Browsing by Author "Hänninen, Marjaana"

Sugar has for a long time been a basic nutritient for humans because of its plaeasurable sweet flavour and high energy content. Today products containing large amounts of sugar are mostly consumed for pleasure. Food has a wide scope of meaning. It can be seen as a necessity, nutritients as a fuel for human, individual expression of freedom of choice, food as cultural phenomenon and representative of one’s values and status in society, and as a pleasure. The mechanisms for choosing food are often subconcious and they’re related to time and culture. 1900’s was the era of development of nutritional guidelines in Finland. On the first half of the century, focus was in securing sufficient nutrition for people. Later, due to rapid rise in standard of living, consumption of sugar increased in Finland and was seen as a risk for public health from the late 1960’s onwards. After social debate, limitations and recommendations for consumption of sugar were applied. Aim of this study is to examine the image of sugar in advisory material and advertising aimed at consumers over seven decades. Changes to importance and meaning of sugar, related to dietary recommendations and trends in discussion about nutrition, are addressed. Material of this study includes 15 printed advisory or marketing leaflets and one short film, all produced in between 1930 and 1994 by marketing and public relations department of Suomen Sokeri Oy. This study shows that the full scope of meanings of food, as well as changes of meaning of sugar, related to increased standard of living, can be found in the examined material. As a result the study material can be divided thematically into four parts: Sugar purely as a source for energy in 1930’s-1940’s.; Delicious and useful in 1950’s-1960’s; Useful and natural in 1970’s- 1980’s; new and easy in 1990’s. Nutritional guidelines recommending limitations to consumption of sugar had an effect to the content and presentation of advisory and mar-keting material produced by Suomen sokeri Oy. Despite of those chanches, preservation was still suggested as the most important use of sugar.