Is Disney Telling Kids That They Are Fat?

Boy oh boy, Disney is at it again.

They just can't seem to catch a break. According to an article I came across last week on Yahoo, the Disney company, who is synonymous with oversexualized princesses and children's entertainment with a lack of educational material, has recently created an exhibit at the Epcot Center in Florida called Habit Heroes. The exhibit was designed in partnership with Blue Cross and Blue Shield and was designed to teach young kids to eat better.

The fun exhibit included some characters that, frankly, make me cringe. Villians such as 'Snacker', who eats too much fatty processed foods, and 'Lead Bottom', who doesn't exercise enough, are featured throughout the exercise. One interactive game was said to allow the played to shoot digital vegetables at the screen in order to knock cream puffs and other sweet junk out of the way.

The exhibit is drawing fire because of its art direction. The villains mentioned above are all drawn to be obese, and in many cases are depicted as lazy or even evil! One villain is named 'The Glutton' which harkens back to one of the seven deadly sins, not to mention that he is dressed in a Sopranos Style double-breasted suit. The pictures of the animation featured in the Yahoo article coupled with the characters' obviously obesity related names display an astounding lack of creativity, in my opinion. Critics are calling Disney irresponsible for allowing such blatant fat-shaming to take place in its works.

Sigh. I think I get all the sides of this debate.

I get the outrage. With 70+ percent of the American population over weight or obese, likely there are going to be over overweight and obese adults viewing this content even though it is an exhibit geared toward children. And with a steadily growing portion of children also registering in as overweight and obese, you can rest assured that some of the audience will be overweight. The exhibit clearly sends the message that fat equals bad. Children especially can't sort out the complicated messages beyond that. Children don't understand the intricacies and science of weight loss. So they are left with only confused emotions and a sense that if they are overweight that they must be deficient in some way.

Fat shaming doesn't work. I have written about that before. If you have a drug problem or an alcohol problem, you can many times hide your health issues from the world. But when you are obese you are on display. And the social implications of obesity are not just 'the obese person isn't beautiful' but also 'the obese person does not have self control', neither of which are true. Exhibits like this one from Disney do nothing to dispel these ever present social assumptions. And who is motivated by shame and hurtful words? Isn't that the first thing they tell you in all those progressive parenting books?

I get the irony. Disney theme parks, though I have never visited one (I want to be up front), are reported to be a wonderland of funnel cakes and French fries. It is ironic that a company that takes in huge profits from all things fast food would be so motivated to create an exhibit like this one. It is then not surprising that they would f@$! it up.

I get the intention. I give Disney some credit for agreeing to take a small portion of their big budget and address this issue. No doubt they see a growing problem in our world. No doubt they see a growing population among their own customer base. No doubt Blue Cross Blue Shield thought they could capitalize on Disney's massive world wide audience in order to send a good message to kids. But with so many hands in the pot from project organizers, animators and insurance people, who knows where this project went astray?

My two cents? Maybe the answer to childhood obesity doesn't lie in the children. Perhaps it lies in the parents. And 70+ percent of the adult population is overweight or obese!! Children cannot legally work. So it is logical to assume that they are not purchasing a majority of their own calories. Maybe just as we should stop marketing ALL foods to children, perhaps we should stop dumping the solution on them as well. They are kids after all. The worst thing we could do to try and combat childhood obesity is try and talk a bunch of science at these youngsters. And complicated eating and exercise plans? Forget about it.

Make Real Food for your family. Get your kids to play outside.

It really is that simple. Kids do not need to worry about their percent of fat in relation to their total calories. Kids do not need to worry about the sugar content of a carrot. Kids do not need to be running laps to have healthy bodies. Kids do not need to be shamed if they have put on a few more pounds than their friends. Kids do need to have active fun doing things like playing tag or kicking a ball. Kids do need you to make vegetables for them so they can try them. Kids do need parents that eat well so that they grow up assuming that is what grown ups do. Kids need to be kids. Keep. It. Simple.

Disney Corporation, I dare you, stop selling funnel cakes in your theme parks and then MAYBE I will take your intentions seriously. Until then I am going to keep assuming that you were looking to make a buck and some much needed positive PR off this project.

Are We All Too Busy To Eat Healthy?

Every couple of months I write some cry your eyes out post about how I am so busy. And I get some awesome responses from you guys in support, telling me to hang in there. I thank each and every one of you who has commented or even just read such a post. But as I continue to hit patches of busy-ness, writing more whining and complaining posts doesn't make for good compelling reading. Or even a cathartic writing experience.

