Americans Infiltrate the World…With Food!

Writ 1133: Eric Leake

Extended Essay 1: How We Eat Now

April 24, 2012

-       Zach Quinn

Americans Infiltrate the World…With Food!

As humans we cannot function without food.  Along with the necessity of eating, cooking and consuming it, food has now become a form of entertainment.  Some are in devastating accidents or get sick to the point that they require food in the form of nutrients through a plastic tube or IV.  The rest of us, however, intake food that is grown, raised, prepared, and served.  This process creates differentiation, flavor and texture.  These aspects create the experience that eating is.  With the opportunity for profit, individuals, groups and companies have created entertainment around eating.   The modern restaurant found its birth in Europe but American culture was remarkably influential on the restaurant industry.  American ideals and cultural values created fast food, which is now one of the most common ways to eat both inside of the United States and around the world.

In addressing the impact that America has had on the restaurant industry, we must start at the beginning.  Before the invention of agriculture, humans obtained their source of food by hunting and gathering. .  Food was caught and prepared in communities.  Since then, there have been obvious changes in the way we collect, prepare and consume food.  In the study of food consumption, arguably the most influential change was the transformation from hunting and gathering to agriculturally producing food.  It allowed for populations to stay in one place and brought the creation of stable communities.  By farming, humans no longer had to move constantly to find new sources of food.  The second largest change was the creation of the restaurant.  This invention got people out of their homes and brought communities together in a way that had never before been heard of.

The beginning of the modern restaurant was modest and simple.  Born in France in the 18^th century, the first restaurant served a massive stew for medicinal purposes.  (Spang 1) Over time, it began to serve a broader range of customers that sought to socialize with members of their community outside of their homes.  These communal gathering places known as restaurants began to spring up wherever there was a demand.  The restaurant began to broaden its menu from the simple stew quite quickly.  Customers had demands and entrepreneurs began to fulfill them in hopes of making a profit.  Today there are wide range of restaurants that cater to different customers and tastes.  Some are elegant and expensive; others have paper napkins, plastic forks and cater to lower socioeconomic classes. 

The most recent change in the restaurant is the emphasis on being promptly served and finishing a meal fast.  Due to the fast pace of society, fast food restaurants place a large emphasis on speed and efficiency. George Ritzer writes in his article on the McDonaldization of Society, “A wide-ranging process of rationalization is occurring across American society and is having an increasingly powerful impact in many other parts of the world. It encompasses such disparate phenomena as fast-food restaurants, TV dinners, packaged tours, industrial robots, plea bargaining, and open-heart surgery on an assembly-line basis” (Ritzer 13).  Though Ritzer talks about the McDonaldization of many segments of society, he focuses on saying that fast food is the root of the movement.  Enter almost any big city in the world and you will find an American fast restaurant.  Eric Schlosser writes in his book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, “Over the last three decades, fast food has infiltrated every nook and cranny of American society.  An industry that began with a handful of modest hot dog and hamburger stands in southern California has spread to every corner of the nation, selling a broad range of foods wherever paying customers may be found” (Schlosser 3).  Fast food chains can be found everywhere and there isn’t an end in sight.  The industry has grown even more with the recession, providing inexpensive food to its customers.  Hoover’s Inc., a business research company prepared a report recently stating that there are more than 200,000 fast food restaurant locations in America.  The industry produces total annual revenues of 190 billion dollars.  In comparison, the entire industry that includes all types of restaurants produces annual revenues of around 400 billion dollars. (Hoover’s)  The fast food section of the industry produces around half of the total annual revenue.

