Misinforming Superfoods?

[Mupp]

Here's an article that I found today;
http://www.care2.com/causes/real-food/blog/superfood-muppets-misinform-kids-about-healthy-eating/

Any thoughts?

 

[Drtooth]

Someone sat on the keyboard. That's how STUPID that article was. It had NO information other than common sense stuff and whining about the big Pharmaceutical companies without ANY actual basis for an argument.

The worst and DUMBEST part of the whole thing is that these people are too stupid to realize that this is first and foremost a PARODY. The fact they are called superfoods has NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING to do with the fake and ridiculous movement of "Superfoods" which is just another faux health movement anyway.

Make no mistake, I find far left whining JUST as bad as far right whining, and SS has had TOO much bad press from annoying little upstarts for one reason or another.

Really, you try to get kids away from shoving their faces full of 8 bags of Doritos, and THIS is the thanks they get..

 

[Mupp]

Really, you try to get kids away from shoving their faces full of 8 bags of Doritos, and THIS is the thanks they get..

Yeah, that's kind of how I felt about it.

 

[frogboy4]

There's nothing wrong with Sesame's program. They can't only list antioxidant foods because it wouldn't show balance. They are missing protein (I wouldn't want to see Gladys in that role) and you know, cheese is not a necessity. Broccoli actually has calcium! But I see nothing wrong with this lineup. It's a general guideline for healthy eating from a time-tested educational source. I can't believe they associate Sesame with Big Pharma! Conservatives continue to cut the budget for public broadcasting and that makes sponsors necessary. I'm not a fan of the pharmaceutical industry, but they are important and they have as much of a right to support non profits like Sesame Street as any other corporation. People like this blogger like to tie innocent-looking things to evil motives in order to gain exposure for their point of view. It's tiresome and dishonest. Sesame does great things and I like this particular program.

By the way, Doritoes have MSG! No kid should be eating those on a regular basis!

 

[Drtooth]

I can't believe they associate Sesame with Big Pharma! Conservatives continue to cut the budget for public broadcasting and that makes sponsors necessary. I'm not a fan of the pharmaceutical industry, but they are important and they have as much of a right to support non profits like Sesame Street as any other corporation. People like this blogger like to tie innocent-looking things to evil motives in order to gain exposure for their point of view. It's tiresome and dishonest. Sesame does great things and I like this particular program.

There are so many specifics I wanted to elaborate on, but just didn't because Community was on...

There are three things that bugged me about that.

1) Did any of those yuppie hipsters download that segment on their iPad and actually WATCH it before they criticized it with NO valuable information to back it up? The superfoods are PARODY characters for one thing... and secondly, the segment was about choosing healthy options, trying new foods, not skipping breakfast, and above all, that simple problems can be solved by eating healthier. No one of the Super Food characters said "eat us," but rather made suggestions like eating a wide variety of fruits and veggies, and healthier alternatives. Sure, milk has problems, but given the fact that soda is much, much worse, I'd go with milk.

2) This... this food elitism has got to stop. I agree with a lot of what's being said about the food industry and how it's generally Wal*Marting our society to get quantity over quality, and how the poor rely on it and the fact that we need to fix it... but what it all comes down to is money. The obesity epidemic is also a poverty epidemic. Plain and simple. People always scream bloody murder about McDonalds, but no one says "BOOO! Banquet frozen dinners!" They carp about Coca-Cola, but never Jolly fun 4 liter sodas for a buck. As someone that had more Hamburger Helper meals than he would have liked, sure I'd love to eat a delicious pro-biotic fed chicken breast in a light vinaigrette with freshly prepared vegetables, but I can't afford it. There are millions of people in our own country who can barely even put garbage on their tables, and millions more around the world that would pray to even get a taste of the garbage we eat, vs the animal feces and saw dust they have to choke down to end the growling hunger pains. The attitude that I get from that blog is "We're so much better than you because we make more money and eat foods that you SHOULD eat they only save for the upper class." and then they have the nerve to wag their fingers telling us to eat that stuff. If they REALLY cared, they'd donate half the money they use to buy local organic heirloom foods to causes devoted to giving mommy and daddy a living wage, putting edible food on peoples tables, getting good food in school cafeterias.... but they seem to only be good at taking fast food toys away from kids, and vilifying parents that bring... GASP cupcakes to their kid's parties.

3) Yeah... kids LOVE goat milk. Tell you what, when you have kids, feed them goat milk. And if they don't puke it all back up, then you can tell me what to eat. Seriously. Kids ARE kids. They like pizza and burgers and chicken tenders and all that stuff. Kids do not like having the diet of a diabetic, painfully constipated 50 year old with an ulcer... heck, 50 year olds with an ulcer don't like eating the stuff they have to eat. It's all about MODERATION. Remember how much the fan base carried on with the song "A Cookie is a Sometimes Food?" I think that was absolutely brilliant and a strong message to kids.

4) I am SOOOO glad you mentioned the sponsorship. PBS is bleeding, and they're taking it out mostly on their kids programming. Back when evil McDonalds (again, the ONLY villain here ) was a sponsor and there was outrage, did ANY of those people phone in large amounts of pledge money to PBS to STOP the corporate sponsorship from being the only means of support? NO! They spent a fortune complaining, putting PTA meetings together... all this other crap. Listen, if you people REALLY gave a crap about how kids watch commercial television, you'd donate to PBS. Not use the same amount of money on lobbyists and annoying pressure groups. Stop taking away to fix the problem. Adding is the only solution.

