DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2023.1.11| HAGEMANN, WAGNER: LUNCHABLES_ INSIGHTOUT 1(2023) 77the question he asks his mother upon looking into thebrown paper bag,“Are you mad at me?”, indicatesthat conflicts within the family may be acted out manipulatively by rationing out disliked foods. Both theprobably problematic family relationships and thenagging son are, however, presented as ironic andcomedic by the female voice-over narrator and thewhole setup of the spot.The status of‘successful son’ and‘good mother’achieved in the Lunchables ad by buying and consuming the advertised product points to the function of characters appearing in(food) commercialsto serve as role models for the recipients in makingtheir choices as buyers and consumers. This becomesevident in another commercial from the 1990s, thistime for the Ferrero brand’s Kinder Surprise. In justa few quick shots, interactions within a well-off suburban family are presented as particularly witty, creative, and harmonious.13When the daughter asks hermother, who is about to go grocery shopping in herBMW convertible, to bring her“something exciting,something to play with, and chocolate!”, the son,overhearing her, takes the opportunity to offer himself as a shopping consultant who recommends buying Kinder Surprise to his mother on the way to thesupermarket. The daughter’s wish for excitement, aplaything, and chocolate will be fulfilled, as is shownin three inserts, by buying Kinder Surprise, which consists of a small toy that cannot be seen beforehandplaced inside a plastic capsule placed inside a chocolate egg. While in the Lunchables commercial, it isthe mother who, from off-camera, presents the solution to the food task posed to her, here, it is the sonwho even collects a fee for his advice in the form ofhis own Kinder Surprise. To satisfy children’s needsand wants in relationships of feeding and upbringing and to achieve positions idealised in society andneoliberalism, like that of the smart businessperson,which require resources that are basically finite and,depending on social class, differently available, liketime, money, recognition, or health, both commercialsoffer an(ostensibly) efficient and timesaving solutionthat looks particularly attractive in view of customers’ potentially scarce resources and is associatedwith a fantasised positive experience. This way, adstargeting conditions of precarity can recommendseemingly simple solutions without having to represent, that is expressly address, those conditions. Atthe same time, questions about the complex conditions for‘success’ in parent-child relationships or forattaining prestigious social positions are answered inan under-complex way that potentially underminesparental care work in that the‘knowledge’ providedconsists, first and foremost, of specific, recommended consumer decisions.Our assumption is that food advertisemens are important producers of meaning, charging foods, theirpurchasing, provision, and consumption with semantic significance and thereby implicitly addressingclass relations. These meanings can be, and in factare, received by customers, which is why we consider their analysis and discussion to be a resourcefor class-political self-empowerment. Specifically, interventions can start out from where food marketing has informed food and nutrition-related speech,thinking, emotion, and action in the social or familial milieus of one’s own childhood and youth and,for example, has promulgated variably applicablebut also semantically diffuse‘valorising vocabulary’like‘fresh’.14This, of course, first applies to products13To watch the ad on YouTube see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hjUVShDhCY&ab_channel=schollek(accessed 28 July 2023).14See, e.g., Erasco’s canned“noodle pot”(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtO2lNZPICE&ab_channel=VhsChorizo) or Dr. Oetker’sDie Ofenfrische frozen pizza(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1x6eG2CkfI&ab_channel=StephanCooper)(both accessed 28 July2023). We know from our own experience the relevance of describing meals as‘fresh’ when served, regardless of how they were prepared. Beyond valorising the meal, the attribution of‘freshness’ can be understood as an act of symbolic‘refreshment’ of the socialrelations between the persons involved in the meal, e.g., mother and son. Depending on the context, though, it can also be indicativeof feelings of shame on the part of the food-providing parent, if there is a sense that the meal prepared is not socially accepted.