Besides ads for tobacco and cigarettes (read today’s news about how tobacco companies duped cigarette smokers with claims about ‘light’ cigarettes), remember this when you see ads for potato chips and all kinds of snacks, candy, medicines for colds and headaches, and baby foods.

Consider baby foods. Of course, it’s illegal to advertise any kind of baby food for children under two years old in India. But where there is money to be made and a will to sell, marketers will find a way.

Even though you cannot see advertisements for baby formula and Cerelac and other foods on TV and print media, most people – even educated people who should know better – seem to believe that they are in fact more ‘nutritious’ than ‘gentle’ than homemade foods. Baby formulas like Nan use the picture of a baby bird and it mother because it is illegal to use the picture of a healthy human baby and happy mother to sell baby food for children under two.

Baby food marketers also use attractive packaging and ‘free information’, sponsorships and ‘chance’ mentions in other media to create an aura that their products are better than anything a mother can easily provide from home. Cigarette companies regularly sponsor sporting events (for example, Benson and Hedges sponsor cricket).

I consider myself intelligent and immune to ads for any form of tobacco, but I have to confess that I am one of the dupees where baby food is concerned. I fed my son rather a lot of commercial baby food before I realized the error of my ways.