Fast food likely would not have been created in a cultural atmosphere outside of the United States.  America has a massive influence on the world’s political atmosphere, but most importantly American companies control the economic markets.  McDonald's and Coca-Cola have emerged on every single continent and almost every country besides Vietnam, North Korea, the Vatican City and others that aren’t involved in the international markets.  American companies have revolutionized both the foods people eat and how they eat them.  Jamie Horwitz talks about how American’s revolutionized the food industry through the TV dinner in his journal “Eating on the Edge.” Horwitz quotes British sociologist John Urry as saying, “The increased significance of grazing, not eating at fixed meal times in the same place in the company of one’s family or workmates,” as one of many signs of a “de-synchronization of time-space paths” (Horwitz 42) The point Horwitz makes is that American culture demanded more efficiency than the long family meal time could provide.  To take that even further, it is necessary to talk about how America has revolutionized food in the restaurant industry.  Though the restaurant was created in France, American culture has arguably had the largest impact on the restaurant industry today.  Today the world is obsessed with what American companies have to offer. Along with other American cultural symbols, movie stars and products like Coca-Cola, fast food restaurants were exported to the world.  Though other cultures initially opposed fast food restaurants, they have accepted them today.  Brian Richards wrote an article “Here’s Where McDonald’s Makes Money” based off of McDonald’s 2010 annual report.  McDonald’s reported making 66% of its total revenue in international sales.  Domestic sales were only 8.1 billion dollars of the 24.1 billion dollars of revenue. (Richards) Without the American desire for a fast paced lifestyle, those restaurants would never have been created.

Aside from being fast, fast food has a few other key aspects.  Ritzer writes that fast food restaurants have created a machine that works with five main goals.  He says, “Emphasis is placed on efficiency, predictability, calculability, replacement of human by nonhuman technology, and control over uncertainty” (Ritzer 18).  McDonald’s is the best of the best when it comes to the machine that fast food is.  In 1955, Ray Kroc founded the McDonald’s Corporation; in the three years following he sold his 100 million hamburgers. (McDonald’s) Kroc accomplished this amazing feat by revolutionizing the way a restaurant was run.  Though he didn’t create the first hamburger stand or even the first McDonald’s, he introduced the idea of efficiency, predictability, calculability and control into the equation. (Ritzer 18) American’s were living fast paced lifestyles and Kroc played right off of that.  He knew that customers would come in droves if they knew what to expect and that they would get it fast.  McDonald’s may not have the best burgers but customers can expect the same product almost all of the time.  Knowing what you are going to get and that you are going to get it fast gives American’s the thing they want most, control. 

Today McDonald’s isn’t the only company that provides this predictable and efficient food.  Companies like Burger King, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Dairy Queen and Arby’s have copied the same techniques.  Though they provide different foods, the same principles remain.  Customers don’t have to wait to be served, tip waiters or break the bank.  People in a hurry can get partial sized meals as snacks, choose off of simple menus with pictures and in many cases order from and eat in their cars.  Fast food is excessively convenient in these ways.  It changed the way that people viewed eating outside of the home.  For the first time, it was cheaper and faster to go out to eat than cook and eat in your house.  Horwitz writes, “Rethinking menus and restaurants to serve what John Urry describes as the ‘de-synchronization of time-space paths’ takes eating in ‘the space of flow’ far beyond trail mix” (Horwitz 46).  By this he implies that American fast food companies created places to acquire foods of substance without disrupting their daily activities with allocated meal times.

Despite the fact that the modern restaurant was created in Europe, American culture had arguably the largest impact on what it is today.  It is no surprise that a country like France opposed the new manner of consumption at first.  In fact, it’s remarkable that a country, which focuses on slow cooking and socializing during a meal, has accepted the method of pushing down a cheeseburger in five minutes.  Without the cultural environment that demanded efficiency and the American desire for control, fast food would not have been born.  Some may argue that a world without fast food would be a better world to live in.  They could be right but it has its benefits when walking underneath the golden arches can mean escaping a horrendous night hugging the toilet in a foreign country.

Works Cited

“Fast Food and Quick Service Restaurants.” Hoover’s: A D&B Company. Hoover’s Inc., 2012. Web. 30 Apr. 2012. <http://www.hoovers.com/‌industry/‌fast-food-quick-service-restaurants/‌1444-1.html>.

“History.” About McDonalds. McDonalds Corporation, 2012. Web. 30 Apr. 2012. <http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com>.

Horwitz, Jamie "Eating at the Edge." Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture. Vol. 9, No. 3 (Summer 2009) (pp. 42-47)

“Our History.” McDonalds. McDonalds Corporation, 2012. Web. 30 Apr. 2012. <http://www.mcdonalds.com/‌us/‌en/‌our_story/‌our_history.html>.

Richards, Brian. “Here’s Where McDonalds Makes Money.” The Motley Fool. The Motley Fool, 2012. Web. 30 Apr. 2012. <http://www.fool.com/‌investing/‌dividends-income/‌2011/‌02/‌28/‌heres-where-mcdonalds-makes-money.aspx>.

