something like the current epidemic facing our nation deserve equal attention? Maybe visual communication can somehow affect behavior, or better yet, make healthy choices easier for us to make.