I recently went to a small restaurant which serves fresh, healthy, delicious food that is creatively prepared. They have the added welcome touch of giving paper (rather than villainous plastic) straws in their fruit juices. It was my second visit in a few days—I found the food fabulous.

On this second visit, a family came in with four teenage children. The kids opened the menu and stared at it. “Is it all salads?” one asked in concern. (No, there were also breakfast items, sandwiches, and a lot of hot dishes.) “I’ll just get a juice,” said another.

They seemed disappointed. I wondered: Would they have been happier in a fast food joint?

Where do our ideas about delicious food come from? How much are those ideas influenced by advertising? More importantly, how can we positively influence people’s attitudes towards healthy and unhealthy foods?

We almost never see healthy foods advertised. Ads for junk food and sugary beverages dominate children’s programming. Images and messages in TV and movies encourage people to believe that unhealthy choices are the tastiest.

It is an interesting challenge. We need to find ways to convince people, starting at a young age, that freshly prepared food using fresh and healthy ingredients looks and tastes great. We need to convince them that healthy food is vastly better, in terms of taste, nutrition, and that little political issue of who benefits from your food spending, than the colourless generic chemical-filled junk that is so heavily advertised and that leads to so much disease!