My Personal OBSESSION with Food. Brand-name or No.

So this is pretty much a rant about food.

We talked in class yesterday about how obsessed with food culture Americans are, and I have been thinking about that. Which has obviously made me think of food, which made me hungry and WANT food. So clearly advertising companies don’t even need to be involved to make us want to eat ALL THE TIME!

Yes, it is true that I see a commercial for McDonalds or Applebees, and / or I get a Steak ‘n’ Shake coupon in the mail with pictures of food on it and I get crazy cravings. And those are pictures and visuals that we all know when we see them that the food we purchase from those places won’t be nearly as pretty or perfectly colored, but we want it anyway. Think of a Burger King commercial with a “high dimensional” Whopper sandwich, now if you went to Burger King right now and bought a Whopper I can almost guarantee it will be smashed and there will be lettuce spilling out into the sandwich wrapping…..but hey, it’s still the same sandwich!

So my point is, yes, advertising does help the sales of brand-name food and restaurants. But I feel like those aren’t even the moments I want food the most. When I DO crave food, more often than not it has nothing to do with brands or “intentional” advertising.

To name a few examples, I watch old Looney Toons cartoons and see Bugs Bunny eating a carrot, then I am convinced I would do ANYTHING for a carrot at that moment. All through my childhood, and still today, every single time I saw Cookie Monster I couldn’t get my hands on any brand of chocolate chip cookies. And when I saw the movie Bad Teacher I craved a red apple for days before I could get to a grocery store.

I guess all I am proving by saying all of this is that I am completely and totally obsessed with almost all types of food, I really do not care about brand names any more. Which is probably why I am a devoted Aldi’s discount shopper!