McBranding hooks preschoolers

[MrVersatile48]

Lovin' it: McBranding hooks preschoolers, study finds By Julie Steenhuysen
Mon Aug 6

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Preschoolers preferred the taste of burgers and fries when they came in McDonald's wrappers over the same food in plain wrapping, U.S. researchers said, suggesting fast-food marketing reaches the very young.

"Overwhelmingly, kids chose the one that they perceived was from McDonald's," said obesity prevention expert Dr. Thomas Robinson of the Stanford University School of Medicine, whose work appears in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

While prior studies have looked at the impact of individual ads on kids, Robinson and colleagues set out to study the overall influence of a company's brand -- based on everything from advertising to toy premiums and word of mouth.

It comes as many food and restaurant companies face pressure to cut back on marketing to children as rates of obesity among that age group continue to climb...


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070806/hl_ ... astfood_dc

See by contrast:-

Sports, for Him

We're called to integrity in athleticsâ€â€not just to opposing steroid abuse.
Elizabeth Lawson


Barry Bonds is on the verge of breaking one of the greatest records in baseball historyâ€â€Hammerin' Hank Aaron's 755 career home runs. His would-be achievement may be tainted by alleged steroid abuse, but, for many fans, it's not tainted enough to discredit the accomplishment.


Bonds is hardly the only steroids user in the league, far from it. Despite new regulations against steroids in MLB, some speculate that a majority of players still juice. There's a reason this is known as baseball's steroids era...


http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/200 ... -12.0.html


See also

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/200 ... ml#related

Ian

 

[MrVersatile48]

Need a record-breaking role model?

In June of 1955 at twenty-two years of age, Paul Anderson won the USA National Amateur Athletic Union Weightlifting Championship which allowed him to travel to Moscow where he captured the world's attention during an amateur weightlifting contest by lifting more weight on his first lift than any of his famous Russian competitors. After astounding the Russians, Paul was called "chudo piryody": a wonder of nature as well as the "Dixie Derrick." At this meet he broke two world records...

http://www.payh.org/site/PageServer?pag ... ulanderson

This link inc his prison ministry & some great photos:-


Paul Anderson: The Story of the "World's Strongest Man"
by Thomas P. Ryan


Paul Edward Anderson was born on October 17, 1932 in Toccoa, Georgia. His family moved frequently when he was a child, in conjunction with his father's construction projects. Paul was sickly as a small child and although he did recover from Bright's disease, he was not expected to have a long life because of the damage to his kidneys.

They did eventually give out, but not before he made quite an impression in the sports world.

He entered Furman University in 1950 on a football scholarship, but his interest would soon turn to weightlifting. There was a small but serious group of weight trainees at Furman and they were impressed with what Paul could lift, although at this point in time Paul was simply fooling around with weights. He soon realized that he had discovered something at which he could really excel and this motivated him to pursue weightlifting seriously.

Not being scholarly inclined (in his autobiography he stated that he did not crack a book to study outside of class in high school), Paul was not suited for college and he wanted to pursue weightlifting, not football. So he left Furman during his first year and returned to his parents' home, which at that time was in Elizabethton, Tennessee.

He did very little for a year but he devised ingenious ways to make himself stronger. Indeed, when he and Terry Todd, Ph.D., collaborated on a series of articles in Muscular Development magazine in 1969-70, Todd stated at the outset "I have the Ph.D., but he has the genius."

Power racks, which allow a very heavy barbell to be safely lifted over a short distance, were almost unheard of in 1950 and were not available commercially until several years later. So Paul had to be inventive.

Accordingly, he devised a method for doing partial squats that consisted of filling two barrels with heavy objects and digging a hole in the ground in his back yard to shorten the distance that the bar had to be lifted, with the bar attached to each barrel. When he needed to increase the distance that he lifted the weight, he would simply partially fill in the hole.

