Psuedo-Healthy Living

Has anyone noticed the increasing number of advertisements for convenience based pseudo-health products designed to make us live longer, stay younger, fight pain and generally make us achieve near immortality?

I was watching some garbage RTE program about getting fit (can't remember the name) and in between there were ads for Actimel, age defying face cream, Activia, painkillers and vitamin substitutes. -Now this all may seem in order, after all these products are being placed in a prime slot for the target audience, but there is an element of subversion going on here. All of these products supposedly espouse to have beneficial results when used. On closer examination, something far scarier and rather paradoxical emerges...

• Actimel from what I can see on observation of the advert is the processed, quick fix way to sort out a bad, unbalanced diet.
  
• Activia is the processed, quick fix way to ensure your bad, unbalanced diet moves through your digestive tract.
• vitamin substitutes are the quickfix way to get vitamins you lack from your bad, unbalanced diet.
  
• Age defying cream ensures your years of lacking vital vitamins from this unmentionable diet don't prematurely age you.
  
• Painkillers dull the pain from those mid afternoon lack of sugar headaches as a result of bad food decisions.

Each of these products in some way are symbiotically linked into a deeply unsettling consumer media fuelled perpetuation of bad health packaged as being beneficial to us all.

I'm not saying all these products are bad, but in the context of where their advert slot was (between a health show) and that they were advertised in succession -I think it's subversion on behalf of the advertisers. Most people who watch these "lose weight/makeover" shows probably aren't the healthiest bunch, and upon seeing these quick fixes this can't possibly lead to a positive outcome. After all, cigarettes and alcohol advertisements are censored in certain contexts... If corporations and the government are buying into healthy living, why don't they run a campaign like "Drink water... -it's great" or "Walk every now and again, and you'll be grand". Personally I think It'd do more wonders than an Actimel a day. -What ever happened to the old adage of "an apple a day"?

Another insulting aspect of these ads is their use of pseudo-science to confuse the audience. Everyone knows of Actimel's "L.Casei Immunitas", but other companies have these ludacris words attached to their products. The idea of using "L.Casei Immunitas" as a selling point of the product is outrageous. No one knows what "L.Casei Immunitas" is, this is like saying now with extra "AD FAKE WORD HERE". The aformentioned face cream utilises "Bioxilift" technology. -That's clearly just a made up compound word! These words mean absolutely nothing and are simply a vain attempt to lull audiences into a false belief that the company that advertise such products know more than the audience as they have a vast catalogue of austintaceous fake words.

Personally the only immortality I'd like to acheive is to get an invincibility star in Mario land.