Fun Food: Children's Food Marketing and the Politics of Consumption

ISBN-13: 9780857854247 / Angielski / Twarda / 2024 / 224 str.

Charlene Elliott

Opis

"Fun Food" provides a fascinating, sometimes startling, journey through the contemporary landscape of children's food and traces the emergence of children's food products. The book examines the significance of marketing foods to children as well as providing a critical account of the products, promotions, protests, manipulations, and bans related to children's food promotion. From FUN-da-Middles cupcakes and Fruit Gushers fruit snacks to Froot Loops cereal and Cheddarific Cheestrings, "Fun Food" probes the significance of marketing food, particularly supermarket food, to children as a form of 'eatertainment'.

While the childhood obesity epidemic has drawn the food industry and its marketing practices into the spotlight, there is a real need for research that tackles the broader implications of marketing food as fun to children. Chapters draw insight from focus groups with children and in-depth interviews and surveys with parents. The resulting analysis intertwines child and parental attitudes toward food and food marketing with broader theoretical questions pertaining to identity and childhood.

Placing 'children's food' and its marketing under the microscope, "Fun Food" provides a lively and innovative account which sets these pressing debates within our contemporary foodscape and conceptualizations of childhood.

Spis treści

Introduction 1 Packaging Fun: Eatertainment and the Reclassification of Children’s Food 2 From Easy Bake to Kool-aid: Food Play and the Rise of Child-targeted Packaged Foods 3 Envisioning Children: On Food, Fat and Freedom 4 Governing Taste in Packaged Foods 5 Kids Weigh In: Children’s Perspectives on ‘Kids’ Food’ and the Question of Food Classification 6 “Healthy Food Looks Serious”: How Children Interpret Packaged Products and the Problem of Media Literacy 7 Beyond Pester Power: Parental Perspectives on Child-oriented Food Products 8 Conclusion: Fun Food and the Politics of Consumption Bibliography Index