Here’s the article, and this is the gist, some taken from the official press release here:

• Big food manufacturers such as Kraft, Mars, ConAgra, and others, have joined farces forces in a “national, multi-year effort designed to help reduce obesity — especially childhood obesity — by 2015″ via The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation.
• The HWCF will “promote ways to help people achieve a healthy weight through energy balance. It focuses on three critical areas — the marketplace, the workplace and schools.”
• The HWCF will promote “energy balance” defined as “balancing calories consumed as part of a healthy diet with calories expended by physical activity.”
• Members of the HWCF “have already committed $20 million to this joint initiative to raise awareness about the importance of balancing a healthy diet with physical activity, particularly among children ages six to 11 years old and their parents and caregivers.”

Why I’m Annoyed

• This is just another foundation created for positive PR and as part of a marketing scheme, rather than as an actual means to affect change.  No real demands or restraints are placed on corporations — this is just an additional way to manipulate the public into thinking processed crap is healthy.
• The big scary “O” word.  Obesity, that is. The term is always used in an alarmist fashion to evoke apocalyptic sentiments.  More emphasis on fat being bad/wrong will certainly have adverse effects on the self-esteem of our kids and, after they’re done running away, wide-eyed and frantic from the Obesity Demon, they’ll be sure to need a refreshing diet coke and 100-calorie pack of cookies to comfort them.
• Big idiots donning white medical garb and playing with their stethoscopes while rolling around in a pig pile of money like pigs in hay are going to be the ones telling us how to eat.  That’s like Big Pharma telling us how to self-medicate — it does not remove the invariable and ever-present self-interest.
• “Healthy Weight Commitment” is in itself imbued with issues simply as a title.  Placing an emphasis on health being equated to reaching a particular weight is already going about health in the wrong way. First because weight is not an adequate determinate for health, second b/c it reiterates that weight is the be-all and end-all determinate for your worth. So, if you have a weight in the socially accepted “healthy” weight category but subsist on Baked Doritos, diet soda and Fruit Loops, you’re a star! And the Food Co.s will definitely love you mucho.
• This teaches false science/poor health by emphasizing calories and energy expenditure.  Adding more prominent calorie details on a package of food is just like making the Surgeon General’s warning on a cigarette pack in larger font.  I don’t see how this is going to remedy anything, though it may certainly create more problems via calorie obsession.  How many times do we have to hear that a calorie is not a calorie for it to stick?  Of course these companies want you to think it’s okay to eat a bag of Oreos as long as you starve yourself the rest of the day and run 10 miles.  And of course they want to be the ones teaching your children how to eat healthy.  That way the youth of America will grow up defining their health by, and being dependent on, what General Mills says.
• They want us to celebrate yet even more marketing dollars spent to confuse the ignorant.  Look — we’re not all healthy lifestyle bloggers.  We take our knowledge for granted.  We assume everyone else has been as fortunate as us in learning how to read nutritional labels, in knowing what truly is and is not a health food.  Let’s remember that healthy eating, in our society, is a learned habit and preference.  When I look back 10 years ago, I truly believed that a 100-calorie pack meant the food was “healthy.”  Others think this too.  In fact, I’d guess more people do than don’t.
• I’m on double-talk overload.  It started with Drop Dead Diva being brought to you by O-Band Bariatric Surgery, then Glamour paying lip service to “plus-sized” models and really just hiding them in the back of their issues (here and here).  Then there are companies (like these Healthy Weight clowns) who use fictional characters, for instance, to in one case sell some crappy soup and then use another in an Ad Council ad promoting an active lifestyle.

I.give.

In the spirit of balance, please hit me up and tell me why I should suck it up and smile and think Packaged Food America is really on the right track.  After all, teaching our kids about health through calories and energy expenditure is still teaching them some basic health knowledge, right?  And making more portion-friendly snack foods is still better than the alternative, right?  Tell me I’m just cranky and need to look on the bright side.

In the News

• New York Times‘, “A Crackdown on Bake Sales in City Schools” (10/2/09) here
• Slate‘s, “Glutton War: What if a War on Obesity Only Makes the Problem Worse?” (10/5/09) here — Could this article be any more fitting?!  I truly recommend this piece!

