The "Appliance of Science"? Appeals to Medical and Scientific Expertise in British Advertising 1930-1980

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The project examines the role of gender, popular understandings of 'health', and rhetorical appeals to medical authority within the advertising of food products in modern British consumer culture. Working in collaboration with the History of Advertising Trust, this project examines advertisements housed within HAT's archives, drawing upon original artwork, posters, point of sale promotions, brochures, press cuttings, TV and cinema commercials, photographs, audio tapes, and a collection of campaign research materials to explore how scientific authority was represented, discussed and disseminated by popular advertisements between 1930 and 1980. Contemporary scholarship on public health has highlighted the central role of images displayed in public spaces in informing popular understandings of what the healthy body should look and feel like, and the importance of altering personal behaviour in the aspiration to be 'healthy'. As nutrition increasingly came under the purview of experts in the early twentieth century, the voices of dieticians, nutritionists and physicians were given increasing authority to speak on the public diet (Neswald, Smith and Thoms, 2017). This project asks how these voices were represented to the British public and how the perceived 'healthiness' of products was framed to sway consumers on the high street, in their homes, and across Britain.