New Appeals Needed: Veggie Crisis in U.S.

After reading this news article my first thoughts were that advertisers weren’t making the correct appeals to influence people’s vegetable consumption. The article primarily covers adults’ reasoning behind not eating vegetables: expense, lack of convenience, and confusion over how to prepare produce such as zucchini. Yet the marketing appeals in the article’s introduction are geared toward very specific audiences—children, young adults, and wealthy adults—not the everyday people whose voices appear throughout the remainder of the article.

Moreover, the everyday people featured throughout the article aren’t looking for vegetables to be more exciting and fun. They’re simply looking for ways to cut down on preparation time when cooking vegetables and for preparation techniques to help them consume a wider variety of vegetables. If the health organizations and pediatricians listed in the article want more Americans to consume their vegetables, then ads should reflect and answer their specific concerns regarding preparation and convenience. Ads could promote cookbooks or television shows that teach people how to cook quick and healthy meals, or ads that promote convenient vegetables and compare them to other convenient foods. There’s little correlation between the reasons that people provide in the article and the appeals (heavy metal music, violence, and phone applications) that the baby carrot industry is using to attract consumers. If vegetable industries and health organizations want to appeal to Americans who aren’t eating nearly enough vegetables then they need to reflect and resolve those people’s concerns regarding vegetable consumption.