Medicalisation of food advertising. Nutrition and health claims in magazine food advertisements 1990-2008

Food advertising increasingly portrays food as a type of medicine. A content analysis of magazine food advertisements in 1990 through 2008 shows that this was manifested with time more in the (a) nutrition claims and (b) health claims made in food advertisements, as well as the (c) food groups and (d) media genres to which nutrition and health claims in food advertising pertained. This so-called medicalisation of food advertising may promote images of the body and mind as malfunctioning unless remedied by the use of - advertised - products. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.