When a Choice isn't a Choice

Lately I have become fascinated by the animated videos from the RSA.  I like this video about choice.  

I agree with the point made about how choice breeds passivity and how too many choices can numb a person's mind.  But one thing that choice has in its favor is truth.  The more you know about what you really need, the narrower your choices are.  This is a good thing.  Advertising is designed to confuse the issue about why a product is worth buying.  Advertising is not totally worthless.  Sometimes it carries truth or at least sparks an idea that can lead to a truth.  Knowing more about what you need allows you to resist marketing that caters to the fool.  Advertising is simply truth plus persuasion.  False advertising is illegal, but if the facts cannot be proven, then that leaves a giant loophole to focus solely on persuasion.  That's why every car insurance company says it can save you 15% over the competition: because they expect the consumer to just accept biased research and not question its truth or validity.

A good practice to get past a product's marketing in the case of food is to read the ingredient label - the actual ingredient list, not just the nutritional facts.  Often times food packaging boasts claims of what is not in it.  I laugh every time I see a pack of Twizzlers stating that it is fat free.  Of course it is! It's all sugar!  That doesn't mean it is healthy by any stretch of the imagination.  The body metabolizes excess sugar into fat for storage, so even though the candy has no fat, your body will still store it as fat.  Another clever deception is the claim of no trans fat.  The nutritional facts label of a product can show zero grams of trans fat if there is less than half a gram of trans fat per serving.  Serving sizes can be a trick, too.  Read the ingredient label: partially hydrogenated oils are trans fat.  Sure you can pick apart the definition of trans fat and partially hydrogenated oil and say there aren't exactly the same, but in the end, their contributions to cancer are equivalent.

By making a choice, you are holding yourself responsible for your actions.  No choice is ever automatic, but a choice can be a no-brainer if you look at all the facts objectively.  Most of the time, difficult choices boil down to one choice: feel good now and terrible later, or feel okay now and good later.  Marketing is designed to make you change your mind for the betterment of sales and cares nothing about your long term wellness.  The goal of marketing is to make you believe that their way is the right way, and that everyone is doing it their way because it is the right way (by "they" I mean whichever company is doing the marketing).  Overwhelming social pressure is the driving force behind marketing.  Even individualism can be twisted into a tool of social pressure.  All the marketers have to do is make you doubt your own choices long enough to make you vulnerable to suggestion.

Ultimately, your choice comes down to what you believe is true.  Freedom exists to let you make the right call, not for you to choose between modes of slavery to the corporate marketing schemes.