Big food's big fat obesity hokum

Hey, kids – you don't want to be a fatso, but that doesn't mean you have to cut back on colas, cake, and candy. Scarf down all you want… and burn off those sweets with exercise. The sugary calories packed in Cokes and Twinkies don't cause childhood obesity – lazy children do.

You're currently reading an archived version of Jim Hightower's work.

The latest (and greatest?) observations from Jim Hightower are only now available at our Substack website. Join us there!

Jim Hightower's Radio Lowdown
Jim Hightower's Radio Lowdown
Big food's big fat obesity hokum
Loading
/

Hey, kids – you don’t want to be a fatso, but that doesn’t mean you have to cut back on colas, cake, and candy. Scarf down all you want… and burn off those sweets with exercise. The sugary calories packed in Cokes and Twinkies don’t cause childhood obesity – lazy children do.

This is the diabolical message being pushed by brand-name junk food giants. Well, not pushed in their own names, but in the names of health-education organizations that target elementary school classrooms with instructional materials centered around two propagandistic themes: (1) There are no good foods or bad foods, and (2) the key to staying fit is not calories, but exercise.

Enjoying Hightower's work? Join us over at our new home on Substack:

In fact, these groups are industry fronts connected by a sort of junk-food mother ship called “Health Weight Commitment Foundation.” HWCF gets a fat bankroll of about $10 million a year from the likes of Coca-Cola, Hershey, Kellogg, Nestle, and PepsiCo to distribute lesson plans promoting the corporate message that junk food is good food – as long as children exercise responsibly. This blatant proselytization is run through such supposedly-sober national organizations as PTA, Girl Scouts, and Head Start.

The foundation brags that some 30 million kiddos – pre-K through 5th grade – have already been immersed in its program of industry hokum. Typical of the absurd “facts” it imparts to elementary school children is that eating a chocolate chip cookie gives you no more calories than eating 21 carrots. Yes, 21! So have a cookie kids – then balance it off by chomping down like Bugs Bunny on a couple of bags of carrots.

It’s one thing for junk-food hypesters to pump out such nonsensical junk, but why are the PTA, Girl Scouts, and other groups swallowing it? To send them a message contact: Center for Science in the Public Interest www.cspinet.org.

“This Junk-Food-Funded Elementary School Curriculum Is Bonkers,” www.motherjones.com, December 2, 2015.

The Lowdown has moved!

We’ve started a Substack newsletter for all of our content. You’ll still find our older, archived materials here at hightowerlowdown.org, but the latest (and greatest?) observations from Jim Hightower are only now available at our new Substack website: jimhightower.substack.com.

Check out jimhightower.substack.com »

Send this to a friend