Como uma boa comilona, é claro que eu me amarro num X salada! Mesmo sabendo que não é nada saudável, ás vezes não resisto e encaro um Cavanhas - lanchonete de Porto Alegre especializada no assunto. A herança gastronômica dos amigos americanos não é nada boa. As cadeias de Fast Food invadiram o mundo e trouxeram consigo um exército de doenças como a obesidade.
Lendo um texto publicado num jornal de Nova Jersey, não resisti e resolvi reproduzir aqui. Segundo o autor, numa comparação antropológica com civilizações de outros tempos, a nossa será vista no futuro como a era do diabetes e da osteoporose. Estas, entre outras doenças causadas principalmente pelos tipos de alimentos que nós ingerimos, provalvente são as grandes vilas do nosso tempo. Pensando assim, a geração BIG MAC sai na frente nas estatísticas.
Modern anthropologists believe lead poisoning contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire. Archaeology digs uncovered lead-lined wine decanters, water jugs and cooking pots in the ruins of the ancient homes of the ruling class. The theory is that the insanity of the Caligula-era senate and the emperor himself was due to lead's effect on the brain.
So what will future anthropologists say about us? What conclusions will they draw from the super-sized coffins and the skeletal remains with missing toes, amputated by diabetes?
What will they derive from cemeteries that reveal a sudden downturn in American life expectancy when our junk food generations begin dying of heart disease and arteriosclerosis in middle age?
Or from the ruins of all the red and yellow plastic roof restaurants sunken by global flooding, or buried under nuclear dust, or volcanic ash or whatever else does us in?
What poisons will show themselves in their chemical analysis of our bones?
We already know the answers. Trans fats. Refined sugars and carbohydrates. Sodium.
This is why the $500 million initiative recently announced by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to combat child obesity is so important. It's putting their money where our mouths are.
"This is an All-American crisis," said Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, the director of the foundation. Health experts across the country hope it fires a strong awareness shot at the runaway junk food industry that overindulges us, 24/7, to feed itself.
Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy at Yale, said the initiative is especially welcome because the government has done so little.
"The Bush administration has done more harm than good," he said. "They curtailed efforts to get rid of soft drinks and snack foods in schools, and have been antagonistic to curtailing food marketing aimed at children." That statement cites the two main ingredients for the pervasiveness of junk food in our culture: advertising and availability.
It's a simple recipe: Spend $12 billion a year on advertising. Put product on every corner. Don't stop until you've changed the American lifestyle.
"We have turned over the nutrition education of our children to the food industry," Brownell said.
And who is doing the educating? Nickelodeon. The Disney Channel. Cartoon Network. Kids have more media, 24/7, directed at them than ever before. Watch an hour of kids' TV someday and you will see a half-dozen commercials for sugary cereals and sodium-filled microwavable snacks, flavored yogurt tubes, candy or fruit (read fructose) snacks. And they are not really about the food. It's about being cool -- the new, marketing-driven American Dream.
Watch an hour someday, and see parents and teachers and other adults portrayed as the unhip, uncool goofs who just don't get it when it comes to choosing a cereal or snacks. "Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids" may have been cute when it started, but the message of "cool kids versus square adults" has become more insidious.
And it's not just TV. It's product placement, billboards and, coming soon, cell phones.
"It's pernicious and relentless," Brownell said. "It completely undermines parents' ability to control what their children are exposed to. The new cell phones have GPS chips, so an advertiser (like McDonald's) will be able to send a cell phone ad, saying, 'Hey, we're just around the corner.' "
Mark Savage, lead attorney of California's Consumers Union, which published a major report in 2005 about junk food advertising, says the industry is using some of the same "sensory perception" tactics the tobacco industry used to make their products attractive to kids.
And new franchises like Ricky's Cones, Candy & Chaos use the same loud colors and splash effects as Nickelodeon. The message is junk food is fun. Junk food is cool.
And it's not just for kids.
Drive down any stretch of any highway and count the number of gas stations that sell soda and snacks. Then count how many can actually fix a flat tire.
Your average Exxon On the Go offers two-dozen varieties of beef jerky, with enough sodium to give it a radioactive half-life of about a thousand years.
"Just a few years ago, the gas station was not a place to eat a meal," said Brownell. "A few years ago, when the burger places announced they were serving breakfast, people said they were crazy. Now they're staying open till 11 or overnight. They've expanded the eating day. The message is any moment of the day is a time to eat fast food."
For the Romans, it was less bread, more circuses. For Americans, it's more of everything.
"When I was a kid, a Coke was 8 ounces," Brownell said. "Now it's 20 with 15 teaspoons of sugar."