I have yet again hit another such patch. While I have been quite busy at the office (which is a good thing), it is our current school situation that is the biggest culprit. My children and I now spend just shy of 12 hours of every week day outside of our home. And of my just over 12 hours spent in the home, 6-7 are spent sleeping, 2-3 are spent caring for the kids or preparing food and 1-2 are spent in other chore related ways, like emptying the dishwasher or making lunches. That leaves little time for the things that I love, like writing. No wonder I never talk on the phone.

So I have now carved out a love-hate relationship with food preparation. When I started this blog I was inspired by all that I read. I tried new things, even on a weeknight! But today making homemade food sometimes feels like a ball and chain. But what choice do I have? Muster up the energy to cook something simple like sausages and boiled veggies, or order food that will make us all feel sick. Last week I was exhausted fighting some cold and I couldn't even think of stepping foot into the kitchen. So we picked up some pizza. What a mistake. I spent the whole night queasy and I couldn't sleep. Some convenience. Yes, the kids ate with no drama-rama, but I have to imagine that their bellies were tender that night too.

I love the idea of a local, organic and non-processed diet. But I will not sit here and tell you that it is a sustainable lifestyle for most people. The vast majority of people lack the skills to make a non-processed lifestyle work with all the commitments they have in life. And my 'experiment' to prove that any family can eat all homemade foods has lead me to dozens of amazing and inspirational blogs kept by full time bloggers, stay at home mothers and home schoolers. That's awesome, but not all the tips really work for me. I am not home to try all these cool recipes out.

So after 18 months of blogging, I have come to one succinct conclusion. We are all just too damn BUSY! The modern American lifestyle is overstuffed with way too many activities and we have made room for them by cutting out things we really need to do like sleeping and preparing healthy food. And we continue to convince ourselves that we need junky convenience foods and faster smartphones in order to do more work and brain cell sucking activities like searching the Internet. But wait, are we convincing ourselves? Or is it the companies that are selling us the phones, computers and junk food?

Today, The average American workday is 7.5 hours. That makes sense, 8 hour day, 30 minutes for lunch give or take a few. That number has remained fairly constant over the years. In this link, you can see that weekly hours worked has remained the same since the mid sixties at about 40-41 hours total per week. That is actually slightly less than in the forties when the average weekly hours worked was slightly over 43 hours. But no huge difference over the years. Then tack on the average commute, which is today just shy of an hour per day, or over 100 hours each year. I guess I can keep on complaining because my work day is 9 hours each day and I can boast a whopping 2+ hours of commuting time each day.

The change in sleep over the last 100 years is much more dramatic. The average amount of daily sleep has gone from 9 hours in 1900 to 7 hours in the 1970's to just over 6 hours today. I myself admit to getting only 6 hours of sleep regularly. I shoot for 7 hours but don't really feel good unless I get a full 8 hours. The fact that kids are getting less sleep saddens me. Reports show that School aged kids today average only 9.5 hours of sleep each day when they should be getting more. That is less than kids were getting 30 years ago. Sleep is important for everything from physical repair to hormone regulation to supporting memory. I know all this, but so many nights I stay up writing this blog instead of turning off the electric lights and the ever portable iPad.

But naturally it is the time spent in front of TVs, computers and Internet capable phones that is so troubling. According to this study and the article published in Businessweek, kids are now using more than 8 hours of media per day. That includes cell phone and iPod usage, texting, Internet, gaming and TV watching. I don't even want to know how many hours I spend using media. It is virtually all day at work. And then between various personal Apple devices, I overdo it a little. The problem I find with this trend is not so much that we are watching so much TV or reading online, it is that we are not setting down the devices to prepare healthy foods. It is that we cannot turn off the computer to go to sleep. We seem so afraid that we will miss something. Surely this cannot be good for us. And our health is surely suffering from the lack of rest and the abundant 'convenient' food.

I don't mean to say that we should just utilize our time better. That's a cop-out like saying we need to eat less and exercise more to combat obesity. The biggest problem in being too busy today is that in order to stay socially connected in today's world we HAVE to be computer literate and text and stay up on Facebook. There aren't quills for letter writing, parlor visits or calling cards anymore. Companies are pushing you to not even get mail anymore by sending you your bill via email. We cannot live without technology. It is not going away. I don't think we will get any less busy than we are right now. I suppose it could get worse. It could turn into The Matrix.