Ritzer, George. “The McDonaldization of Society.” Getting Started in Sociology 3rd Edition (2008): 13-18. Print.

Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001. Print.

Spang, Rebecca L. The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts : Third Printing, 2000. Print.

Rough Rough Rough Draft

Writ 1133: Eric Leake

Extended Essay 1: Advertising and Experiences Relating to Food

April 24, 12

-       Zach Quinn

EE1: How We Eat Now

1,500 words minimum

Write a researched argumentative essay concerning food and culture. You might think of your essay as an argument for understanding how “we” eat now. You may incorporate and / or expand upon any of your previous writing from this unit. Include at least three sources in your essay. Those sources may include articles we read in class. The best essays will make a specific argument or observation concerning food and culture and will support that argument with well-reasoned analysis and research.

Thesis:

As humans we cannot function without food in one of its many forms.  Some are in devastating accidents or get sick to the point that they require food in the form of nutrients through a plastic tube or IV.  This way of eating pays no attention to taste, texture or experience.  The rest of us, however, intake food that is grown, raised, prepared, and served.  This process creates differentiation, flavor and texture and these aspects create the experience that eating is.  Humans place eating food as an important part of daily life.  With this, there are individuals, groups and companies that have long thought to profit off of such an activity.  These people and groups have created atmospheres for people to congregate, socialize and eat at the same time.  The food industry has created entertainment around the simple activity of eating.

At one point in the era of hunting and gathering, food was caught and prepared as a community.  Since then there have been large changes in the way we collect, prepare and consume food.  Rebecca Spang writes in her book The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture, “In the past 230 years, the restaurant has changed from a sort of urban spa into a ‘political public forum, and then into an explicitly and actively depoliticized refuge” (Spang 3).  The earliest form of the restaurant known existed in Pompeii before its destruction.  Archeologists figure that over 158 of these L-shaped counters served people cold and hot food along with drinks throughout the day. (Ellis)  What we know as the restaurant today was born in France in the 18^th century.  The first served only a massive stew for medicinal purposes.  (Spang 1) It led to serving a broader range of customers over time and became a communal place for socializing.  The industry has come a long way since then and we see it through how restaurants look, the foods they serve and how they advertise.

America has had a huge influence on food around the world.  McDonald's and Coca-Cola have emerged in markets on every single continent and almost every country besides Vietnam, Iran, the Vatican City and a few others.  American companies have revolutionized the way people eat food and changed the foods people eat.  Jamie Horwitz talks about how American’s revolutionized the food industry through the TV dinner in his journal “Eating on the Edge.” (Horwitz) To take that even further, it is necessary to talk about how America has revolutionized the restaurant industry.  Though the restaurant was created in France, American culture has arguably had the largest impact on its existence today.  From the creation of fast food like McDonald’s and Burger King that French people opposed it can be assumed that without the American desire for a fast paced lifestyle, those restaurants would never have been created.

Works Cited

Ellis, Steven J. R. (2004): "The Distribution of Bars at Pompeii: Archaeological, Spatial and Viewshed Analyses", Journal of Roman Archaeology, Vol. 17, pp. 371–384 (374f.)

Spang, Rebecca. Book

Horwitz, “Eating on the Edge”

America and Food

America has had a huge influence on food around the world.  McDonald's and Coca-Cola have emerged in markets on every single continent and almost every country besides Vietnam, Iran, the Vatican City and a few others.  American companies have revolutionized the way people eat food and changed the foods people eat.  "Eating On the Edge" by Jamie Horwitz tells how the way people eat food has changed inside the United States.  In talking about the invention of TV dinners in 1954 he says, "I recall being dazzled by the tv dinner on a tray table. It was the taste of freedom" (Horwitz 42).  Before the late 1950's in America, an importance was placed on the family dinner.  With the invention of TV dinners, however, things began to change.  As Horwitz states, meal times became less about sitting face to face with another person and more about staring at a screen today.  We see this as the norm today with many people eating meals or snacks in front of the computer or TV.  Meals are no longer a time for socializing but rather about convenience.  From the time I've spent abroad I can understand how this disgusts Europeans and others around the world.  France is a place where a family might spend two or three hours on a meal before its completion.  The emphasis is not on finishing the food as quickly as possible as in America but rather to appreciate the food and time spent with close family and friends.  Horwitz talks about the difference in emphasis placed on meal time in relation to the international space station.  He quotes an journal by NASA nutritionists Helen W. Lane and Dale A. Schoeller, “Some American crew members are content to eat ‘on the run’ and by themselves, whereas many European crew members prefer eating a complete meal as a group” (Horwitz 44).  There is an obvious difference in the way that American's view the importance of meal time.  It is hard to say which came first, the products like TV dinners from American companies or the desire for convenience in eating by American people.  Either way there is much opposition to this by the rest of the world.