The difference is, we know it's killing us.
Mark Di Ionno is a staff writer for the (Newark, N.J.) Star-Ledger, where this article appeared. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.
Lendo um texto publicado num jornal de Nova Jersey, não resisti e resolvi reproduzir aqui. Segundo o autor, numa comparação antropológica com civilizações de outros tempos, a nossa será vista no futuro como a era do diabetes e da osteoporose. Estas, entre outras doenças causadas principalmente pelos tipos de alimentos que nós ingerimos, provalvente são as grandes vilas do nosso tempo. Pensando assim, a geração BIG MAC sai na frente nas estatísticas.
Modern anthropologists believe lead poisoning contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire. Archaeology digs uncovered lead-lined wine decanters, water jugs and cooking pots in the ruins of the ancient homes of the ruling class. The theory is that the insanity of the Caligula-era senate and the emperor himself was due to lead's effect on the brain.
So what will future anthropologists say about us? What conclusions will they draw from the super-sized coffins and the skeletal remains with missing toes, amputated by diabetes?
What will they derive from cemeteries that reveal a sudden downturn in American life expectancy when our junk food generations begin dying of heart disease and arteriosclerosis in middle age?
Or from the ruins of all the red and yellow plastic roof restaurants sunken by global flooding, or buried under nuclear dust, or volcanic ash or whatever else does us in?
What poisons will show themselves in their chemical analysis of our bones?
We already know the answers. Trans fats. Refined sugars and carbohydrates. Sodium.
This is why the $500 million initiative recently announced by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to combat child obesity is so important. It's putting their money where our mouths are.
"This is an All-American crisis," said Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, the director of the foundation. Health experts across the country hope it fires a strong awareness shot at the runaway junk food industry that overindulges us, 24/7, to feed itself.
Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy at Yale, said the initiative is especially welcome because the government has done so little.
"The Bush administration has done more harm than good," he said. "They curtailed efforts to get rid of soft drinks and snack foods in schools, and have been antagonistic to curtailing food marketing aimed at children." That statement cites the two main ingredients for the pervasiveness of junk food in our culture: advertising and availability.
It's a simple recipe: Spend $12 billion a year on advertising. Put product on every corner. Don't stop until you've changed the American lifestyle.
"We have turned over the nutrition education of our children to the food industry," Brownell said.
And who is doing the educating? Nickelodeon. The Disney Channel. Cartoon Network. Kids have more media, 24/7, directed at them than ever before. Watch an hour of kids' TV someday and you will see a half-dozen commercials for sugary cereals and sodium-filled microwavable snacks, flavored yogurt tubes, candy or fruit (read fructose) snacks. And they are not really about the food. It's about being cool -- the new, marketing-driven American Dream.
Watch an hour someday, and see parents and teachers and other adults portrayed as the unhip, uncool goofs who just don't get it when it comes to choosing a cereal or snacks. "Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids" may have been cute when it started, but the message of "cool kids versus square adults" has become more insidious.
And it's not just TV. It's product placement, billboards and, coming soon, cell phones.
"It's pernicious and relentless," Brownell said. "It completely undermines parents' ability to control what their children are exposed to. The new cell phones have GPS chips, so an advertiser (like McDonald's) will be able to send a cell phone ad, saying, 'Hey, we're just around the corner.' "
Mark Savage, lead attorney of California's Consumers Union, which published a major report in 2005 about junk food advertising, says the industry is using some of the same "sensory perception" tactics the tobacco industry used to make their products attractive to kids.
And new franchises like Ricky's Cones, Candy & Chaos use the same loud colors and splash effects as Nickelodeon. The message is junk food is fun. Junk food is cool.
And it's not just for kids.
Drive down any stretch of any highway and count the number of gas stations that sell soda and snacks. Then count how many can actually fix a flat tire.
Your average Exxon On the Go offers two-dozen varieties of beef jerky, with enough sodium to give it a radioactive half-life of about a thousand years.
"Just a few years ago, the gas station was not a place to eat a meal," said Brownell. "A few years ago, when the burger places announced they were serving breakfast, people said they were crazy. Now they're staying open till 11 or overnight. They've expanded the eating day. The message is any moment of the day is a time to eat fast food."
For the Romans, it was less bread, more circuses. For Americans, it's more of everything.
"When I was a kid, a Coke was 8 ounces," Brownell said. "Now it's 20 with 15 teaspoons of sugar."
The difference is, we know it's killing us.
Mark Di Ionno is a staff writer for the (Newark, N.J.) Star-Ledger, where this article appeared. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.
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