Eatertainment Elliott

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University of Calgary

Eatertainment and the(Re)classification of

Childrens Foods

Charlene Elliott

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ABSTRACT

: :

Ideas of fun and play have emerged as dominant characteristics in childrens packaged

food marketing.This article examines both the expression and implications of

eatertainment in childrens packaged food products, contrasting it with the theme of

engagement that typifies the marketing of many adult foodstuffs. I detail how child-

oriented packaged food both embodies and communicates (historical, culturally specific)

ideas about childhood, and explore how the reclassification of childrens food into fun

food brings with it a series of unintended consequences, which include

commodification, the reinforcement of webs of consumption, and the encouragement of

overeating.

Keywords: food marketing, packaged food, food, identity, childhood, child, play

Much of culinary history has been about a sense of playfulness associated

with food The development of exotic dishes, the manner of food

presentation, the theatricality of the restaurant, and the display of taste are

all aspects of eating rituals that express our continuous amusement and

engagement with food. (Finkelstein 2003: 187)

Introduction

: :

Most certainly, exotic dishes, food presentation, environment and display

have powerful sensory appeal. But Finkelsteins evocation ofplay is merely a

gestureone which demands more sustained attention. Indeed, play has

become a central component in childrens food, and this article examines

both the expression and implications of eatertainment in childrens

packaged food products. First, I explore the radically different expression

between adult and child-oriented foodstuffsthe former promoted through

the theme of engagement; the latter, through play. Talking about playfulness

inevitably involves considering the world of children, and the second sectionof this article examines how child-oriented packaged food both embodies

and communicates (historically, culturally specific) ideas about childhood.

As scholars have long observed, food communicates meaning and identity

(Levi-Strauss 1969; Douglas and Isherwood 1978; Bell and Valentine 1997;

Douglas 1999 [1975]), and this is especially true of childrens packaged

foods. I argue that parents embrace childrens packaged foods and the

promised eatertainment as an appropriate choice for children for various

reasons, not least of which involves a hyper-validation of fun and play as

540 :: Charlene Elliott 10.2752/175174410X12777254289385

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determinants of childhood. Because food for children has not always been

based on the notion of eatertainment, parents must be willing to reclassify

childrens foodthat is, to accept fun and play as desirable food features

before they will embrace these food products. The final section probes the

unintended consequences of this food reclassification, and details how it is

even reorienting natural, unprocessed food.

Food for Adults, Food for Children: Engagement versus Play

: :

Although Finkelstein affirms the long history of using food as a source of

amusement, this is not her focus. Her central concern is with the

industrialization of food and its standardized presentation, which, she

argues, leads to a sense of blandness and boredom in individuals: Mass

cuisine and the industrialization of food standardiz[e] and transform

comestibles into a highly regulated and closed commodity, which can

produce greater passivity, disinterest, and boredom in the consumer

(Finkelstein 1993: 199). Convenience and pre-prepared edibles reduce the

opportunity to be innovative with food; for Finkelstein, they are palatable

yet closed products which prove less interestingin fact boringto the

consumer. Such is the upshot of food industrialization. The consumer

here, it should be noted, is implicitly adult (in line with the majority of

studies that ignore the reality of children as consumers or co-consumers

see Cook 2008). But food for adults, despite industrialization, is marketed

as anything but dull. The central tenet of contemporary food marketing toadults is based squarely on engagement: our modern marketplace offers The

Starbucks Experience (promised to meet the unique tastes of each

consumer), The Cinnabon Experience (a rather mystifying marketing angle

for mass-produced cinnamon buns), and a range of other personalized,

sensory delights clustered under the umbrella of experiential marketing

(Schmitt 1999). Recent exposs of the food industry, including The End of

Overeating (Kessler 2009) and Stuffed: An Insiders Look at Whos (Really)

Making America Fat (Cardello 2009), reveal that boredom is the last thing

packaged with industrialized food. Kessler, a former commissioner of the

Food and Drug Administration, uncovers how food engineers use the latestadvances in technology and consumer research to create products that

excite the senses, such as Doritos, with just the right balance of salt,

crunch and fat; and ice creams with different flavor combinations, mixed

with chocolate bar pieces (for maximum sensory hits). This engaging

aspect of packaged food is also reinforced by the multiple descriptors

affixed to nearly every product, which makes them sound even more

appealing. The Decadent Chocolate Chunk Cookie or Deep Dish Sourdough

Pizza with Prosciutto and Asiago Cheese have pushed aside the lowly cookie

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and pizza, and consumer research studies have found that people claim to

prefer the taste of foods with multiple descriptors over plain descriptors

even when both foods are identical but simply named differently (Wansink

2006).