I bounce between wondering if blogs like mine make a difference to anyone who eats the Standard American Diet and not having any effect whatsoever. Or does my writing into the ether just solidify a group of people who have all independently come to the same conclusion, that we are too busy and we need to make lifestyle changes in order to maintain our health? Are we visionaries? Are we cutting edge? Have we discovered the missing link that could save us from more health problems? Or are we the fringe? Are we the crazies? Are we the Miss Haveshams' still clutching our old failed dreams even as the world passes us by?

Wouldn't it be a wonderful world if we could all learn to live in balance. Do you think anyone will ever get that to catch on?

This post is shared with Simple Lives Thursdays

It's On: This Is Survival of the Fittest

When I was in the seventh grade, my social studies teacher Mr Shipman taught us that there were 5 billion people aproximately living on earth. Mr. Shipman himself is, for some reason in my brain, integral in my memory of the earth's population. I heard that figure several more times throughout high school but by my college years the news reports were all reporting that earth human population had topped 6 billion. And today we are fast approaching 7 billion.

Writers love to write about 'sustainability', 'doing more with less' and 'supporting growing populations' but what they aren't saying in so many words is: 'Good God, soon there aren't going to be enough resources (read food and water) for all the people on earth!!' Perhaps it wouldn't be wise for them to foster fear among a large section of the population. We can't possibly know how critical our food and water and natural resource situation will get in the next 20 years as a result of population expansion. I believe that if we needed to adapt to shortages of certain items, most people could (provided that the shortages don't encompass. EVERYTHING). Life has continued to find a way to adapt and survive for millenia. I actually have full faith that when oil runs out or becomes endangered enough to become prohibitively expensive that electric car technology will suddenly be pulled out of the dusty back drawer and someone will make ka-gillions!! But until we are forced to wean off gas, we probably won't. $4 a gallon hurts, but it isn't currently making MOST people rethink driving or their job or their living situation, certain subsets of the population excluded.

Food is different though, while some countries have always dealt with simply having enough food for their expanding populations, the US struggles with having TOO MUCH food. You'd think this was a GOOD problem to have. The US currently produces, on a yearly average, about 3900 calories of food for each person in the country per day. The USDA recommends that the average adult consume about 2000 calories per day. Much of the uneaten food is exported and some is wasted, like unsold grocery store food, spoiled foods and restaurant leftovers. But when the extra calories are owned by major corporations they have historically found ways to sell them off and convince you to consume them. From the same source as before, it is estimated that Americans consumed about 2700 caloires per person per day in 2007 for example. That is 28% higher than 1970. And we weigh on average about 30% more too. This tells me that when there is a surplus of food, humans typically rise to the challenge and eat the surplus, even if we don't biologically need it. This also tells me that MARKETING WORKS. Most of the country has succumbed to the message to eat more all while believing that they are impervious to most marketing schemes.

Obesity has created a whole mess of conversation in our nation. We talk incessantly about changing laws and fining fast food restaurants for fraud and public endangerment. We argue about soda taxes and the rights of the overweight. We argue over the Farm Bill knowing that SOMONE will get hurt be it the farmers or public at large. Bloggers like me take to the internet to desperately hope to change our food culture and our children before we all fall victim. But when do we step back from the din of disagreement and say 'I am going to eat right because I HAVE to, not because it is easy.' Some of us have already begun to do so.

Call me a pessimist but I don't think things are going to change fast enough for my generation and possibly my kid's generation. Being so pessimistic doesn't make me write less or feel that what I talk about is futile. We are slowly changing our food culture. But in the mean time I openly admit that I am throwing down the gauntlet. Our obesity crisis is a classic case of survival of the fittest.

If I had a nickel for every person I had met who didn't care about the food that they eat, I would be a rich woman. I have had people tease me and say I was making too much out of our exposure to pesticide residues and chemical food additives. Or, "I have been eating that for YEARS and I am not sick!" Or my favorite "But the chemicals taste so good!"

Well, this pessimist is doing what it takes to feed my kids right, regardless of what anyone else says. I am currently teaching my kids that uber processed sugars, GMOs, chemical additives and the whole host of non-foods that we currently eat as a nation are WRONG! I am not tip toeing around the average child nutritionist's fear of labeling some foods good or bad. I am simply teaching my kids that certain things are food and certain things are not. And in the end, this will make my family stronger and more fit to carry on the gene pool for our species. Call me competetive, but this is survival of the fittest.