Shown below is a photo taken by Atlanta Journal and Constitution award-winning photographer Floyd Jillson on May 24, 1955, which shows Paul standing in the hole at the completion of a partial squat, with a pretty girl sitting on each barrel...


http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgur ... %26hl%3Den

Ian

 

[handy]

I've never been much of a baseball fan, the action is a bit to slow for me. But, as a sport goes, it captures the American spirit.

Which, unfortuanately, is why I believe that any celebration of Bond's tainted record is a sad commentary on the state of America's spirit. Hammerin' Hank broke far more than a sports record. He also broke down the walls of prejudice and racism in this country. America was better for Hank Aaron.

Just the fact that people really don't care that a drug abuser and cheat is set to break Aaron's record is the saddest thing of all. :roll:

 

[Vic C.]

Henry Aaron was a real team player and a "player's" player too. I, for one, will not be "celebrating" if and when Bonds breaks the record. I liked his dad, Bobby and his cousin, Reggie Jackson, but... oh well. :-?

This is interesting:

Much has changed for Bonds, Aaron
http://www.mercurynews.com/giants/ci_6562220

 

[MrVersatile48]

Overweight couples boosting obesity epidemic

By Jennifer Hill Reuters - (Reuters) -

People select partners of a similar size to them, according to scientists, who say the trend is contributing to Britain's obesity epidemic.

Scientists at the Rowett Research Institute, Aberdeen, and Aberdeen University found that people select mates with a similar amount of body fat to their own -- passing on a "double dose" of genes that make someone susceptible to being obese.

Previous studies have shown that people "assortatively mate" -- select partners with characteristics similar to our own -- on the basis of age, height, social class, education and race.

Researchers have also shown a link between couples and their body mass indices -- an indirect measure of body fatness...


http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20070808/ ... 408_1.html

 

[handy]

I was listening to the news report on "McBranding" to pre-schoolers.

I think the researchers may be misunderstanding the children's responses. I've worked with pre-schoolers for years, even have my degree in Early Childhood Education. Kid's at that age will most likely pick the McDonald's food, even if there is no difference from the other food, but for reasons that have nothing at all to do with food. McDonald's is an experience for most kids. Most kids associate McD's with a fun place to play and a place where they get toys with their meals.

I really think the researcher's need to re-evaluate the message here. When kid's are even saying that carrots taste better from McD's, then it's obvious something other than taste is involved.

If they wanted to try an experiment on Branding to preschoolers, I'd suggest giving a number of preschool girls a choice of Barbie's and a type-B brand fashion doll and see which one's were selected as best. I would bet the results would be fairly even, because the play value of a toy like a fashion doll is going to be fairly similar to kids at that age. However, the enjoyment value of a McD's hamburger is far greater than that of a regular one, because McD's is such fun place for kids.

It reminds me of a similiar study done around 30 years ago that sent shockwaves throughout the land. Pre-schoolers were asked whether they would rather have their TV or their father taken away from them. The kids overwhelmingly said they'd rather have their Daddy taken away. Researchers were shocked and much more grant money was awarded to them because they needed to find out if this horrifying problem was due to the fact that TV was just too influential in the lives of young children or were fathers being too neglectful of their children and not bonding properly enough with them.

Turned out, it was neither. The thing was that the pre-schoolers didn't buy the fact that Daddy would actually 'go away'. They were very secure in the love of their fathers and instinctively knew that Daddy wouldn't abandon them. The idea that they could take away the TV though was percieved as much more likely to the kids. Since the kids liked TV, and percieved that the TV might indeed be taken away, they 'chose' the TV. The end result of the study wasn't a good insight to the insidiousness of TV nor the devaluation of fatherhood. Rather, it was a good study to study in the course of Early Childhood Education as to what prompts young kids to make certain statements to adults.

 

[Guest]

To understand the 'branding' of McDs - one should read up on the history of Kroc and Disney.

It is no accident that McD's has a playground, and a collection of 'cartoon characters'.