Ethnography Project Sushi Den

Writ 1133: Eric Leake

Third Essay: Ethnography

-          Zach Quinn

Ethnography of Sushi Den

Sushi Den on Pearl Street in Denver looks like a restaurant out of the television drama Entourage. The building that houses it lacks a sign. It’s as if customers are already supposed to know where they’re going. Upon arrival, valets take your car for you for free. This accommodation aids with the difficulty of parking around Pearl Street and allows the restaurant to leave Bentleys and Range Rover’s outside its front door. This touch shows the types of customers that eat at Sushi Den and the prestige of the restaurant itself.

I was talking to the bartender about what Sushi Den does best and that is make sushi. I learned from him that Sushi Den gets fish flown in from 26 different locations around the world. The restaurant owner’s brother lives in Japan and attends the market there every week to pick out the best types of fish from the market. Smoked salmon comes in from Scotland and other types of fish come from places like California and South Africa. The fish gets flown in three or four days per week. It comes in at least two times a week from Japan alone. To make their sushi they use modern techniques. Kaori M. Kubo, Yukari Ogawa and Masako Horikoshi talk about the typical way to make sushi that is still popular in Southeast Asia, China and Japan, “Funazushi, which is one type of Japanese fermented sushi, is a processed food with a specific flavor made from crucian carp (Cyprinus auratus), from Biwa Lake in Shiga, and rice” (Kubo 1). This dish carries a taste that many don’t like but it is good for you. In the previous journal mentioned, they studied the compounds present in Funazushi, finding high levels of lipids and proteins. Use of traditional wooden boxes occurs occasionally but they don’t ferment the sushi in the traditional style.

The restaurant features two cocktail bars, one sushi bar, a private dining room and the main dining room. It is decorated simply with a few potted plants and candles placed around. The tables and booths have one cloth white napkin, one wrapped pair of wooden chopsticks, one small bowl for soy sauce and one appetizer plate to start for each place setting. When customers are seated, their waiter or waitress greets them with hot towels. If customers want metal silverware it seems they must ask. Most customers however demonstrate their abilities with chopsticks. Some humor can be found in the difficulty that certain patrons show in using these utensils but their persistence is admirable.

Large tables are mostly families. Those that aren’t families seem to be on dates, double dates, or business meetings. There seem to be very few friend groups meeting at Sushi Den for dinner. It seems that a good amount of the customers are over the age of 30. There are a few young customers but they are at the tables that seem to be related. This I conclude is due to the high pricing of food items. California rolls are the most affordable sushi at $6.00. The special rolls are as much as $18.00. Dinner entrees are anywhere from $14.00 to $28.00 each.

Customers that are old enough to do so order alcoholic drinks anywhere from Sake and Sapporo to Dirty Martini’s. The restaurant also has an extensive wine list that customers often order from. The customers that do drink seem to be throwing them back. These tables are also a lot louder and livelier as expected. Most everyone seems to be social and talking quite a bit. No one seems to be on their cell phones or distracted by a television playing sports. The latter is true because there simply isn’t a TV in the place. The people sitting at the cocktail bars are mostly alone and seem to be waiting for somebody. I fell into this category as I did my observations. Those at the sushi bar seem to be interacting less with each other because of the nature of the seating. They do still turn to talk to one another but often interact with the chefs behind the counter. These chefs diligently do their work creating the art that sushi is while also catering to the needs of customers when the wait staff is absent.

Works Cited

Kubo, K. M., Ogawa, Y. and Horikoshi, M. (2008), The effects of free amino acids, nucleic compounds, and volatile constituents of funazushi (fermented sushi of crucian carp (Cyprinus auratus)) on preference. J. Sci. Food Agric., 88: 1259–1265. doi: 10.1002/jsfa.3216

Article

History of Sushi

This is an article on the history of sushi and how it originated. It talks about the fermentation process of traditional sushi and the acids and compounds that come out of it.