We are facing over population. And the biological history book doesn't tell a great story for those species who become out of balance in the world. The earth always wins. Call me controversial. Call me a nut case. Call me drunk with my own opinion. But future fortune will favor those who are strong and healthy. And who knows what lays around the corner? So until then we will continue to eat real food and support local sustainable food systems. We will continue to look for ways to garden and make our own food. And we will continue to encourage people to join the real food movement because we need more like minded people. And it would be unfair to keep our real food secret to ourselves! But what do I say to the detractors? I say 'Bah, you can have your vegetable oil and your Cheetos and your factory farmed beef chunks!' And the next time someone teases me about what I eat or tells me that I am a nut job for believing that the Standard American Diet is such a problem, well, I might just keep my mouth shut. I am a formidable foe after all.

Local or Organic or ????

As yesterday dawned I was pretty sure that I had a direct path ahead of me. Buy more organics and buy more from the farmer's market. But through the course of the day it became apparent that my clarity had become a little cloudy.

Although I have been shopping at the Inwood Farmer's Market for a couple of years now and I have loved the high quality food, I had never actually asked the question 'Is your food organic?' I just naturally assumed that because these farmer's were pursuing the avenue of selling their fare at the farmer's market rather than contacting a supermarket distributor, that they must be organic. I also see all the folks from my neighborhood that I know from the CSA, and I know that they prize organic foods like I do. Surely the fact that other health minded folks I know shopped there, that MUST mean that everything was organic!

I have known for sometime about the USDA organic program. I know because of Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma, that family farms must pay a government certification company a lot of money to become certified organic, so they can stick that USDA ORGANIC logo on all their produce. Many family run farms simply do not make enough money to pay for the certification process, but their food is organic nonetheless. My CSA makes no effort to hide the fact that they fall into this category, and I always assumed that the folks at my farmer's market did too.

Well, I got to asking people. There were several stands that were obvious. Milk Thistle is labeled as organic, Bread Alone Breads too are labeled. The mill selling beans and flour are all labeled. The turkey however....the turkeys were not given hormones and antibiotics, but they did not eat organic feed. So they are not organic, even though theirs is a better practice than at most conventional animal farms. The apples are grown with both chemical fertilizers and pesticides. I have heard from my own CSA that growing fruits organically are especially challenging because there are so many other critters besides us that like fruit. Those buggies just get to it first. All of the vegetable stands sold veggies that were not sprayed with pesticides, but they all used chemical fertilizers. There was one exception, Hawthorne Valley Farm sells organic yogurts and breads and other delicious goodies. They are a not for profit biodynamic farm in Ghent, NY and they were selling organic salad mix. But that was it, no other veggies for sale. It was pricey, but I bought it.

So there I was at the market feeling a little lead astray. But not rightly so, none of these farms had ever lead me to believe that they were certified organic. None of them labeled their food with a misleading label. However I was blissfully happy to assume that they were organic when they weren't. But I didn't feel that I was left with much of a choice. I supposed I could have gone to my supermarket and bought all organic veggies that were trucked in from California. Those veggies would have been from upstanding but nonetheless factory farms like Earthbound farms who grow food in huge monocultures and manage to turn a huge profit. They are wonderful farms that started out small and grew through success. But I don't like that whole 3,000 mile trip that they make across country. Not only is it an amazing waste of gas, but I get fewer days to enjoy my food because it is older by the time it arrives in Manhattan. And the nutrients in food diminishes with each moment after it has been harvested. I have bought potatoes at the farmer's market that were in the ground 5 hours before I bought them (the farmer told me).

And furthermore, buying local means that my food dollar will stay within the economy of New York State. When I purchase a California grown carrot, my grocery store gets one chunk of my food dollar, a distributor or importer gets another chunk and that CA farm gets the last chunk. I am not sure whose chunks are big or little , but I know a thing or two about the wholesale industry, the profit is divided up amongst the people that connect your product to you.

Today I have decided that local is more important than organic. I was hoping that my choices would be more clear. I envisioned a big yellowish-maybe-slightly-orangish crooked carrot that had a pair of evil eyes that were red and swirling around. I would know NOT to buy that carrot because it was bad news. But the choices are not that easy. And it doesn't seem like anyone is talking about all this gray in the marketplace. They are just making black and white statements. Buy more of this and less of that. Eat this, and not that.

We all live in gray. I think the most important thing for each of us is to ask the questions and try and make your way though the cloud.