Engaging consumers is also accomplished through promoting indulgence,

which is central to todays adult food marketing. Premium treatingandeven healthy indulgencesprovides a means to grab consumers attention

(Kessler 2009). The notion is that any ingestion of food stands as an

opportunity for reward; food marketers sell premium packaged goods as a

much-deserved luxury or reward for overworked, time-poor, stressed out, or

simply indulgence-seeking adults. Premium treating thus becomes a caloric

slice of Me Time for grown ups (Kessler 2009).

Contrast this adult food marketing with the food messages aimed at

children. Gone is the theme of engagement through personalized

experiences, complex sensory hits and premium ingestibles to create Me

Time. Instead the primary message in packaged foods is that of play and

fun. In the world of childrens foods, eatertainment takes on literal

meaning. Fun is promised on the package, designed into the food and made

central to the eating experience. This is a literal connection, not something

implied. Fun often manifests in the names of the edibles. For instance,

Kelloggs Eggo FUN PIX waffles have images from High School Musical,

Hannah Montana: The Movie or Star Trek tattooed right onto the waffle for

increased entertainment. (The entertainment of film and that of food

literally collide.) Black Diamond sells processed FUNCHEEZ in the

shapes of dinosaurs, fish or moons and planets. Presidents Choice offersMini Chefs FunShines biscuits (shaped into fun sunshines with happy

faces); Sun-Rype sells FunBites Fruit to Go shaped as squiggles or deep-sea

characters; and Betty Crocker markets radically colored CrazyPix Fruit Roll

Ups with outlandish flavors like Jungle Rush Blastin Berry. Packages

directly reference fun with descriptors such as fun to eat or claims that

whenever you eat them, youll agree they spell fun (Elliott 2008a: 265).

Treats like Earths Best Letter of the Day Cookies, shaped like fun letter

blocks, position cookies as a fun way to learn the alphabet. Such examples

are numerous. Hundreds of fun foods specifically target parents and

children in the supermarket through these direct appeals to fun,entertainment and interactivity (see Elliott 2008a, 2008b, 2009). Unlike

the adult descriptors that connote luxury or gourmet, childrens foods

typically have radical, playful flavors: Kelloggs YoGos Rollers in

Strawberry Stretch and Cosmic Crush flavors; Yoplait Tubes in Cyber

Strawberry and Hip Hop Grape; Betty Crocker Fruit Gushers in Blue-

Bursters or Mystery Flavor.

In this way, children are told to play with their food, the brightly

colored, strangely shaped edibles providing a source of eatertainment.

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Food design encourages this, with tubes of colorful yogurt meant to be

squirted, fruit snacks created with gushing centers or in foot-long

windable strips, ice pops filled with gummi bugs, cheesestrings

designed to be peeled, and drink crystals or marshmallows that magically

change color. Eatertainment like this is entirely absent in adult-targeted

packaged foodstuffs.1

Fun Food and the World of Childhood: Embracing Play in

Packaged Foods

: :

How did this (packaged) playfulness come to colonize childrens foods?

The phenomenon is relatively recent in packaged foods (Elliott 2008a,

2009), although some marketers were advocating the need to kidize

packaging to appeal better to the child end user in the 1990s (McNeal

1999: 88). Scholars of both food and childrens culture have observed

how childrens food is symbolically different from adult fare (see James

1998; Nestle 2006; Schor and Ford 2007; Elliott 2008a; Linn and

Novosat 2008), while Mechling suggests that children learn that the

consumption of food can be part of the performance of identity

(Mechling 2000: 18) and so often play with their food as a form of

expressive behavior. Mechling (2000) seeks to document the ways that

children play their food: this might include imaginative food play, such as

one finds in a childs tea party (where the teacups are present but the tea

and biscuits are imagined), or in creating cakes out of mud for pretendparties. He also observes that children play with real food by