Connecting With Our Food

These two readings were quite different on the surface.  Once I began to read into their depth, however, connections and similarities arose.  Food has been a huge part of humans lives forever.  Not only is it necessary for survival but also it stimulates brain neurons, making us happy.  Knowing how irritated I’ve become when I haven’t eaten for a period of time, I can’t imagine what it is like for those that have little amounts of food for days or a week at a time.  Food isn’t just about survival.  In Cate’s piece on prison spreads she talks about the nutritional value of prison food.  It provides the daily amount of intake and is nutritionally balanced.  That said, Cate describes that, “From the inmates’ point of view, their food comes from a largely invisible source. Spread, on the other hand, reflects personal taste and individual access to resources. As such, it is an inmate’s product of choice, not under the control of any authority” (20).  Food for humans isn’t about getting as much as possible into your stomach in the shortest period of time as a dog does.  Instead we spend time creating our food, using ranges of flavors and processes, and connecting with our food before eating it.  Eating foods imprints memories on us and eating them again in the future brings us back to our connections with communities, places, people and feelings.  O’Donnell describes in her piece on Shenzhen, “Zhang Tao failed to understand that when his mother ordered cornbread, she was reminded of the meals she had forgone both in rural Shandong in the early 1970s and, a decade later, in Shenzhen—moments when she had sacrificed her physical well-being for the benefit of her country” (36).  Humans will always be tied in closely with the foods they eat.  Different cultures and places have specific dishes they are known for.  These are developed by the people and communities that live there.

Food in My Life

Growing up with my mother, food had to be a big part of my life.  Had I been a picky eater, I very may well have been placed for adoption.  I would sit in the kitchen while she made dinner.  While talking about the events of the day, I would snack on the ingredients and stick my finger in the sauces, trying to taste new flavors all of the time.  My mother is a chef and has owned two restaurants with my father for the past thirty years.  While she comes up with new recipes and makes sure the cooks are preparing food correctly, my father runs the business side of the operation.  Together, they work perfectly and the restaurants have been successful through good economic times and bad.  Being able to go into their restaurants and see what they created was influential on me as I child.  My parents taught me many lessons but the most important among them was to take risks.

In addition to my mother being a great cook, my grandmother cooked more traditionally but was excellent nonetheless.  Going over to her house on one of Minnesota’s many lakes was a weekly occurrence.  Their house that looked like a cabin was on White Bear Lake.  In the summertime I would spend weeks at a time there.  My grandfather and I would sit on the dock, fishing for sunfish.  I would swim with my cousins and have the neighbor kids over on the pontoon boat.  It was here that I made fond memories.  After catching a string of fish with my grandfather we would fillet them ourselves and bring the fish steaks up to my grandmother.  She would bread the fish and fry them in butter.  I can still taste the flavor of lemon squeezed on the panko-breaded sunnies.

After my grandfather past away, my uncle Jack became a big part of my life.  The fishing adventures, building forts, high dives off the dock and wooden aircraft carriers became my summers as a child.  My uncle was a dentist, giving him the technique to build things and this inherent creativity that only some are blessed with.  He applied these talents to many activities such as building a wooden airplane I could ride in that my father later flipped himself over trying to push me down the driveway in it.  In addition, however, my uncle was a good cook himself.  What I will always remember making with him are plum dumplings.  Him and his wife are from Seattle.  At their house out on Lake Washington they have plum trees and when they are in season they fly out to Minnesota with a box of them.  We would spend an afternoon wrapping the plums in a piecrust like material and covering them in sugar.  After a while in the oven, these piping hot dumplings could be eaten.

My family is obsessed with food.  My immediate family more so then the rest but when we’re all together, the meals that come out of it are amazing.  Both my brothers are in the restaurant industry, following after my parents.  I’m not sure what I’ll do after college yet but I suspect at some point that it will have something to do with food.  I can’t count the amount of cooking classes my mother sent me to on weekends in middle school but the memories will always be there.  I went to Paris for one month in the summer after 10^th grade and took a course on cooking.  What I took away from that experience was a love for food of all cultures.  We spent days and nights going to different restaurants and meeting the chefs.  We created meals with them and learned new techniques.  The opportunities I’ve had for experiencing food and cooking are amazing.  I love cooking myself but I know that whether or not I pursue a profession in cooking, its all been worth it. 

