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page 5 of 8 |
 Mr. Sugar doesn't seem to be copyrighted yet. His smile masks his fear at his unprotected status. |
After this initial expression of corporate concern, the article adopts a no-nonsense question-and-answer format. The effect is one of persistent, low-level imposture: the use of "us" in the sentence cited above suggests that some non-Kellogg's entity is at least a partial instigator
of the article; the phrase "cares about how you eat" positions the company as a concerned, parent-like presence rather than a profit-oriented corporation. And
the question-and-answer format mimicks the kind of
consumer-oriented, doctor-written columns that have become a popular feature of newspapers and TV news.
But for all its efforts to appear as such, the article is not a consumer-oriented or objective newspaper feature. It is a corporate positioning piece, with a deliberate sales objective: to make a case for the notion that sugar is essentially harmless, and can indeed be a part of a healthy diet. To lend credence to this notion, the author cites the work of "a special Food and Drug Administration task force" which concluded that sugar does not cause hyperactivity, diabetes, or heart disease. What the article does not say is who this task force was comprised of, or what information caused them to make their conclusion. The author also refers to a study that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine which stated that sugar did not cause hyperactivity among a test group of children. The New England Journal of Medicine certainly sounds like an impressive, credible source, but it's just the magazine where the study was published. Who conducted this study? And who funded them? And how many children were in the test group? And what kind of sugar did they eat? |
