Marketing Lies

I recently just graduated from the UofL with a solid history degree and went looking for jobs. Of course, now that I have an actual degree from a certified university, it really shouldnt be that hard to find a job that will pay a good salary and have some benefits as well.

Oh how misleading the world can be... now I work at a local petstore. I make a decent, but not amazing, salary that is enough to get me by for now. Who would have thought that a petstore would give me a very real view of how the world actually works.

I was learning about the varieties of dogfood that are available for petowners and I discovered that they aren't healthy, or good for your pet, at all.

In fact, often it is quite the opposite. The ingredients that are included within the mainstream well-marketed petfoods are often cheap ingredients that do enough to get your pet full, but not really give them their nutritional needs.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, but often the food recommended by your veterinarians are the ones that take in all those bad ingredients. All because they are paid a hefty sum by dog food companies such as Nestle and Del Monte want to make a good buck.

So how is this remarkable? Well... an unhealthy food item (even if it is for your dog/cat) has been marketed in such a way that petowners believe that these foods are the best for their pets. However, almost all foods marketed on the television are notoriously bad.

Pet owners are starting to sue manufacturing companies in the hopes of bringing about awareness of the issue.

Lots of good information can be found at this website http://hubpages.com/hub/Medi-Cal_Pet_Food_Class_Action

So how does this relate to the world today? I mean... its petfood, not like human food where people have to be honest with what's in their product.. and the affects that it would have on people. Right?

Well Coca-cola is under the gun right now due to their misleading advertisements of their VitaminWater. Can you believe that it has the same amount of sugar in it as a can of Coke? And yet its marketed in such a way that the consumer is to believe that it is just a healthier, tastier form of water.

Companies like McDonald's have their "active adult" meals for those that dont want to eat Big Mac's and the like. They came out with their salad's to offer people a healthy alternative. Lets look at the comparison of this healthy alternative to the Big Mac:

Premium Bacon Ranch Salad with Crispy Chicken

540 Calories
35g Fat
1500mg sodium
6g sugar

The BigMac^®

540 Calories
29g Fat
1040mg sodium
9g sugar

http://thenakedlabel.com/undressing-the-mcdonalds-salad/

I guess that can be some food for thought on the marketing practices of our world, and how we can't be ready to believe everything that we see or hear. Sad that it took some dogfood to really hammer that point home.