[Food advertising: advice or merely stimulation of consumption?]. / A propaganda de alimentos: orientação, ou apenas estímulo ao consumo?

Current advertising messages for food products deserve special attention, since they indicate that the media has played a central role in shaping new eating habits. The food industry, seeking to serve a new customer segment (increasingly preoccupied with health and physical well-being), and with a specific interest in this promising market, has intensified its marketing strategies for stimulating consumption of diet and light food products. This study analyzed 20 food advertisements published from June to October 2006 in Brazilian magazines and newspapers with nationwide circulation. The following elements were analyzed in the advertisements: the advertiser; the audience; the language; and the message. It was seen that the advertising message mainly targeted women, proposing guilt-free consumption, promising a combination of esthetics and health. In order to enhance their product, several advertisements omitted relevant nutritional information while others promoted hazardous combinations with pharmaceutical products, and still others induced the target public to replace regular meals with their product. The results signal the need to broaden the discussion on the strategies for food advertising, as the citizen's right to information and health cannot be subjugated to market values.

[Reflections about health and educational objects and physical environments]. / Reflexões sobre os objetos e os ambientes físicos de ensino e pesquisa em saúde.

This article looks to the objects and physical environments destined to teaching and research in health from a different perspective. It addresses the communication between the designers and the people that use their projects and investigates in which ways the designer can contribute to a positive transformation of the state of mind of the users of teaching and health environments, taking into account the reaction of people to the products and environments, especially manifestations of pleasure and well-being. The article presents a pilot edition of an instrument for sensitization and data collection in form of a workshop called "Environment, Creation and Pleasure".