While flipping through magazines, I found an advertisement for Campbell's soup which I found particularly deceiving. It had a comparison of two bowls, the first of which had a small portion of salad and was captioned "100 Calories of Caesar Salad", the second a better-looking bowl of soup with the caption "100 Calories of Campbell's Soup". The intention of the ad, which was explicitly stated on the page, was to convince possible consumers that Campbell's soup is much more satisfying and healthy than other "healthy" alternatives. It was probably targeted at the kind of people who are constantly watching what they eat or trying to lose weight, in other words: middle-class, middle-aged women.
My problem with that advertisement was its attempt to sell soup as a healthy alternative when, first of all, the soup was being compared to Caesar salad, already not particularly healthy; secondly, that the soup's ability to sate someone's hunger lies in its high water content; and lastly, that canned soup is notorious for containing high amounts of unhealthy artificial flavor enhancers such as salt and MSG. I focused on combating my third problem in designing my photograph, emphasizing the salt in canned soup by taking a picture of a soup bowl filled with nothing but salt. My photograph also has the added bonus of showing the health cost incurred with the convenience of canned soup.