manipulating it into something else (such as biting a piece of bread into

the shape of a toy gun). Particularly relevant to this analysis, however, is

his recognition that adults co-opt this play by both moving the imaginary

food to the real (e.g. real cupcakes from the Easy Bake oven replace the

imaginary cakes served with imaginary tea 2000:12) and uttering the

imperative Dont play with your food. In short, adults attempt to control

and channel the imagination of childrens food play via commercial

impulse by selling it to them (e.g. the Easy Bake oven) or determining

when and how food play is appropriate.The notion of appropriate foods emerges when one considers that the

specific classification of childrens food has historically been limited to

treats like candies (see James 1998), or desserts like Jell-O (see Newton

1992). As Newton argues in her discussion of popular culture foodways:

Playing with foodby learning the rules for eating Oreo cookies or

spaghetti or Jell-Oquickly becomes part of a childs repertoire of

play behavior. Although this food play is not approved of in most





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households, often adults and children have a tacit understanding

about Jell-O: Jell-O for dessert is license to play (Newton 1992:

253).

Childrens food play, in short, is contained within particular times and for

particular products (e.g. candy, dessert). By the 1950s through 1960s,cereals were also entrenched as childrens fare, staking this claim not only

through the cartoon characters on the cereal boxes, but also through the

direct link to sugar and candy via Sugar Crisp, Sugar Frosted Flakes, Sugar

Corn Pops, Corn Fetti, Sugar Smacks, Sugar Sprinkled Alpha Bits and

Cocoa Puffs, etc.2 Indeed, the stage was set for such a reality as far back as

the 1920s, when the Quaker Oats Co. launched an ad campaign that

suggested that The WAY to make CHILDREN like CEREAL is to

correlate it with confections (Quaker Oats, 1928). Chatelaines March 1928

issue contains an advertisement for Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice that

begins: Children think theyre confections According to the advert, thesepuffed cereals have a flavor so enticing and delicious that children revel in

them like confections. And that meets the modern idea of diet (emphasis

added).

Quakers modern idea of diet suggests a certain uniqueness to the child

eater. Childrens foods must be conceptually different to be palatable; in this

case, recategorized as confections. (Confections, certainly, would serve only

as an adult treat not a breakfast staple). This recategorization remains,

even though the frame of fun has replaced that of confection. It is a

reasonable shift, given that fununlike sugardoes not come bundled with

health concerns, such as dental caries, hyperactivity, type II diabetes orchildhood obesity. (Arguably, the idea of breakfast candy is still very present

today, even without the direct reference to sugar. Consider Chocolate Lucky

Charms, Count Chocula, Reese Puffs cereal, etc.)

What does the recategorization of packaged goods as childrens food or

fun food reveal about childhood? Above, I suggested that fun food both

embodies and communicates (historically, culturally specific) ideas about

childhood. But what concrete ideas about childhood does fun food

communicate? One obvious answer is that childhood is about fun and play.

Historians such as Aries (1965), deMause (1974) and Cunningham (1995)

or sociologists like Jenks (1996) have established that perspectives on both

childhood and the position of children have fluctuated over time; cultural

critics like Postman (1994), Buckingham (2000), Barber (2007) and others

have observed how either technology (print, television, etc.), the

recognition of childrens agency, or commercial markets challenge the

dominant cultural frame of children as innocent of adult secrets,

knowledge and economic realities. Hardyment (1998) frames this shift in

childrens roles as one from producer to consumer, and also one that moves


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children from a meaningful and central place in the household to an

isolated and boring one. He argues:

In the past children of all classes had an important domestic role of

their own. They helped with domestic management, waited at table,

sewed, ran errands, took responsibility for hens, weeded vegetablepatches. They also earned money, supplementing low family

incomes rather than being a drain on them. Legislation and

education have changed all this. Childhood is now an experience of

consuming food, clothes and entertainments manufactured outside

the home and bought with parents hard-earned cash, rather than a

matter of learning about and contributing to a busy centre of

production. The average dual-career familys home is often distinctly

dull and lonely for children. Our response has been to supply them

with ever more fantastical and hygienic plastic toys, and create

special child-orientated environments (Hardyment, cited inPiachaud 2008: 446).