Food and Culture Readings

The pieces by Ahn and Nicholson tell stories of seeking connection with lost parents.  It was somewhat heartbreaking but interesting to hear these men talk about their parents that had past away.  They both used the foods that their parents ate to try and reconnect with their childhoods and recall memories.  In Ahn’s piece, it is particularly prevalent that that Korean culture brings him back to growing up in his childhood home.  Nicholson addresses British foods and culture that remind him of his mother and father.  From the sound of it, it seems that Ahn has much more experience in cooking than Nicholson.  Due to this, the way he connects with his past is through cooking and creating food concoctions.  He says, “Latent Korean influences began to insinuate themselves into the food I prepared. I fried rectangles of tofu in vegetable oil. I tenderized flank steak in garlicky kalbi marinades. I slipped scallions into whatever dishes I could. Sesame oil found its way into my sauces” (Ahn 15).  The way he describes it, it seems as if he subconsciously brought out Korean influences in the dishes he was preparing.  Nicholson doesn’t describe cooking so much as finding the same foods at the store that his mother purchased.  He talks about buying the specific cheese from a cheese shop tailored towards British immigrants and a Wonder Bread like substance.  These pieces brought me back to my childhood.  My mom, being the food fanatic she is, constantly had me trying every type of food.  Ahn describes his parents as being lenient when he didn’t want to eat certain Korean foods.  My mother on the other hand would never let me get away with not trying something.  I grew up loving all kinds of foods.  The dishes Ahn describes in his writing sound amazing.

Comparing Comparisons

Paul's Blog

On his blog, Paul talked about the advertisements made by different restaurants selling burgers.  Compared to my study of cereal boxes, the advertisements for burgers had different much different focuses.  Where as the main lines on cereal boxes were about supporting kids schools, natural ingredients, whole grains and calorie counts, burger advertisements were about how juicy the burgers were, had masculine print and images of the burgers.  The audience they are targeting is masculine, doesn't particularly care about the ingredients as long as they look and taste good and is hungry.  Cereal companies target small children, mothers and those looking for a health conscious breakfast meal.  It's interesting looking at the difference between the writing on the boxes.  Burger shops have masculine block letters while cereal boxes like Cheerios and Cinnamon Toast Crunch have hearts, wisps of cinnamon sugar and feminine text.

My last supper

The last meal I ate was at Jason's Thai.  This restaurant, across the street from DU's campus features asian cuisine from China, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam.  It offers a wide range of different foods that are all fairly good.  My friend Sky Zhang and I went there today for lunch mostly because we didn't want to eat Sodexo's cafeteria food.  In addition, getting off campus for lunch with a friend allowed us time to chat about daily happenings, adventures and life in general.  It was a good break from the days activities.  Sky is from Shanghai, and thus speaks Chinese to the workers there whenever we go in for lunch.  It's amazing hearing a language that is foreign to me be spoken.  As well, he's always getting me to try new dishes.  This was extremely prevalent when he took me out to his favorite chinese restaurant.  He had me eating anything from deep fried oysters to duck skin.  When it came time to order, I chose the Thai dish, Green Curry.  It came with chicken and vegetables in the curry, along with white rice and an egg roll.  They do a great job of offering lunch specials and all of this was only $6.95.  I also love eating with chopsticks rather than a fork and knife.  And the fortune cookie is fun to eat at the end.

For Cereal

Writ 1133: Eric Leake

Second Essay: Advertisement Analysis

      Zach Quinn

Comparison of Cereal Boxes 

In considering categories of food that are influenced greatly by advertisements, I landed on brands of cereal.  Inside this category there is much variation between what one might classify as expensive cereal or inexpensive cereal.  In addition, there is differentiation between organic cereals and those that use artificial flavors.  The biggest difference lies in whether the cereal is brand name or an off brand generic.  The way cereals are advertised; their prices and who buys them all vary according to these major variables.

