Potatoes rebranded as healthy, easy choice in new marketing camapign
The Potato Marketing Corporation has unveiled a new marketing campaign aimed at reversing a decline in potato consumption among young consumers in WA.
The campaign, by Rare, attempts to position potatoes as a healthy and easily prepared meal choice. The campaign is being backed with an ad spend of $1.8 million.
Rare head of strategy, Richard Beards said: “Research showed us that the millennial generation think potatoes are fattening and just too hard to prepare. The reality is that they contain no fat and can be whipped up in no time.”
Apart from abolishing the Potato marketing board which they should do so we can get some other types of potatoes in this state,Nadine duch cream and red and purple spuds are not enough.
Get rid of the board and let us have any spud we want
Don’t get me wrong, I adore potatoes, but to flog chips and mash as somehow essential and healthy I think is off the mark. They’re basically dense white starch – good for filling you up (like rice and bread) but of little nutritional value (even less so when fried or laced with cream, salt and butter). I doubt any GP or nutritionist would recommend more in the diet if you were potato deficient.
Bruce,
You can eat potatoes in a variety of ways, not just chips and mash. Baked potatoes are pretty good, I personally like potato and leek soup as well. They actually have a lot of nutritional value as well. I got some good info from the following sites:
http://nutritiondata.self.com/.....cts/2770/2
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.....38;dbid=48
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.....8;dbid=101
@Bruce, yes and even less so without the skin, where most of the potatoes fibre and nutrients can be found. I love jacket potatoes but lately the quality of the skin on a number of potato varieties have been less than desirable. Shame.
Bruce, with all respect to your comment, you might be surprised to find that there’s a lot more to potatoes than just starch that’s “good for filling you up”.
In many ways they have better health properties than rice and pasta.
Check the facts out for yourself: http://freshpotatoes.com.au/potato-facts
Food with complex carbs/a low GI such as potatoes are certainly an essential part of any diet.
Hey, I’m not trying to fly the anti-spud flag (it would be an insult to my Irish heritage!!!!) but the reality is spuds have limited health benefits, most of which are lost in the cooking process. Sure, we can all post pro-potato links from the potato industry just like this from a site of foods you should NEVER eat….
“Root vegetables absorb herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides that wind up in soil. In the case of potatoes–the US’s most popular vegetable–they’re treated with fungicides during the growing season, then sprayed with herbicides to kill off the fibrous vines before harvesting. After they’re dug up, the potatoes are treated yet again to prevent them from sprouting. “Try this experiment: Buy a conventional potato in a store, and try to get it to sprout. It won’t,” says Moyer, who is also farm director of the Rodale Institute. “I’ve talked with potato growers who say point-blank they would never eat the potatoes they sell. They have separate plots where they grow potatoes for themselves without all the chemicals.”
Yeah Bruce. WTF are you thinking?
Visit http://freshpotatoes.com.au/potato-facts and get a big bag of money, i mean, a better understanding of the ‘health properties’ of money.
Also, with all respect you, and your stupid comment. POTATO CURRENCY
@ Yeah Bruce…. Firstly I’m loving this potato conversation. Sure, spuds have nominal amounts of those nutrients, however up to 80% of the vitamins are lost when peeled and boiled. Add to that most people deep-fry potatoes in oil, or mash them with fat and salt and – my point being – hardly the health food they’re portrayed in the ad above. In fact, if we think “chips” are good for us is there any wonder we’re fast becoming a nation of diabetic obese fatties!
Looks to me like all these ads are doing is trying to correct a misconception: potatoes aren’t the ‘bad guy’ they’ve been made out to be. They show oven cooked chips, skin on, cooked in olive oil. A far cry from the deep fried chips you get at your local fish and chip shop or fast food joint. And the mash – skin on and microwaved. Looks pretty healthy to me. Roast spuds…yeah, if they hadn’t boiled them first they’d retain more vitamins.
Bruce,
If you had taken the time to look at my links, you would’ve noticed that i purposely chose neutral sites that take a nonbiased look at foods
The WA Potato Marketing Corporation — the last of its kind in Australia — decides who can grow potatoes, how many hectares can be planted and what varieties are produced.
Growers must deliver their produce to the PMC, which then sells them at a higher price.
The PMC has the power to stop and search any vehicle suspected of carrying more than 50kg of potatoes. Inspectors can demand the name and address of the driver and impound any “illegal” potatoes.
– See more at: http://www.theaustralian.com.a.....h1LUa.dpuf