Playthings like toys, for Hardyment, emerge as distraction for modern

children, who occupy a lonely, hollow and meaningless position in

domestic space. The need for this play, moreover, is implicitly driven by

parental guilt over working long hours and not being there. Scholarship

by both Sutton-Smith (1983) and Hochschilds (1997) attests to this. Toys

as Culture (Sutton-Smith 1983) details the unparalleled rise in the number

of toys gifted to children since the Second World War. The toys central

purpose is simple: to socialize children into being alone. The Time Bind(Hochschild 1997) similarly reveals how working parents buy gifts for their

children as a type of payback for not spending time with them (Hochschild

1997: 216).3

Recent literature on childrens culture affirms that we need to recognize

some of the radical changes characterizing childrens lives over the past few

decades. Such changes include increased levels of spending on children,

heightened commercial pressure on children, a proliferation of child-

oriented products, and the fact (as per Hardyment) that children live more

solitary lives due to smaller families and dual income or single-parent

families (Piachaud 2008). Cook has recentlyand convincinglyarguedthat theoretical understandings of childhood must recognize childrens

presence and practices as constitutive ofrather than derivative of or

exceptional tocommercial, consumer culture generally (Cook 2008: 221).

This means acknowledging that children are both consumers and co-

consumers: children are economic actors in their own right (consumers), but

parents often purchase goods for their children, because of them, or with

them in mind (co-consumers) (Cook 2008: 223). Zelizer (2002), Chin

(2001) and Levison (2000) have advanced this to specifically observe the





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economic worlds of children, and how kids actively engag[e] in a broad

range of economic relations (Zelizer 2002: 377).4 As a whole, one could

argue that current perspectives of childhood (excluding media effects

research) have moved away from the dominant frame of innocent to

acknowledge childrens agency and their constitutive place in commercial

consumer culture.Fun food offers a validation of this frame of children as consumers, with

agency, and dealing with the reality of solitary lives due to dual-income or

single-parent families. As consumers, children ingest fun foods in three

ways. First, they literally consume these wildly colored and strangely

flavored fruit snacks/yogurt tubes/drink mixes (etc.). Second, they act as

consumers or co-consumers in seeking their purchase. Third, children (and

parents) figuratively consume the messages fun foods embracenamely,

that children should have foods made just for them, and ones that are

visually, and symbolically, distinct from adult food. By its marketing,

packaging and food engineering, these fun foods suggest that regular or

adult foodor food that looks like fooddoes not fit the unique needs of

children. Such marketing suggests that childrens tastes can only be

satisfied by consumables shaped into dinosaurs, letters, princesses or

SpongeBob SquarePantsand/or colored in tints rarely found in nature.

According to the messages of fun food, children require fun to eat; food

play is framed as both a necessity and a validation of what it means to be a

child.

While fun foods suggest that childrens tastes are quite separate from

adult tastes, notions of childrens agency are also reinforced by the playdemanded by each comestible. Fun food is not incidentally played with, but

designed to be played withwhether this be making words out of lettered

pastas, cookies and cereals, watching sugar-coated dino-eggs hatch in

Quakers Dino Eggs Oatmeal, or squirting fruit Gushers. Certainly, these are

mass-produced goods, but ingestibles like fun-shaped cereals, Squirt Ems!

squirtable applesauce or breaded nuggets stuffed with macaroni and cheese5

promise a playfulness and interactivity that make the boredom Finkelstein

warns about a remote possibility. And this is presented as a good thing. As

Kapur (drawing on Adam Phillips) observes in her analysis of childrens

culture, adults relentless efforts to keep children distracted make it seemas if the adults have decided that the childs life must be, or be seen to be,

endlessly interesting (Kapur 2005: 129).

Presumably, children are not victims or dupes in this new food

phenomenon; instead they are agents who participate in the play and make

it personally meaningful. Edibles like Betty Crockers Fruit by the Foot are

not merely mass-produced foodstuffs, then, they become the object of

various, personalized eating rituals for children: unrolled and ripped into tiny

pieces; wound around the finger and sucked on like a lollypop; stretched out


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to full length and ingested like a strand of spaghetti. The food itself becomes

endlessly interesting, it becomes the plaything. In brief, fun food becomes

the toy.

