Hugo is gonna make you fatter than you are. - Page 2

I have complete faith that intelligent parents will continue to have the ability to influence how their children eat. I'm also pretty convinced that the number of intelligent parents are dwindling when it comes to nutrition. I don't think a lot of parents are smart enough to make the decision not to ignore their kids' begging, and, worse, most of those adults were raised on McDonalds' themselves. When they got old enough, it ceased to be a treat and became more of a convenience for many of them.

As for why this isn't strictly a matter of individuals making poor choices, consider this: fast food tends to be cheap, so it's an obvious and easy option for low-income families who are already pressed for time, possibly due to having to work multiple low-paying jobs. Thus you get a bunch of poor people with weight and health problems from an early age, and, since they're poor, they're quite likely on - ding ding ding - Medicaid (as MissZooey said). We pay for that.

So it's not quite as simple as "parents need to do a better job." Parents are quite clearly not doing a better job, and it's not so out of line to hold the suppliers and aggressive marketers of said food a little responsible for their dumber offerings, too. It's socially irresponsible of them.

I do my damnedest to make sure my kid eats right. But - and I'm not trying to make any excuses here - it's very, very difficult. I don't get home until 7. My kid goes to bed at 9. After a long day of work, I have to prepare a meal for the family, and by the time I'm done, I'm exhausted. It's not just McDonald's, but processed food that's to blame. It's easier to throw something in the microwave than to cook a nutritious meal. Also, I've noticed, it's also more expensive. It's insane how much more it costs to make something decent than to just grab a Hamburger Helper off the rack.

You know why it was less work to make sure the children ate nutritiously, or at least more balanced, back in the day? Because that's all they had. There weren't Amorphous Globs Of Starch (TM) in the grocery stores then. You had to actually prepare your meals. It's cyclical. Society works us harder, we have less time, we eat shit, repeat.

What does "hold[ing] the suppliers and aggressive marketers of said food a little responsible for their dumber offerings" entail?

(Anytime, 'digger, anytime).

I see where you're going wrong, Nord. Taking care of children and cooking dinner is the woman's job. You need to slap your wife around and get her to shape up or ship out.

It entails not providing them with a boneheaded "let them do what they want" overly capitalist party line excuse every time someone - be it a media figure or someone in this thread - criticizes them for doing something socially irresponsible. If they want to defend their practices, let them do it, but I honestly don't see why anyone who doesn't work for McDonald's would want to do it for them.

People in this thread keep saying "what impact does it have on me if I don't buy it for me or my kids?" Well, I just gave you an example of the impact it might have on you if you don't buy it. In an ideal world, perhaps the actions of others wouldn't impact you. But in this one, they do. It's not wrong to give a shit about it.

Wasted energy. I can't beat her into becoming a good cook. You can't learn something like that.

It used to be that any family could get by on a single income, leaving time for the other parent to be a home-maker/food-preparer.

These days? Forget it.

This will bruise her more than mere fists.

Before I start, thanks, Dave, for doing my legwork for me. I'll stop being too cheeky and too busy to post now.

It all depends how you choose to think about expensive. All of that processed food really doesn't cost much less than high quality, nutritious food and here's why - farm subsidies. I'm reading the fantastic Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver right now and, somewhere in there, she notes that we pay about $700 per person in farm subsidies every year, subsidies that mostly go into paying for soybeans and the corn for the high fructose corn syrup-fueled soft drinks that started this thread. You are paying for it, just not at the grocery store. Plus, it'll cost us all in the long run, as more and more people who have eaten more and more awful food have more and more medical problems that we, the taxpayers, are going to have to shell out for (back to Medicaid/Medicare).

Even farm subsidies aside, a trip to one's local farmers' market can be a very inexpensive way to buy a lot of locally-grown, extremely fresh produce on the cheap. Or, if such a trip doesn't work with one's schedule, there's also Community-Supported Agriculture, where one pays a one-time fee to receive a shipment of vegetables (sometimes eggs, honey, flowers, herbs, flour, and meat, too) every week/every other week through the growing season. It probably won't be a lot cheaper to go the CSA route, but the food will be a lot better.

Those two options, plus some nice local dairy, a bread recipe or two, a pot of herbs in your backyard (hey, kids! Fun, low-maintenance gardening project!) and a couple of good cookbooks, and you're well on your way. Not that one shouldn't crack open a box of the ol' mac and cheese now and again, mind you.

I have one Rachel Ray cookbook. Despite the fact that I've gotten a couple of good things from her show (including a killer Thanksgiving turkey), it pretty much sucks.

On the other hand, I have some lemon tofu in the oven and a greek salad in the fridge from this little number as we speak.

Well, you can't chain her to the stove these days, but anyone can learn to cook moderately well.

I was thinking, and maybe I should have been more specific, more in the vein of legislation and lawsuits.

As I said before, directly marketing to children is a shitty practice.