The Hype and the Media

Ah Lou Dobbs, what would we do with you. The blustering blowhard from CNN who as of late has been rankled with charges of racism and being courted by that bastion of impartiality Fox News has let another verbal shot across the bow of reason fly ...

"On Monday night, Lou Dobbs did a segment on how "Meatless Monday" is being adopted by the Baltimore city school district in an effort to cut costs and get children to eat healthier food. The segment showed schoolchildren eating vegetarian chili and grilled cheese sandwiches, and CNN reported that they found no parents who objected to the policy.

The news network also noted opposition to the one-day-a-week of vegetarian food by the American Meat Institute -- a trade group that represents meat processors and packers with obvious financial interests in meat consumption. Without pointing out factors that helped fuel the initiative, such as childhood obesity and a national school budget crisis, CNN reported that the AMI is concerned that "students are being served up an unhealthy dose of indoctrination." The institute's Janet Reilly claims the policy was depriving students and parents of "choice."

After watching the segment, Dobbs described this as "a real political storm in the making." (this is from Huffington Post)

Pardon me for a minute while I rant and wail against thinking like this. Forgive me if I get a touch ... well snarky .. because sometimes snarky is all I have.

First lets talk about facts:

The problem of childhood obesity in the United States has grown considerably in recent years. Between 16 and 33 percent of children and adolescents are obese. Obesity is among the easiest medical conditions to recognize but most difficult to treat. Unhealthy weight gain due to poor diet and lack of exercise is responsible for over 300,000 deaths each year. The annual cost to society for obesity is estimated at nearly $100 billion. Overweight children are much more likely to become overweight adults unless they adopt and maintain healthier patterns of eating and exercise. (from The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry)

And then there's this:

According to research published in the journal Pediatrics, schools in Philadelphia banned soda, educated staff and families about nutrition and rewarded kids for eating well with raffle tickets, where winners got prizes like bikes, basketball hoops, calculators, and jump ropes, researchers report. Schools in the study's control group didn't undertake these initiatives.

The findings show that a comprehensive approach to battling childhoold obesity in schools can make a significant difference, according to lead researcher Dr. Gary D. Foster of Temple University.

The findings were fascinating. For instance, researchers found that 7.5 percent of the students in the program for two years were still overweight compared with nearly 15 percent of youngsters who were overweight after not making any changes.

Notice anything here? We have an EPIDEMIC in this country but education on what is considered a lifestyle choice is something that can't be discussed without causing a "political storm in the making."

Now some facts about AMI:

They came up with this web site:

http://www.safefoodinc.org/

Remember these guys? They were the ones saying that the claims in Food Inc weren't based in fact. Go look at the web site. It's got all kinds of nice little graphs and diagrams with no source material. I'm not a statistician by ANY stretch of the imagination but I know that if you're going to refute claims that you need information to refute it rather than just blindly stating .. "Well that's just not true ... and you should believe us."

This is their tag line from the web site:

America’s food supply is a modern miracle and one in which we as a society can take pride. American consumers deserve all the facts – just what this web site aims to deliver.

Really? So all of that fighting you've been doing against food labeling, the reduced standards on beef testing all of that is in our best interest? I'll say it again .. Really?

YES .. YOU deserve the facts. The things I point out here was just a CURSORY glance at the information available to the average consumer out there. Don't believe the HYPE even if it comes from CNN.

Now onto my rant. Mr Dobbs, I applaud the fact that you're trying to helm such a weighty and "beefy" subject (forgive the pun) but you're not doing anything to advance this arguement along. You're stating that the AMI is upset. Boo hoo! Imagine a food industry that is monolithic in it's ideas, that is monopolistic in it's tendencies and really doesn't care about us, the consumer, as long as they get PAID. This war about food comes down to a few things. Knowledge, power and money. Slowly people are waking up to the fact that industries like the meat industry, the insurance industry and others along those lines, don't want us, the consumer, to know the truth about what goes into what we eat. They LIKE us being sick. They like us eating the crap that they produce. Fat, lazy, sick, undereducated, but they're buying our products. Sounds like a winning slogan to me. Wake up America, the voices that you hear inside your head probably make more sense than the ones that get prime time news shows.