‘I don’t care if it does me good, I like it’: Childhood, Health and Enjoyment in British Women’s Magazine Food Advertising

Advertisements included within women’s magazines have often used portrayals of families, and of children, in the attempt to persuade readers to purchase the products depicted. As part of such attempts at persuasion, and consistent with advertising’s more general tendency to put products forward as problem-solving devices (Dyer 1982:168–169; Cook 2001:49), particular versions of the relationship between childhood, food, and consumption are advanced in such material. For instance, chil dren may be constructed as particularly ‘faddy’ in their food preferences, and resistant or uncooperative when it comes to eating healthily. Thus, advertisements for food products have often featured the ‘voices’ of such children, endorsing a product — evidence that it transcends ‘faddiness’ or circumvents a more generalised resistance to eating healthily.