Kids and Junk Food - Part 3

In October I wrote about the symbiosis, if that's the right word, between mascots and children's licensed characters and junk food. The quick version is that although many licensors are insisting their characters be used for healthy food there are quite a few, to say the least, that have their characters promote candy, presweetened items, Happy Meals, and so on and so forth.

So a couple weeks ago I followed that up linking to a story about how more characters are indeed being used for healthy food marketing; I put up a picture of Popeye, he being the pinnacle of cartoon characters and vegetables getting along (in the marketplace as well as on the screen).

So now it's come to this: Burger King is selling apples (Granny Smiths) cut in the shape of French fries. Is it a refreshing example showing how fast food chains are coming of age and offering healthier fare for kids? Or, given the packaging, is it a clever ploy to get kids with health-conscious parents in there so that it's just a quick switch to substitute fried potato for apple? (And just how fresh are they? Remember they're harvested in the fall...)

I don't eat at hamburger chains very often--once or twice a year (more when I live near a Carl's Jr.)--so I was unaware of these, but I became aware of them in a New York Times article yesterday by Tara Parker-Pope in which she tracks some of the recent trends toward healthy food. It's definitely worth a look. I was wondering just how fulfilling those apple fries could be (no skins?), so I found some consumer reviews. But do we have to call them apple fries? They're not fried, they're sliced. Do the marketing folks have too much of an aversion to "apple slices"?

Anyhoo, the entire trend comes in the wake of the largest study ever conducted on the health consequences of red meat. The National Cancer Institute recently studied data from a 1995 AARP survey of meat-eating habits and followed up on the participants' health today, primarily looking at incidents of cancer, of course, and heart disease. The results are pretty impressively stacked against beef: in short, the high meat eaters are at much greater risk for a whole slew of diseases than moderate consumers. This month's Nutrition Action Healthletter has it as the cover story, but it's not online (you can see the table of contents); the accompanying editorial by Michael Jacobson, the man who literally invented the term "junk food," deals with the health and environmental consequences of beef and is online there as a pdf. Back on March 24, however, the Times ran a story you can read about the study's findings, i.e. "Eating Meat May Increase Risk of Early Death." 

To piggyback off of Jacobson, here's a Mother Jones article about cows and global warming. It's "Diet for a Warm Planet" from the Nov./Dec. issue; there are lots of such reports, articles, and books out there.

As a children's advocate of sorts (I suppose) I applaud Congress passing stricter regulations against tobacco this week. Now let's reorganize all the myriad organizations overseeing livestock and agriculture and give the FDA some real teeth to enforce recalls, inspect processing plants, etc., and then do what needs to be done to get beef consumption down in this country.