Elsewhere in this paper I have suggested that fun food provides a unique

salve to the reality of childrens solitary lives due to dual-income or single-

parent families. The argument, in short, it that fun food is easy playtimefor overworked parents. It requires no special trips, minimal preparation, and

minimizes feelings of guilt. (One cannot feel guilty for not making pink bug-

shaped pasta or waffles emblazoned with Star Trek imagesthese would be

extremely challenging to make.) Fun food provides easy playtime because

the play occurs right at the dinner table or at lunch or during snacks,

providing a way for parents to double-up activities, as eating is something

that has to be done anyway. Alternatively, if a child is eating alone, fun food

provides reassurance that they are still content.

In this way, fun food works to clearly carve out and validate the cultural

category of childhood by affirming that certain foods are specifically for

them, that adult fare does not fulfill childrens particular culinary needs.

The culinary need here is not about nutrients; it is about fun. Childrens

packaged supermarket foods suggest that fun is imperative to the

consumption experience. Adult fare, focused on engagement, bears scant

resemblance to the colorful, bizarre and interactive eatertainment found in

child-oriented packaged foodstuffs. But a critical point needs to be raised

about these products. Like Bratz dolls, Leapster, Thomas the Tank Engine,

and other popular childrens toys, packaged foods are commercial

products. They validate childhood while commodifying it, and althoughscholars like Cook (2008) argue that we must recognize the constitutive

role of children in commercial culture, we do not necessarily have to like

it. Organizations like the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood

thus seek to reclaim children from corporate marketers. It is something

Cook (2008) would undoubtedly find naive and wrong-headed, yet is a goal

that many parents support (despite wanting to provide the best for their

children). So why is it that fun food has enjoyed such remarkable success?

One important reason is that fun food, although a commercial product, is

categorically different from other toys and consumables occupying

childrens lives. Fun foods, comprised of cereals, waffles, pastas, yogurts,puddings, apple-sauces, cheese-strings, crackers, drink boxes, lunchables,

etc., promise to build childrens bodies rather than corrupt them. Because

they are consumable and have nutritional value,6 they seem less

objectionable than plastic toys and trinkets. Buying a toy validates play,

but stands as a constant physical reminder of the commercialization of

childhood. Even the free toys provided by fast food companies with

childrens meals can be problematic for parents (even as they are gratifying

for children). Pettigrew and Roberts (2006) report that the twenty-one





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mothers they interviewed generally consider these toys to be gimmicky

trinkets that cultivate materialistic attitudes. Pettigrew and Roberts

further observe that:

Most interviewees reported that the toy premiums held their

childrens interest only briefly and quickly ended up lying aroundunderfoot. This poses a disposal problem as the toys represent

something between items of value and rubbish. While some

interviewees perceived the toys to be of low quality and not worth

retaining, others felt the need to give them to charities in an

attempt to prevent them from being wasted. Either way, parents

have to engage in some kind of disposal behavior that is often

associated with guilt at the wastage. (Pettigrew and Robert 2006:

65)

Fun food provides play for children without the hassle or guilt of disposal for

parents. The number of edible foodstuffs with cross-merchandising means

that children can enjoy Dora the Explorer, Polly Pockets, Star Trek, Shrek,

Buzz Lightyear, Hannah Montana and the vast array of other commercial

products popular with childrenbut enjoy them as Dora the Explorer or

Polly Pockets shaped and themed fruit snacks, Shrek or Cinderella shaped

and themed pasta, Hannah Montana tattooed waffles, SpongeBob

SquarePants branded water, etc. All of these commercial and entertainment

products aimed at children are available as themed edibles.7 When food

becomes the toy, the problem of gimmicky trinketsand their disposal

evaporates.Along with the fact that food seems somehow less commercial than toys

and other entertainment, another significant observation is that people

cannot really get upset about fun. Commodifying childhood is problematic,

but the idea of providing fun for children is not. Unlike the

commercialization of childhood (or childhood obesity), fun is not a social

problem in need of solving. Food fun and food play stand as a convenient

and presumably harmless experiences caregivers can easily provide during

eating occasions.