5) I see no difference between this garbage as I do with the "Sesame Street is a smut peddler" from the Katy Perry fiasco or "Sesame Street is an evil left wing brainwashing conspiracy" fiasco for them daring to use their right to free speech to openly mock the only ones that think that applies to. SW has to start IGNORING these web comments, blogs, and loud mouths and do the show THEY want to do. SNL does NOT back down from mocking Fox news. Letting people censor you IS a violation of free speech. Especially when you use that pulpit for all the respectful work SS does.

By the way, Doritoes have MSG! No kid should be eating those on a regular basis!

And why do we even STILL have MSG? We got rid of transfats, and they are trying to vilify corn sweetners... why the heck is no one getting on about MSG? It's very dangerous to certain people.

 

[mr3urious]

And why do we even STILL have MSG? We got rid of transfats, and they are trying to vilify corn sweetners... why the heck is no one getting on about MSG? It's very dangerous to certain people.

This may sound controversial and a bit off-topic, but MSG isn't really as evil as people make it out to be. It's just dihydrogen monoxide, sodium, and glutamate (the former and latter of which are found in nature and in many foods). Japanese people eat about 3 times as many of it as we do, yet have the longest lifespan in the world. Plus, MSG has about 1/3 the sodium of sodium chloride, which is ideal for certain people on low-sodium diets.

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/03/science-is-so-inconvenient-to-food.html

I can't believe they associate Sesame with Big Pharma!

Well, there was that time where SS was sponsored by the letter Z... and Zithromax.

 

[Drtooth]

This may sound controversial and a bit off-topic, but MSG isn't really as evil as people make it out to be. It's just dihydrogen monoxide, sodium, and glutamate (the former and latter of which are found in nature and in many foods). Japanese people eat about 3 times as many of it as we do, yet have the longest lifespan in the world. Plus, MSG has about 1/3 the sodium of sodium chloride, which is ideal for certain people on low-sodium diets.

There are some people with severe reactions to it, though. Make no mistake. But it still isn't really the greatest thing out there either. Though a lot of the OTHER stuff in Doritos is pretty bad too.

 

[StreetScenes]

wow. that's scary. i find that most people who are health food extremists like that and preach about it aren't in it for the health at all. their real interests are usually moral (becoming vegetarian for animal rights) or political (eating locally grown produce to defeat capitalism), and once they adopt that cultural identity, they start talking about health, half trying to justify their choices and half because they want to believe everything their peers and the targeted advertisements say. the one person i know who actually eats like that for the sake of being healthy doesn't preach at his friends or talk down to them for eating the occasional barbecued pork sandwich.

take my friend, who's always telling us he eats healthier than we do because he's a vegetarian. after ranting about corn syrup, he criticized us for buying a loaf of white bread and refused to allow us to "torture chickens" by buying regular eggs rather than the organic local farm fresh ones (which were more than 5 times the price). did he want to eat my barley and bell peppers, or my bok choy, tomato & caper salad? no. but he downed an entire bag of cookies in 24 hours. and what was in the cookies, pray tell? white flour, regular eggs, and high fructose corn syrup. and i'm the unhealthy one because i put butter on my roast beef sandwich.

the thing i think sesame street is doing really well is to remind parents that eating healthy doesn't have to be so extreme. not all healthy foods are expensive or obscure or yucky--just use some common sense & encourage a simple but diverse diet. cheese is okay--it's got calcium and it makes broccoli taste good! and it's better to eat broccoli with cheese than to make kids hate vegetables because you only do them raw or boiled plain, and not get enough calcium because you cut out their dairy intake. plus, then, as soon as they go to a birthday party, they eat pizza and cake until they puke because they can't get it at home. (& we don't grow out of it. at the office christmas luncheon this week, the grownups who gorged on desserts were the ones whose wives make them eat the most salads at home. seriously.)

because the other thing the preachy health food extremists have in common is that they don't enjoy food. (they never did, or they wouldn't have completely stopped eating whole categories of tasty foods by choice). when you enjoy cooking and eating lots of different things, some of them are bound to be healthy. then eating healthy most of the time isn't a chore or a punishment but a pleasure, and you can still eat sometime foods sometimes! the're not never foods, for crying out loud.

 

[Drtooth]

I would like to quote you verbatim, but that's redundant. It really is one of those annoying little things that people hold over everyone else's heads. They watch 10 minutes of their bluray edition of Food Inc and think they're experts. Yet, their idea of "helping" is more or less finger wagging. It really smacks of elitism too. A selfish spoiled brat mentality... sort of like when they were younger they held it over your heads that they had every Transformer, and your parents refused to buy you the cheapest one... or they got EVERY game system that ever came out WHEN they came out, and when you finally got one, they'd mock you... "Oh, you only got a Nintendo, ya baby?"

There is an air of that there too.

I have to say, there IS a point somewhere in there, deep deep down... but I've heard too many horror stories of people who can't even get to a mainstream non-organic grocery store and have to buy everything at convenience stores and gas stations. And often times, the people with the least amount of income go after quantity. If anyone really cared, they'd organize some sort of help for them.

Not that there aren't... there have been strides in trying to get better food in school cafeterias and starting up community gardens. We need more people fighting FOR that and less people fighting AGAINST kid's programming, Happy meal Toys, and classroom birthday parties.

 

[bingboingcutie]

We need more people fighting FOR that and less people fighting AGAINST kid's programming, Happy meal Toys,

Yes! I agree; I'm looking forward to those Muppet Happy Meals once the new movie rolls around. Hey, they did it with all the other non Muppet productions

Whoopie! Did I just make a 100th post? I did! Right? Yes i Did!