How the Food Industry Pays Influencers to Shill Blueberries, Butter, and More

Tim Forster
·9 min read

Getty/Yulia Reznikov

Remember butter boards? The viral sensation burned hot and bright, fueling dozens of social media videos and how-to articles on how to make a photo-friendly spread. Sparked by influencer Justine Doiron, the butter board was a self-made social media food trend from an innovative content creator. But one group wanted to take credit for it: Dairy Management Inc. (DMI), an industry organization that pays influencers to help promote the consumption of dairy.

Following backlash, Doiron clarified that while she had published videos in partnership with dairy in the past, the butter board video was entirely her own and not secretly an ad. The video that was an ad, she notes, was clearly denoted as such. (Doiron and DMI did not respond to requests for comment.) Still, the controversy highlighted a growing reality: In recent years, a new genre of food industry ads has grown on social media, and sometimes they’re hard to spot.

Tia Mowry, of ’90s ABC sitcom Sister, Sister fame, has been paid by Big Blueberry. As a celebrity spokesperson for an industry organization called the US Highbush Blueberry Council, she has posted a smoothie recipe that doubled as an ad for blueberries. But when she later posted a blueberry muffin video, it was not marked as a blueberry ad but as promotion for her cookware line. As Doiron’s and Mowry’s examples show, the lines get blurry when you’re promoting an unbranded agricultural commodity.

Advertising for agricultural foods isn’t new. If you’ve watched TV or flipped through a magazine in the past three decades, you’ve probably seen advertising from organizations that want you to consume more of whatever agricultural product they represent—from dairy (Got Milk?) to California raisins (I Heard It Through the Grapevine) to beef (It’s What’s for Dinner). These new ads are similar, but because social media campaigns and influencer deals are just a fraction of the cost of TV ads, more food products are now jumping into the game. The National Mango Board has paid chef and actor Ayesha Curry to make a mango slaw, while Potatoes USA has enlisted TikTok influencers like a former pro footballer and a registered dietitian. The dairy industry, one of the most cashed-up groups, has also sponsored a MrBeast video, which as of publication time has more than 34 million views.

The ads from these organizations, called checkoff boards, have government backing of sorts. Farmers need to vote to form a board—potato farmers for a potato board, peach farmers for a peach board, and so on—which is then overseen by the US Department of Agriculture. The farmers then need to pay a fee to the checkoff board (usually linked to the amount they produce—say, one cent per thousand pounds of potatoes or peaches). The board is then free to use that money as it sees fit to grow demand for whatever product it represents. Most checkoff boards split the money between advertising and research—the latter of which could include working with food scientists to develop America’s new favorite snack, or funding scientific studies to show off the virtues of peanuts, popcorn, or whatever other food.

The research side of the checkoff world has yielded a surprising array of food innovations, like Egg Beaters, the pre-cracked eggs in a milk carton-esque container that was developed with the help of the American Egg Board. Some checkoff boards have taken a more branded approach to developing consumer products that use as much of their respective commodity as possible. The beef and dairy lobbies, for instance, have used their budgets to help devise fast food Frankensteins like Taco Bell’s Grilled Stuft Burrito, Domino’s Philly Cheese Steak Pizza, and Pizza Hut’s 3-Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza, according to historian Sarah Milov. And in 2007, the national dairy checkoff not only worked with Domino’s to create pizzas that used 40% more cheese, it paid for the advertising campaign behind them.

Now, as media has evolved, so has checkoff board advertising. Unlike a celebrity spokesperson in the ’90s print ads who may not have had particularly strong opinions about, say, milk or beef, many influencers say they only promote products that they personally believe in. Sammi Haber Brondo, a registered dietitian who’s worked with a number of produce boards, including Potatoes USA, told me that she follows strict criteria for her influencing campaigns. “If I wasn’t aligned with the product, I would not work with it,” she says. “It has to align with me and my nutrition philosophy as a dietitian with a private practice and as someone who has a social media platform.”