Although it is not the focus of this article, it would be remiss to overlook

the problems with this eatertainment. Fun food and food play are framedas convenient, innocuous (and waste-free) affirmations of childhood, as

ways to make childrens eating experiences special and their lives more

fun. So wheres the harm? The impact is subtle, and relates to both the

edibles themselves and the issue of commodification. Fun, as earlier

noted, is not a social problem in need of solving. But childhood obesity is,

and promoting eating as entertainment to children seems a ridiculous

strategy in light of the childhood obesity epidemic. Entertaining and

externally-manufactured food cues teach children to overlook internal


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cues to satiety (Kessler 2009); children may ask to eat (or snack) because

of the play involved instead of hunger, or they may eat more than necessary

because the food is fun. Research conducted with adults has established

that adults eat considerably more when they are distracted or engaged in

other activities (Wansink 2006); this over-eating may equally apply to

children distracted by their food. Moreover, the Cornell Food and BrandLab recently completed a study that showed that preschoolers would eat

twice as much carrot when it was given a catchy new name like X-ray

Vision Carrots (Wansink 2009: 1). Director of the Food and Brand Lab,

Brian Wansink, concluded that children ate about 50 percent more

because giving a food a fun name makes kids think it will be more fun to

eat (1). If children eat 50 percent more simply because of catchy names

and appeals to fun, then the fact that all child-oriented supermarket

consumables have these characteristics should give us pause. Seemingly, it

sets children up to persistently overeat. And while healthy fun food is

available, the exact same marketing techniques are used to sell less

nutritious fun food to children and parents. Eating 50 percent more

tomato because it is called Tremendous T-Rex Tomatoes may, for

Wansink, cause no harm8 but the same does not apply to sugary cereals,

fruit snacks, cookies and crackers.

Commodification is another subtle harm relating to fun food. While the

themed foods seem less objectionable than the gimmicky trinkets sold

with fast food or other more expensive toys promoted to children, the fact

that even food now must be separate and unique reveals how thoroughly

commercial products have infiltrated childrens lives. While fun foodappears to offer play without the problem of disposal, the fact that the

edibles are often shaped and themed on popular childrens cartoons,

movies, toys and other entertainment works to create webs of

consumption: the movie prompts desire for the (themed) edible, which

reinforces desire for the toy, video game and a vast array of themed

pajamas, toothbrushes, band-aids, school supplies, etc. The Disney

Company, which has done much to promote the idea of childhood

innocence and play (while commercializing it), recognized this

merchandising benefit early on. In 1941, Roy Disney noted that [t]he sale

of a doll to any member of a household is a daily advertisement in thathousehold for our cartoons and keeps them all Mickey Mouse Minded

(deCordova 1994: 205). The same mindedness applies with fun food

whether it is the consumption of the entertainment that leads to the

eatertainment or vice versa.





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Food Reclassification: Differences of Degree and Differences in

Kind

: :

I have suggested that food marketing to adults generally promotes

engagement with food, while childrens packaged foodstuffs sell

eatertainment. Both types of foodthat is, implicitly adult foods andspecifically child foodsforcibly reject the boredom that Finkelstein

worries might be the result of mass-produced edibles. Yet, as discussed,

they reject the boredom for different reasons. Adult fare is made engaging

through emphasizing elements of taste and descriptors of taste, by focusing

on personalized ingestibles or premium treating or promises of Me

Time. Childrens fare sells play through food; its fun-infused calories also

establish children as special eaters with unique dietary needs. Adult

packaged foods may focus on premium quality ingredients or appeals to

taste in order to attract consumers; products are categorically the same, but

offer a difference in degree (e.g. a pizza may be superior because of gourmet

toppings). Childrens packaged foods, in contrast, suggest a reclassification

is necessary. Fun food is a difference in kind, because it promises an

entirely new category of foodstuffs (i.e. fun food) with new rules, a distinct

audience and a consistent range of experiences and characteristics. It

promises interactivity, play, unusual colors, names, shapes and flavors,

and/or tie-ins with childrens entertainment. This category is so pervasive

that even the specialty labels typically used to make products stand apart

organic, environmental, healthyare subsumed under the appeals to fun.

Brands like EnviroKidz, Earths Best Organics, Eating Right Kids andPresidents Choice Mini Chefs subtly direct attention to food production

processes or questions of health, but these organic, environmental or health

claims in the brand names are utterly dwarfed by the appeals to fun on the

packages and in the foods. Simply put, packaged food brands affirming

organic or eating right clearly exist to appeal to parents, but these words

prove secondary to the colorful packages, cartoon images, fun-shaped

edibles, and direct claims to playall of which firmly sell fun to both

parents and children.

