Inesita Soares de Araujo

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 citizens right to information and health cannot be subjugated to market values.

O design e a promoção da saúde nos laboratórios de pesquisa da Fiocruz

The article discusses the relationship between the objects and the physical environments devoted to research and health promotion. It analyzes the physical environment of the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz (IOC/Fiocruz) research laboratories in light of such health promotion principles as expanding the concept of health, participation by the players in the decision making process regarding health areas and the involvement of different disciplines in the planning of these environments. It finds a close relationship between design, architecture and health promotion throughout the history of Fiocruz and presents interviews obtained in the workshop denominated Space, Creation and Happiness, an instrument for sensitization, participation and listening utilized by users of the laboratory environments, developed and perfected in the IOC/Fiocruz.

Games and Health Communication: Brazilian Players’ Point of View

This chapter discusses how online digital games could address shortcomings in traditional health communication strategies, namely, their centralized production, normative tone, and unidirectional diffusion, without space for dialogue with the population. Games could be used to present health content in attractive formats, fostering an active stance in seeking such content and even enhancing population’s social participation. To this end, we analyze theoretical perspectives of meaning production in games like the concepts of serious games, procedural rhetoric, and games as participation. Our research methods include interviews with 22 players of a popular online digital game in order to draw conclusions about their views about the potential of digital games to communicate health themes and illustrate collective health issues. The research results allow us to conclude that participating in games and the fact that games generally bring participants together are decisive elements of the potential digital games for health.