Carbohydrate: the Ultimate Hunter 117 Over 90 % of the retail price of a can of popular soft-drink covers paying salaries, paying off expensive offices, packaging and advertising. The cost of ingredients are less than 10 %. Whereas, in selling fresh fruit or raw meat the cost price would be between around half of the retail price. I know which product I would rather be manufacturing and throwing millions of marketing dollars at! Advertising is at its best, at its cleverest, when it provides a solution to a strong sense of need. In a study of over a thousand people Time Magazine found that one in four people surveyed would‘ often’ eat to improve their mood. Now there’ s a market that needs a solution! Watch the expressions on the faces of the people in TV advertisements as they eat the food being promoted – if they don’ t look like they are having a supreme, orgasmic experience then the creative director should be shot. I must say, however, these ads are great for one thing. They remind us to eat mindfully and savor food fully as discussed in Chapter 8. The experience the actors appear to be having is exactly what you should be experiencing when you eat your high sacrifice foods. The manufacturers of chocolate bars know they are not selling confectionary; they are not even selling a drug-like substance that lifts mood. Even if it doesn’ t have enough real chocolate in it to do this, the expectation of the consumer – known in medicine as the placebo effect – will do the job. But, nevertheless, this is not what they are really selling. What they are really selling is emotion – specifically the emotion of feeling happier! It’ s only everyone’ s goal in life – that’ s all! They are talking to our unconscious at an instinctual level – the most powerful of all levels – because they are mixing our need for pleasure with our instinctual, DNA programmed need for food. Then if they are really clever they add the sense that, if you eat or drink their product, you will be part of the in-crowd. This is rolling out the big guns because belonging to the right group is the next most important desire for us after we have met needs like food, water, clothing and shelter.