Give-Away Round Up

• Win a $50 gift certificate to San Marco Coffee here
• Win a copy of the book 101 Things to do before you Diet by Mimi Spencer here
• Win a make-up bag from Three Custom Color Make-up here

<3, The Cranky One

So unless you’ve lived under a rock, you heard all about the “model on page 194″ — Lizzi Miller who appeared nude in the back of Glamour Magazine. Her picture caused quite a stir as people debated semantics, the “obesity crisis” and whether Lizzi’s picture was a step in the right direction or an IOU lip service to feature more “plus-sized,” “normal,” and “real” women. *Vomits at all the double talk, hyperbole, and attempted political correctness*

The November issue of Glamour is now featuring (and by “featuring” I mean showing pictures beginning on page 198 of a magazine with svelte Scarlett Johansson on the cover) plus-sized models as part of Glamour‘s pledge to show a “wide range of body types [and ethnicities] in our pages.” Before I get all cranky and lose my meager readership, here’s the picture featuring the seven plus-sized models in their nude-ish glory:

Four of the models, Kate Dillon, Lizzi Miller, Crystal Renn and Amy Lemons, appeared on the Ellen show today here.  The clip is actually painful to watch because Ellen (whom I usually adore) just doesn’t seem to get it.  Her awkward comments on size zero models invariably being anorexic is counterproductive and ironic given the intention of these women to promote body acceptance.  She also makes sure to note that these women are “healthy” as she is subtly addressing critics who will argue that these gorgeous women are promoting obesity.

Cindi Leive, Editor-in-chief of Glamour says that her message to young women, especially, is that “there are a million different ways to be beautiful. You don’t have to be born pin thin. Whether you’re voluptuous or lean, however you’re made is the right way for you.”

Look.  I hate to rain on every one’s parade.  I really don’t get that much pleasure out of being cranky and all that jazz, but I have to be honest (repressing my strong sentiments is really not good for my health …

• Glamour:  I don’t care.  Yes, it’s true.  I don’t care what size models are posing on the cover of your magazines because I don’t buy them.  I don’t not buy them in protest of the models you do or don’t feature, I just think most magazines are crap in general.  Everyone seems to be seeking adequate representation.  It’s like asking a caricaturist to make sure to get your mole on the right cheek.  At the end of the day, it’s a caricature.
• Ok maybe I care a little, but only in deference to all the little girls out there and to my future daughters. Sure, I don’t want any little girl to feel like she’s ostracized or an outcast or what not.  I do have a heart somewhere in this chest cavity.

• But I’m not going to be putting my daughter on a diet, telling her she can’t eat ice cream or crying with her over airbrushed photos of Faith Hill wondering why oh God why couldn’t I have been made to look like these women?! Why not? Because I don’t want my daughters to equate their self-worth with someone else’s description of beauty, or, dare I say, external beauty in general. I hope I have to cradle my future crying daughter because she cares about the world or about being more intelligent, not because she thinks her thighs are fat.
• The so-called “plus-sized” models are stunning — yes, I think they are beautiful, truly. So, setting that I supposedly don’t care aside, why aren’t these chicks on the cover of your magazine? So you failed at life once by putting Lizzi on page 194 and when she became an accidental phenomenon you vow to show more “real” women, more women who show how we are all not “cookie cutter.” Then, in your issue that is hailed for answering our prayers, you put them again in the back of your magazine while cookie-cutter white, thin, beautiful and wealthy actress Scarlett Johansson is featured on the cover? *Looks around for Punk’d crew or Candid Camera — you’re joking, right?*
• I can’t help but feel like that chubby little girl who is crying over feelings of otherness and is confronted with people who are almost condescendingly apologetic. You know when people apologize to you but in the same breath are saying, “look, that’s just the way things are in this big, bad, society and we’re all powerless to change it! But your face is beautiful and you have a great personality!”?
• Just like Drop Dead Diva is awesome for trying to give a hip-hip-hooray to “plus-sized” chicks, the show, at the end of the day, is part of a larger network of problems, which is why the show is brought to us by O-Band Bariatric Surgery Centers. Yea. You’re beautiful with all your curves girl, but in case you forgot we’re really just saying that because we want your viewership and your money. By the way, you’re fat. Get surgery to remove it then pump more money into our system by paying your therapy bills and shopping at our couture stores for your new size 2 body.
• Don’t even get me started on everyone throwing around the term “obesity crisis” and the fact that these healthy looking chicks are being called fat and unhealthy. Sometimes I feel we fear body acceptance because it means Big Pharma & Med Cos might lose some of their body-hating customers.

You know, I really could go on.  I guess my convoluted point is that I truly want all women to be happy in their unique skin.  I strive for body acceptance and also believe in the right to work on our bodies healthily without feeling anti-feminist.  More than anything, I want women to just stop caring so damn much about external beauty.

I would love to hear from you.  What do yo think?!

In the News

• Science Daily‘s, “Eating Sweets Every Day In Childhood ‘Increases Adult Aggression’” (10/1/09) here

Give-Away Round Up

• Win a $50 gift certificate to Whole Foods if your “small bites” appetizer recipe is chosen here

<3, The Cranky One