All the influencers who talked to me spoke genuinely about their appreciation of the various foods they had promoted. Melissa Harrison, who owns Montana-based catering service Seasonal Montana, says that she has worked with Potatoes USA due to her genuine love of that versatile tuber. “I cherish the potato,” she says. “It’s so universal. Everybody loves potatoes.”

But the boom in social media advertising for foods has drawn criticism, usually toward boards with big budgets like beef, pork, and dairy. Democratic Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah recently introduced a bill in hopes of reforming the boards, which they argue don’t even help smaller farms and sometimes participate in “wasteful, anti-competitive, and deceptive behavior.” For example, one complaint is that partnerships with fast-food companies (as the Dairy Board has done with Domino’s and Pizza Hut) only benefit big, industrial dairy companies. (Several trade groups that work with checkoff boards have widely denied accusations that they misuse money.)

Many checkoff programs also take a subtle approach as they seek to target younger consumers—and some critics say that a government-endorsed program shouldn’t feature advertisements that could counter overall wellness. Unlike other forms of influencing, ads from checkoff groups are technically no different from government PSAs like Smokey Bear or McGruff the Crime Dog. It doesn’t quite mean, “The government wants them to say it,” clarifies Helen Norton, a law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. But it does basically mean, “The government is willing to support it.” That may be fine and good when it comes to sheet-pan salmon with potatoes and peas, a recipe that one dietitian and influencer worked on with Potatoes USA. But a beef burger with bacon jam, as celebrity chef Josh Capon developed with the beef board as part of another campaign, raises questions.

The USDA doesn’t really draw any lines: It approves checkoff advertising as long as it’s factual, whether or not the product fits national health standards. It can also technically veto these ads. Influencers who have worked on campaigns with checkoff boards say that, as a result, any information in them must be true, says Dawn Jackson Blatner, a registered dietitian and nutritionist who has worked with checkoff boards for potatoes, grapes, and peanuts, among others. “You really cannot say, ‘You will lose 20 pounds in five days with this fruit.’ So the sensationalism is not there.” The information must be backed by research.

That said, critics say that some of the featured research is also funded by the checkoff boards, which makes it less reliable. And Harry M. Kaiser, Gellert Family Professor of Applied Economics and Management in Cornell University’s Dyson School, notes that it’s very rare for checkoff advertising to be outright vetoed by the USDA. It usually only occurs if the ads are denigrating another agricultural product. In one instance, Kaiser says, a dairy checkoff ad that would have insulted nondairy spreads was vetoed. “They said you’re disparaging soybeans because that’s what margarine is made out of. And we won’t let you,” he says. Even so, in early 2023, actress Aubrey Plaza surfaced in a controversial campaign that indirectly made fun of plant-based milk (or “wood milk”) on behalf of a dairy checkoff.

It may not be scandalous that government-endorsed blueberry recipes can appear in your feed: Blueberries are a tasty and inoffensive fruit, so there’s no obvious downside. But studies have indicated that while consumers like “nonintrusive” advertising, they equally don’t appreciate being manipulated. Checkoff board info tends to be reliable because it’s subject to that USDA oversight, but the influencer model used to push them can be done so for more pernicious ends: A recent Washington Post investigation highlighted some instances of some less scrupulous dietitian-influencers working with corporate-funded entities to push certain ideas—for example, American Beverage Association, a lobby group representing Coca-Cola and other companies—although these organizations are not checkoffs and not bound by the same rules.

There’s no shortage of other gray areas. If an influencer devises a recipe as part of a checkoff campaign, there’s the question of who owns that recipe. Checkoff boards tend to keep the rights, but not always—and if the creator retains those rights, they could republish the recipe elsewhere. In these situations, it’s easy for something that looks innocuous to turn out to be advertising, but just as easy for something that was advertising to be repurposed as everyday content. In any case, next time you see a delicious-looking recipe for say, honey-cashew butter or chicken tenders with mango slaw, it may be worth checking the caption or the tags a little closer to get the full story of just how organic that recipe actually is—both in terms of the food and how it found its way to your feed.

Tim Forster is a freelance editor and food and culture writer based in Berlin, Germany. His work has been published in Eater, Vulture, Slate, and more.

Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit

More Culture Stories From Bon Appétit