The unintended consequences of this reclassification include the subtle

promotion of commercialization of childhood, as well as promoting eatingpractices that make funand often unnaturalness the primary

determinant of food desirability. This trend is so powerful that even natural,

unprocessed foods are becoming swept up in the wave. For instance, Disney

started licensing its characters for placement on fruits and vegetables in 2006

under its Disney Garden linepeaches with Goofy and Daisy Duck Stickers,

apples with Winnie the Pooh, watermelons featuring Mickey and his friends.

By literally sticking Disney characters on produce (and its packaging), Disney

was able to reframe marketing to children as an act of corporate responsibility


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(McDevitt 2009: G02). Two years later, Disney Garden Organic apples were

launched, featuring Winnie the Pooh, Tigger and Piglet. By March 2009,

Disney expanded its efforts to even include eggs, which display Mickey

Mouse on the carton and different Disney charactersGoofy, Donald Duck,

Mickey Mousestamped on each egg. According to its advertising, Disney

eggs are Great tasting, delicious, and fun too!As if this werent enough, Disney Garden also sells Foodles kits: Mickey

Mouse head shaped packages containing separate compartments of cut-up

celery, peanut butter and raisins (and other food combinations) with

instructions on how to use the edibles to make caterpillars and other fun

creatures. The instructions explain that Disneys Foodle Doodles make it ok

to play with your food. Children are thus instructed with fun ideas to

Dream It Build It Eat It.

Such shifts to fun, whether comprised of natural or processed foods,

suggest that normal food is not enough. While food stimulates the senses,

the reclassification of childrens food into fun communicates that apples

cannot possibly be desired by children if they are not stamped with Winnie

the Pooh, while multicolored bugs or princess shapes or Transformer

characters are standard requirements for pasta. While childrens agency and

childrens need for fun is evoked to justify such promotions, a final,

lamentable side-effect is that the freedom offered by such fun is often one

that promotes an appreciation for both overeating and the artificial in food.

And where the food is unprocessed and natural (in the case of produce and

eggs), the fact that food must be fun alters the genuine, sensory (and also

seasonal) pleasure to be found in a ripe strawberry or a fresh watermelon. Thefact that food must be fun means it ceases to be special in its own right.

Although Finkelsteins projected boredom is kept at bay through this

reclassification, greater issuesof commodification, overeating, food

distortion and food alienationare certainly in play, and must be considered

in this eatertainment.

Acknowledgments

: :

This work was generously supported by the Canadian Institutes of HealthResearch [FRN 86633].

Notes

: :1 As an anonymous reviewer observed, haute cuisine chefs, such as Ferran Adri or Herv

This who make edibles like burning sherbet could count as fancy chefs playing with theirfood. Certainly this argument can be made; however, this paper focuses on generaltendencies characterizing packaged foodstuffs and mass-produced edibles.





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2 According to Bruce and Crawfords (1995) Cerealizing America, the cereal makers justifiedtheir sale of sugared cereals by arguing that adding a controlled amount of sugar inproduction was preferable to children adding sugarand probably too muchto theircereal at home.

3 This is not to suggest that children today all come from dual-income homes (where parentsare always working) nor that toys/playthings are solely the preserve of modern children. The

point is simply that fun food underscores the contemporary framing of children asconsumers, and the modern tendency to emphasize playand playthingsas significant tomaking childrens lives full and/or meaningful.

4 Zelizer examines children as active economic agents and adults as simply one category ofpersons with whom children carry on economic activities (Zelizer 2002: 377). Levison(2000) similarly seeks to uncover the childs perspective of, and involvement in, economicactivity.

5 Presidents Choice Mini Chefs Mac-a-Cheezie breaded crispy nuggets filled with macaroniand cheese.

6 This is debatable. As reported by Elliott (2008b), 89 percent of childrens supermarketproducts could be classified as poorly nutritious due to an excessive proportion of caloriescoming from sugar, fat and/or salt.

7 For a detailed description of the brand licensing of childrens film and television characterson food marketed to children, see Linn and Novosat (2008).

8 As noted, however, it seems unwise to urge children to eat 50 percent more of any foodbased on its fun-factor, as it teaches children to overlook internal cues to hunger in favorof external ones.

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