Zainab Jafri
Mr. Ballinger
ENG-101- ML
15 September, 2016
Manipulations to Serve Gratifications The tendency to exploit those that are vulnerable is highly practiced by corporations in the United States to gain success. In Michael Moss’s The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food, it is delineated how the food conglomerate, Oscar Meyer, led by executive Bob Drane, manufactured and marketed the famous product that is known as “Lunchables.” In interviews with Drane and his daughter, Monica, Moss uncovered that Monica had three children of her own, however, she claimed, “I don’t think that my kids have ever eaten a Lunchable… they know they exist and that Grandpa Bob invented them. But we eat very healthfully” (Moss 269). The inferences …show more content…
Working women bear the burden of trying to get to work but also trying to gather a meal for their kids. These problems were a “gold mine of disappointments and problems” (Moss 266) that Bob Drane used in inventing “Lunchables.” The original target were “busy mothers” and “working women” because “they might be too distracted by work to make a lunch, but they loved their kids enough to offer them this prepackaged gift” (Moss 268). Eventually, however, as the realization that “when it came to trying to feed [kids] healthy foods, kids themselves were unreliable,” kids became a target to further enhance the franchise (Moss 268) and different messages such as “All day, you gotta do what they say… but lunchtime is all yours” (Moss 268) gave the kids the sense of freedom. Not only did companies benefit from targeting and influencing women and their children, they would also influence local politicians and international locations into taking in their products and selling them amongst their people. Food industries find loopholes in order to leave their companies with more options, such as replacing bread in the Lunchables snacks with crackers instead for they would stay fresher (Moss 266). They create addicting foods, such as the potato chip which “causes the glucose levels in the blood to spike… which can result in craving for more” (Moss 273). Food …show more content…
Monica Dane stated, “I don’t think that my kids have ever eaten a Lunchable… we eat very healthfully” (Moss 269), highlighting the fact that she did not eat Lunchables because it was unhealthy. However, low-income families most likely do not have the choice of making healthier decisions hence Lunchables might be the only source of food for their families. Those with higher incomes can manipulate those that make less money than them because they have the privilege. Higher-income earning individuals have access to better education, research and development, such as Howard Moskowitz (Moss 263), and obtain the knowledge about the foods that are processed. Through this they avoid the obesity risk whereas the low income individual is simply taking what they can get, whether they have the full knowledge of it or not.
The inferences that can be conjured about culture, politics, and economics in the United States through Monica Dranes’s statement about “Lunchables” in The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food, by Michael Moss, is that the United States consists of characters that act on impulse to feed to their gratification all often under the manipulation of grand companies. We have warnings about many of the items that we want to consume, but at the end of the day we want to get our hands not necessarily on something that makes us healthy, but what makes us
Mr. Ballinger
ENG-101- ML
15 September, 2016
Manipulations to Serve Gratifications The tendency to exploit those that are vulnerable is highly practiced by corporations in the United States to gain success. In Michael Moss’s The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food, it is delineated how the food conglomerate, Oscar Meyer, led by executive Bob Drane, manufactured and marketed the famous product that is known as “Lunchables.” In interviews with Drane and his daughter, Monica, Moss uncovered that Monica had three children of her own, however, she claimed, “I don’t think that my kids have ever eaten a Lunchable… they know they exist and that Grandpa Bob invented them. But we eat very healthfully” (Moss 269). The inferences …show more content…
Working women bear the burden of trying to get to work but also trying to gather a meal for their kids. These problems were a “gold mine of disappointments and problems” (Moss 266) that Bob Drane used in inventing “Lunchables.” The original target were “busy mothers” and “working women” because “they might be too distracted by work to make a lunch, but they loved their kids enough to offer them this prepackaged gift” (Moss 268). Eventually, however, as the realization that “when it came to trying to feed [kids] healthy foods, kids themselves were unreliable,” kids became a target to further enhance the franchise (Moss 268) and different messages such as “All day, you gotta do what they say… but lunchtime is all yours” (Moss 268) gave the kids the sense of freedom. Not only did companies benefit from targeting and influencing women and their children, they would also influence local politicians and international locations into taking in their products and selling them amongst their people. Food industries find loopholes in order to leave their companies with more options, such as replacing bread in the Lunchables snacks with crackers instead for they would stay fresher (Moss 266). They create addicting foods, such as the potato chip which “causes the glucose levels in the blood to spike… which can result in craving for more” (Moss 273). Food …show more content…
Monica Dane stated, “I don’t think that my kids have ever eaten a Lunchable… we eat very healthfully” (Moss 269), highlighting the fact that she did not eat Lunchables because it was unhealthy. However, low-income families most likely do not have the choice of making healthier decisions hence Lunchables might be the only source of food for their families. Those with higher incomes can manipulate those that make less money than them because they have the privilege. Higher-income earning individuals have access to better education, research and development, such as Howard Moskowitz (Moss 263), and obtain the knowledge about the foods that are processed. Through this they avoid the obesity risk whereas the low income individual is simply taking what they can get, whether they have the full knowledge of it or not.
The inferences that can be conjured about culture, politics, and economics in the United States through Monica Dranes’s statement about “Lunchables” in The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food, by Michael Moss, is that the United States consists of characters that act on impulse to feed to their gratification all often under the manipulation of grand companies. We have warnings about many of the items that we want to consume, but at the end of the day we want to get our hands not necessarily on something that makes us healthy, but what makes us