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Pogo Wisdom
June 5, 2006
3 Min Read
It’s open season on the food industry once again.
Now that the hoopla over Morgan Spurlock’s documentary about McDonald’s, “Super Size Me,” has subsided and Eric Schlosser’s book, “Fast Food Nation,” is no longer topping any of the best-seller lists, along comes the fictionalized movie version of “Fast Food Nation,” which debuted last month at the Cannes Film Festival along with the publication of Schlosser’s latest diatribe, “Chew On This,” a thinly veiled rehash of “Fast Food Nation” edited for a younger, junior-high-school audience.
As there is really nothing much new in either the “Fast Food Nation” movie or the “Chew On This” book, and since the food industry is responding strongly through letters to newspaper and magazine editors, protests at book signings, and even their own website, www.BestFoodNation.com, I’m not going to devote any more space to Mr. Schlosser’s endeavors.
It really frustrates me, though, to see our industry singled out as the big bad wolf of the childhood-obesity discussion. After all, while we do play a part in the drama, there are plenty of other players that make up the “Why Are Our Kids So Fat?” cast of characters. Perhaps the Morgan Spurlocks and Eric Schlossers could give us a rest and cast their publicity machines in other directions.
School system administrators. Perhaps there has been a conspiracy among this group of sinister bureaucrats who have used their students’ desire for unhealthful foods to squeeze money out of food companies to fund their pet projects. Have all those funds been used properly? Shouldn’t there be an audit?
Boards of education. In their quest to create the next generation of math and science geniuses, they have killed off a wide variety of extracurricular activities and most physical-education programs, citing lack of funding, thereby robbing their students of at least some exercise to help combat the effects of the abovementioned school administrators’ plot.
Video-game manufacturers. If food manufacturers are being held responsible for the effects of their good-tasting products and for their advertising of the same, shouldn’t the video-games industry be held to the same standard? After all, it’s the lure of their products and their advertising messages that are largely responsible for turning our kids into video game addicts and couch potatoes.
Parents. If a whole generation of kids is obese or near-obese, don’t their parents bear some responsibility for allowing it to happen? Several researchers predict this current generation of children will see a decline in life expectancy. Perhaps a class-action lawsuit is in order ...kids vs. parents—i.e., how much is each year of lost life expectancy worth?
OK, I know I’m a little “over the top” with these examples, but there is some truth to each one of them. The bottom line is there are many factors that have brought us to this epidemic of childhood obesity, and yet the one I feel is the main culprit continues to get a “free pass” from the media, the politicians, the writers and the public-interest groups, and that is each and every one of us and the everyday choices we make.
Epidemics are conquered when the general population voluntarily takes the appropriate action to eliminate the root causes. Simply put, we all have to eat less, eat smarter and exercise more ... one by one!
When I was a kid, I read the comic strip, “Pogo” whose title character would often say, “I have met the enemy, and he is us.”
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