Eat a Rainbow Every Day!

This is one of the quilts I have up in my exam rooms. I have tried to make the rooms cheerful and unthreatening, with subliminal messages. This one is all fruits and vegetables. I'm working on another one that is not too subliminal. There's a border of vegetable fabrics, and in the center it says, "French fries are NOT VEGETABLES!"

Everybody knows that there is an epidemic of obesity in the United States. So I do a lot of talking every day about what kids are eating. It sounds pretty easy--fruits and vegetables are delicious, beautiful, full of vitamins and fiber and all kinds of antioxidants. But kids are eating so much highly processed junk, devoid of nutrition, and full of white flour, white sugar, high fructose corn syrup, trans fats, artificial preservatives and flavor and color. Of course there's a mega-industry devoted to get kids to whine for things that aren't good for them. They actually do studies with kids and give products a rating on the "whine factor." As parents we're up against big money with all the marketing tricks ever developed. But our kids lives are at stake. You may have heard that teenagers are starting to get Type 2 diabetes, which was unheard of when I went to medical school. (Really, it wasn't that long ago!) Now I am seeing them in my practice.

I'll be ranting, I mean talking a lot about the fast food and junk food industries, about how TV pushes total crap to our youngest children. I like the advice I've read about "shop the perimeter of your grocery store," the fruits and veggies, the meat section, the dairy section. Sometimes bad things come in small packages. When you're buying food in a box, at least read the label!

Speaking of food....it's time to feed some hungry mouths around here. Take care!