Ok Matthew, you didn’t like the use of the word tirade, fair enough. But yes, unfortunately all advertising is designed to mislead you. If you for one second think that advertising exists to help find the best product for you, rather than being there solely so advertisers can lead you towards their product because selling that product makes money for them, you are just being naive.

My point was that it does not make sense to come out and single out the MLA and claim their advertising is misleading when they have played by the rules, haven’t made any false claims (red meat contains all the things they have advertised it claims, as pointed out by Dr Rosemary) and they haven’t put any other products down or compared their product to any others in the process. Why are we not singling out ther products that have the same lack of nutritional value in the same article? Better yet, if you want to be informative, draw no reference to the MLA commercial and just say “Heres a list of foods with the highest content of x”.

I think its misleading to use the term misleading about MLA’s advertising.

This is no worse than any other advertisement and if people are silly enough to just eat red meat to get the nutrients mentioned because Sam Neill told them they should, they are just going to get duped by someone else. You may not have fun if you drink coke, VB may not necessarily cause you to have a great time with your mates, Channel 10’s “Law and Order” is not necessarily a “brilliant, must see episode” everytime, even if they do say that 65 times a week when they advertise it.

Im just drawing a line. When claims are false, you can denigrate them, but when they still rest in the realm of fact, leave them be.

As the Dr Rosemary Stanton points out these nutrients are available from many other animal and plant based sources, in addition many of these are cholesterol and carcinogens free sources, so not only does red meat not have a monopoly on these nutrients, there are plenty of much healthier packages to choose from.

Makes perfect sense to me. By your own statement the advertisement is misleading, regardless of any other advertising. I’m not inclined to agree that all advertising is specifically designed to mislead us either. And tirade*? That’s a bit of a stretch isn’t it?

Good sources of iron are listed here: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002422.htm

* Tirade: A long angry or violent speech, usually of a censorious or denunciatory nature; a diatribe.

To be fair, I haven’t actually seen the second ad with the orangutan, so I can’t comment. That is a subtle little addition trying to move people away from fruit for such nutrients if it is true, I will give you that.

I’d take on a cow if I had to…. one foul kick to the udder should do the trick….

I wouldn’t say that’s entirely true. Has anyone else noticed that Sam drags the orangutan away from pursuing a big bag that has bananas hanging out of it? It’s not just a piece of humour thrown in… advertisers are more clever than you give them credit for!

What I don’t understand is why they’re using an animal that doesn’t even eat red meat?? Orangutans are primarily herbivores who sometimes eat ants/insects and occasionally a bird. Are they trying to tell us to go against our natural diet because it’s “better for us”?

I’m not trying to start an argumement about what humans are meant to eat but come on - you couldn’t take on a cow with your bare hands!

I appreciate that MLA are not suggesting meat is one of many sources you can get suggested nutrients from and that some people may take this as you have to eat red meat to get these nutrients.

My point was, if you are going to condemn them for taking an ‘our product is the best’ approach and they use factual information when telling you what their product contains, you need to condemn everyone who promotes their product having the best interests of themselves or their company in mind. If you take all advertising ‘in context’ as you suggest, by that definition, 99% of advertising is misleading.

You will note that no other products were mentioned in the advertisement. If people want to take the information given and don’t consider the source of the advertising, then that is simply their fault for not making an informed decision. I don’t believe everything I see on TV, do you? I certainly don’t believe those numerous ads for kids’ cereals which try to sell high sugar contents as ‘low GI’, for example and in my opinion these are much more pervasive than suggesting red meat has iron, zinc and omega 3 in it.

I agree Dr Rosemary is doing a an ok job in suggesting proper nutrition requirements and at least some of her article was balanced, but to go on a tirade against the MLA declaring their adverising ‘misleading’ doesn’t make sense as all advertising is designed specifically to ‘mislead’ you from other products to the product that the advertiser is selling. This is an ad, nothing more and is no more harmful than any other food advertisement you see on TV.

If you want to write an article about good nutrition, fine, but don’t base your whole article against one particular advertising campaign of one particular product, come out and say ‘these are the highest sources of the following vitamins and minerals’. Even the MLA and most advertises seem to have realised, your arguement or suggestion is a lot more convincing when you don’t feel the need to get your point across by specifically berating one group with an alternative view to yourself.

Is my post relevant to the article? Well people who use trained animals to perform tricks that serve no other purpose than to entertain us leave their ethics open to question and here we have an add that does just that and (or is that ******AND******) makes dubious claims about red meat so there my post does have something to do with the article.

anyway who died and made you the post moderator?

Regarding iron levels: Mine were tested recently and were in the high end of average (do I need to mention again that I’m vegan?). Meat eating has NOTHING to do with it - eating properly does.

“I find the Sam Neill ads promoting meat-eating to be creepy, offensive and environmentally irresponsible.” - Environmentally irresponsible. Amen.

Look at the MLA campaign in its context: MLA is not suggesting that red meat is one of several sources of iron and, hey, choose whichever you think is best for you. They’re clearly suggesting that if you want to develop your brain you need to eat red meat. This is misleading; there is no evidence that a balanced diet without red meat is any more likely to assist brain development than a balanced diet with red meat. And, just btw, there is plenty of evidence that too much red meat does all sorts of bad things for some other pretty important parts of your body (heart, bowel, etc) without which a healthy brain is pretty useless.

Dr Rosemary Stanton is doing a sterling job in shedding light on the biased psuedo-science which the animal production lobby is using to maintain popular misconceptions and myths about the human diet.

if you read through your assessments of what Sam Neill is claiming on these ads, you will find that you agree that red meat contains all the things Neill and the MLA are claiming it contains. It is not misleading if their claims are actually true, when they say “red meat is a source of ….” and you suggest that it is.

misleading would be saying red meat is a more plentiful source of … than ….

Clearly that hasn’t been done.

by your logic, the fact that Commonwealth Bank suggest they will “talk to you in easy to understand language about financial planning” is misleading because they havent suggested someone else may be able to speak in easier to understand language, or Coke is misleading in its advertising when people are having fun in the sun or whatever because it doesn’t suggest you can have as much fun with a competing soft drink brand.

Next time, write an article titled - “Good Nutrition” and suggest what the most abundant sources of each vitamin / mineral you have mentioned, that is good journalism/writing compared with the pedantic, argumentitive, pius drivel of saying things are “misleading” when you yourself have confirmed the things the MLA suggest are in red meat in their advertisements are actually correct.

Deccles by your logic, anything is possible

That said I’ve dealt with MLA up close and personal at fairly senior levels. Scary, rabid people.

I embrace the fact that we’re designed to be carnivores. Otherwise the appendix wouldn’t be.

Regarding iron: I’m also a vegetarian with healthy iron levels. In fact, when giving blood, my iron levels have at times come out ahead of my meat-eating partner. The only nutrient that is difficult to obtain in my vegetarian diet is B12, which Rosemary has conceded is supplied only by animal foods.

The percentage of vegetarians with anaemia has been found to be either the same or only very slightly higher than that of the general population, so I find Adam D’s comments about ‘stupid’ vegetarians to be both misleading and offensive.

It sure beats getting your home chopped down in Sumatra.