The cereals among our comparison will be Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Cinnamon Toasters.  To begin lets take one of the most popular cereal brands out there, Cheerios.  The bright yellow box is an iconic image on the shelves of supermarkets around the country.  Advertising has been a great part of what makes Cheerios such a well-known brand.  Cheerios aren’t inherently people’s favorite breakfast.  The reason they are bought so often is because of General Mills marketing strategies.  If we take a closer look at the box that the cereal is housed in, important information for our comparison will come up.  The largest letters other than Cheerios are ‘Whole Grain.’  The emphasis placed on this shows the importance that the makers of Cheerios place on seeming natural and healthy.  The next thing that catches your eye is either the ‘Cheerios may reduce your cholesterol!’ or ‘Box tops for education.’  These lines, that made it in bold to the front of the box convey that Cheerios is serious about being healthy as well as donating to your child’s school.  The latter only being true if you buy a general mills product, cut off the box top and turn it in for the 5 or 10 cents they will donate.

Cinnamon Toast Crunch is another popular breakfast cereal.  Given the amount of sugar and the design scheme of the box, it’s made for kids.  The biggest letters that a shopper sees first are ‘More whole grain than any other ingredient.’  Though this product is for children, their parents are the ones buying it and thus this key fact is advertised.  At first glance it seems great, why not have more whole grain?  However, in thinking about what cereal is, it is impossible for that to not be true.  Unless Lucky Charms started making cereal with only the marshmallows, there isn’t really a chance for whole grain not to be the primary ingredient.  In addition, on the front of this box, we see the part to clip out for box tops and it says ‘real cinnamon and sugar in every bite.’  This again portrays the emphasis on natural ingredients.  The other interesting thing that the front of this box has is the calorie count.  For dieters and calorie counters out there, it’s displayed as 130 calories per ¾ cup of cereal.  This, however, doesn’t include the calories from milk and very few people only eat ¾ of a cup of breakfast cereal.

In an important comparison, we will consider the off brand version of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cinnamon Toasters.  The first thing to notice is that it comes in a bag rather than a box.  This itself could be a marketing decision or simply to save on production costs.  If it was a marketing decision to make customers think they’re getting more, it’s a false representation.  The bag actually has fewer ounces of cereal than most boxes do.  In addition to the claims of being whole grain, having 12 vitamins and minerals and 0 trans fats, the biggest statement this brand makes is that its ‘Only $2.29.’  Most cereal companies don’t advertise the price but rather leave it up to the grocery store to do so.  This one, however, has to compete with the original brand and advertises how cheap it is to attract customers.  Lastly there is a badge on it that says ‘taste guarantee.’  This guarantee to refund your $2.29 if you don’t like it emphasizes that you should try something rather than the original.  It attempts to eliminate the feeling of buyer’s remorse that its customers might feel.  Given the emphasis placed on the price and the guarantee, this brand is catering towards money conscious customers.  This off brand is marketed towards those with lower incomes that have to worry about making ends meet.

The three brands that we have looked at all have different marketing strategies but we see certain similarities between all of them.  It’s interesting how much importance is placed on whole grains and health.  Marketers and business executives at cereal companies like Malt-O-Meal and General Mills, spend hours on end thinking about how to sell more of their product.  Though sometimes ridiculous, the ideas they come up with to push their products tend to work for the audiences they’re targeting.

I love chips of all shapes and sizes

Freedman and Jurafsky addressed the correlation between the language used on food advertising in conjunction with the advertising audience being either upper or lower class.  In their study they found that advertising designed for the upper classes contained more complex language than advertising directed at the lower classes.  I found their study on the use of negation in language most interesting.  Negation is basically using a negative word to imply that they don’t do something that the bad guys do.  Chip companies used phrases like “no wiping your greasy chip hands on your jeans,” “no fake colors” and “never fried.”  The expensive chips used negation 14 times as often as the inexpensive chips did.  It was impressive how often this strategy was used in their advertising.  I imagine that in looking at the advertising on candy bars, milk cartons, soda bottles or frozen pizzas, that we would find the same results.  Companies that are all producing the same product and competing for the same customers must use advertising strategies such as these to differentiate their products.  Even these two bottles of soda, have iconically different advertising methods.  The word below Coca Cola is "classic" while the words below Izze are "sparkling clementine.  This is an important difference in language and follows Freedman and Jurafsky's study.  The Izze brand, designed for an upper class audience uses more complex words and a design schemes that appeal to sophistication.