{"id":39465,"date":"2018-05-25T23:28:57","date_gmt":"2018-05-25T23:28:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dominiclevent.com\/blog\/?p=39465"},"modified":"2019-04-17T17:12:59","modified_gmt":"2019-04-17T17:12:59","slug":"food-firms-could-face-litigation-over-neuromarketing-to-hijack-brains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dominiclevent.com\/blog\/food-firms-could-face-litigation-over-neuromarketing-to-hijack-brains\/","title":{"rendered":"Food firms could face litigation over neuromarketing to hijack brains"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Leading obesity experts are considering litigation against the food industry in the light of emerging research suggesting that junk food marketing could hijack a child\u2019s brain.<\/p>\n

Neuromarketing is of growing interest to food companies. Fast food, soft drinks and snack companies increasingly interact with children through social media and online games. Some are beginning to probe further, gathering information through brain scans about how unconscious decisions are made to eat one snack rather than another and targeting people\u2019s susceptibilities. A report on food neuromarketing <\/a>to children by the Center for Digital Democracy in 2011 predicted \u201can explosive rise in new tactics targeted especially at young people\u201d.<\/p>\n

Frito-Lay, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, is one of those known to be taking an interest. It hired a neuromarketing firm to explore what happened<\/a> in people\u2019s brains when they ate Cheetos, its brand of cheese-tasting puffs. Brain scanning technology found that people derived a sort of guilty pleasure from the sensation of having their fingers coated with orange dust.<\/p>\n

This revelation was behind an advertising campaign called the Orange Underground, playing on that sense of rebellion, featuring a group of snack-food anarchists who covered their faces with scarves made of Cheetos. In 2009 it won a grand award from the Advertising Research Foundation in the US.<\/p>\n