ConAgra

http://www.conagrafoods.com

This company manipulates the parents as well. Their site tells the moms to say yes to the children's requests including allowing them to eat this crappy kid cuisine. This message simply gives more power to the children not to the mothers. This way, children will be allowed to eat whatever they want. Advertisement is very strong to manipulate people's minds, especially young children. They even deliver false messages and make them sound true. Consumers in general don't buy with logical thinking, but they are deceived by these advertisements. I thought, I could use this strategy in a good way as a graphic designer.

Japanese bento

A short commercial from Tokyo gas company: The mother creates heartfelt balanced lunches for her son.

Kids Cuisine

http://www.conagrafoods.com

This is an image of" Kid Cuisine Bug Safari Nuggets", microwavable food for children, created by ConAgra.

This product is very popular among children and it provides a variety of foods. However, this ready-made food is generally high in sodium and cheap bad oil such as concentrated lard is used. The company uses very effective marketing strategy. First of all, the package design is attractive to the children. The playful penguin character looks like it’s having so much fun swinging on the jungle vine. The design includes mazes and other games for children on the box.

This box becomes a toy rather than real food. The children can decorate the chicken nugget with a sealed plastic pouch of ketchup. How fun the mealtimes can be! However, these food tastes like plastic, not real food.

Creative Lunch

http://www.sanrio.co.jp

http://www.sanrio.co.jp

Children bring their homemade lunch to school. Some mothers make a big effort to create artistic lunches to please their children.

Child Nutrition Awareness

I always enjoy playing with children. I was a full-time nanny from 2003 to 2005. I also worked for almost two years as an assistant teacher for an international school in Japan. I have two nieces and two nephews whom I adore. Someday I would like to have my own children. Kids are always fun to be with. They will bring joy and open a new world for you. However they can create nightmares for parents and caretakers also, especially when you have to discipline them.
One of the most difficult tasks is feeding children. Feeding becomes like a game, it seems like the more pressure you put on children to eat vegetables or having good eating manners, the less they have an interest in eating right. One of my hobbies is cooking and eating. Mealtime is pleasant for me but why do so many caretakers, including me, struggle to feed children properly?
Generally, through my experience, kids are not interested in eating healthy. They prefer to play than sitting and eating. They are distracted easily by other members at the table (siblings or friends), by TV or by toys. Off course they get hungry naturally and they love eating, but they prefer sweets or junk food to nutritious food. Even though there are so many books/videos talking about nutrition, balanced diet, eating healthy, or the evils of junk food, kids still go for unhealthy bad food. WHY? Reading books about nutrition can keep one healthy for a while but it is very easy to go back to bad routines once the reading is over. When children are socialized to eat what they want to eat most of the time, there are so many temptations and cravings and it is very difficult to control one’s impulses to eat unbalanced and unhealthy food. To eat healthy, one needs to have a strong mind to win over those bad temptations and powerful corporate advertisements for bad food such as McDonalds.

Educational materials for children’s nutrition awareness

I am making a set of educational materials, to be placed in various locations and
domains in children’s everyday lives, to promote children’s nutrition awareness. This will physically remind children that they should eat a balanced and proportionally reasonable
meal any time they eat a meal. It is hoped that such educational materials placed in various
places throughout children’s everyday lives will help them to develop an intuitive sense of what
a balanced meal. It is also hoped that exposure to my materials will help children to develop
an automatic instinctual reaction that something is wrong when they see a plate of food that is
disproportionate in the food groups or unbalanced in general.
Here is the set of materials I created: Food grouping game, food alphabet, stickers, buttons, Daily food serving poster, booklet, picture book, t-shirt.