The green ketchup phenomenon: Colored foods aimed at young consumers

Published on: February 27, 2002

by Phil Lempert

Walk around a typical American supermarket and you will see almost 40,000 products on its shelves. With a shopper spending just 22 to 24 minutes on their average food shopping trip you can understand how hard it is for food companies to get their products in your shopping cart. But now some companies are trying a new approach – using strangely-colored foods aimed directly at your kids. 'Today' food marketing expert Phil Lempert reports.

TODAY THE HOTTEST trend is marketing foods to kids, and for good reason – there are more of them and they have more money to spend.

Today there are more than 60 million kids aged 5 to 19 with over $100 billion of their own money to spend – on top of the $300 billion their parents give them each year to spend on groceries. Marketers spend almost $15 billion advertising directly to children under the age of 12. Building a brand relationship with any consumer is important, and even more important at an early age – as these are the consumers who can buy and consume products over a longer period of time.

According to the Center for a New American Dream, at six months of age (the same age they are imitating simple sounds like ma-ma) babies are forming mental images of corporate logos and mascots. By the time a child attends first grade, that child would have soaked in 30,000 advertisements.

So what are companies doing to attract these young consumers?

They are using color.

It all started when Heinz introduced their 'green' ketchup which delivered the highest increase in sales in the brand's history.

Now every company wants to see if a different shade of blue can increase their sales.

Here are some of the latest:

Ore-Ida, a division of Heinz, is introducing Funky Fries: Cocoa Crispers, Cinna-Sticks and Kool Blue. These are frozen potatoes in purple plastic bags. As they say, timing is everything – just last week the Wall Street Journal reported that for the first time in more than a decade per capita consumption of French fries is expected to fall. The average American now consumes 28 pounds of fries each year.

Kellogg's has teamed up with Disney to produce Mickey's Magix – an 'enhancing' mix of colorful Mickey Marshmallows and oat stars that are sprinkled with ÒpixieÓ dust that turns the milk blue.

Kraft Blue's Clues macaroni and cheese features pasta in eight different shapes and blue colored paw prints.

Kool-Aid, long known for its vibrant colors, is now introducing flavors to fool our eyes and taste buds. Changin Cherry is a green powder that turns blue and tastes like cherry.Grape Illusion is a gold colored powder which turns red and tastes like grape.

White Soda isn't white at all – it is a carbonated skim milk in 4 flavors that delivers 50% of the RDA for Vitamin A and D and 25% for Vitamin C. Kids love it, but sadly it only contains 2% of the RDA for calcium.

The biggest question that I get from parents is whether or not we are promoting bad nutrition with these products. The answer is simple – sometimes yes and sometimes no. We still have to read those nutrition labels and compare this generation of multi-hued foods with the old standards. Sometimes they are identical – sometimes they have added sugar and artificial coloring.

Food manufacturers and restaurants don't always make it easy for us to make the right choices. Many convenience foods designed for kids are high in processed fats, sugar, sodium, and preservatives, but low in fiber, regardless of their color. Yes, it is our responsibility to choose the right foods for our kids, but with the plethora of products and so little time, it can be tough to get kids to eat the no-fun cereals that don't reflect the latest trend.

Childhood obesity is on the rise, and teaching children early about healthy eating habits may deter them from a lifetime of obesity and disease. And it is well known that children who eat a healthy breakfast do better in school. Can you just imagine the impact on our nation's health if food brands started using these marketing tools to promote healthier foods to kids?

Column Archives

For archived copies of 158 Today Show stories, click the links below: