Thursday, September 6, 2012

Groomed to consume

Earlier this week, while running around the park, I noticed a young guy riding a large red plastic battery operated fire truck.  His grandmother was riding a bike nearby. I couldn't help but think about how this little guy was being groomed to be a passive consumer of battery powered gizmos.

The day before I saw a couple of boys, of about the same age, who were tooling around the park on bikes with training wheels.  How much better it was for them to be getting exercise, while also powering themselves in order to get to the places they wanted to go.

A story in the StarTribune, Lunchroom menus push healthy foods, noted how new school lunch menus were being developed for students that included more fruits and vegetables and fewer calories.  This is in response to an obesity rate of 17 percent among American children. What a good thing it is for children to be groomed to consume heathy foods.  While some adults fear that kids won't eat healthy foods, the nutrition director for the Minneapolis School District, Bertrand Weber, noted "Kids will eat the food if it's presented well, if it tastes good and if we keep reinforcing and keep doing it over and over again." Isn't it great that we might begin grooming kids in school to consume healthy foods?!

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