food ads

I've never really seen the point of those ads that are not for a specific product, but for a category of food: eggs, milk, pork. I understand that our government is highly invested in promoting Agriculture (more so than in regulating food safety) -- but do they really think that these ads will affect people's actual eating habits? For instance, in our city we have many billboards for avocadoes -- the most bothersome one says "We also have a support group called AA." I think I find this kind of offensive, on the part of people who are in the real AA (which I'm not) -- and it certainly doesn't make me feel like eating more avocadoes. Does this strike anyone else as odd?

Even more pointless are the ads that are stamped across the actual food packages (as opposed to billboards or magazine ads for milk etc). I was at the store a couple of days ago and went to pick up a bag of potatoes -- across the plastic sack it proclaims "A DIET FOOD". The old man next to me also getting potatoes snorted and said, "Ain't no such thing as a healthy potato." Now that just seems to illustrate the problem. Potatoes can be healthy, or not -- depends on who's eating them, in what quantities, and most importantly, how they're prepared. But it's not like anyone is going to see that slogan and think, "well, I'm going to pick up two sacks today, since they're a diet food." It'd be far better to put money into educating people in how to cook the darn things. Reminds me of a few years ago when low-fat was all the craze -- I bought a bottle of vinegar that said "NO CHOLESTEROL." Anyone with any sense would know that there is no way that vinegar could possibly have cholesterol.