Re: Re: oreos

May 17, 2003

Mike-

> what I said is 100% true. These facts you list above are also

>true and accurate corporate practices, but their success rides on

>ONE thing...

>

>Sheeple being unable to ask, probe and critically think. Sorry

>friend but the ultimate responsability for the rise or fall of the

>sheeple lies with the sheeple.

You keep accusing me (us) of wanting to give individuals (parents etc.) a

free pass for their ignorance and stupidity, and I (we) keep protesting

that that's not true, just as you keep protesting that you don't mean to

absolve corporations of their responsibility, but insisting that the

ultimate responsibility lies with the sheeple does just that.

And to be fair, I haven't talked that much about what should be done about

the sheeple, with the exception of protesting that I'm not giving them a

free pass and joking about kids suing parents.

Remember the vegan parents who lost custody of their baby because it was

failing to thrive on a vegan diet? Although interventions like that are a

lousy last-resort sort of corrective mechanism, I think that given the

overall situation we're in, it's GREAT. Scare the bejeesus out of parents

who would malnourish their kids like that, and make parents think about

what health and nutrition really mean. We frankly need more of that, and

if the low-fat gestapo try to impose their own vision of how kids should be

fed, fight fire with fire. And that means us doing the fighting and not

leaving it to the so-called sheeple.

And as a practical matter, the sheeple are not the only ones being

penalized by their sheepness: their kids are being punished for the sins of

their parents. We can point fingers at the sheeple-parents all we want and

say it's their fault until we're blue in the face, but that doesn't do a

damn thing for the kids, who are being poisoned and malnourished into new

generations of sheeple and sheeple-parents.

>If you're stupid enough to believe and not question that

>Oreo's or the like are fine, considering the boatload of clear info

>that says otherwise you deserve your own horrible self sealed fate.

Sure, if YOU choose to believe Oreos are healthy, maybe it's fair to say

you deserve your own fate, but what about when you turn your kid into an

Oreo-gobbling monster? Why is it so bad to try to stop kids from being

destroyed by ignorant parents? We don't let kids drink booze, and alcohol,

at least in moderation, might even be a good thing, at least for some.

>It continues to amaze me how intelligent critcal thinkers like

>yourself and other folks I meet simply want to give the sheeple a

>free pass and make it the " fault " of the big bad corporations who

>admittedly suck in the most major way, but still fall short on the

>responsability scale.

Well, for all your protests to the contrary, I honestly don't see where

you're holding the corporations responsible at all, other than saying they

suck. (And like I said, I hadn't really said anything substantive about

the converse.) Responsibility requires consequences.

And why exactly do they fall so far short on the responsibility scale? If

corporations secretly (and openly) fund fraudulent research in favor of bad

things like sugar and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil and create

hordes of credentialed experts (and I do mean " create " ) then how much blame

exactly should fall on average people who assume that the vast majority of

doctors and universities really do have their best interests at

heart? Everyone can't spend the time to become an expert on media

manipulation AND traditional nutrition AND biology AND physiology and so on

and so forth. It's just not possible, and even if it were, think of how

many other fields would suffer because people who should have been working

in physics and literature and telecommunications and everything else

dropped their primary careers to become expert in those other fields.

>If you eat oreo's and the like and feed them

>to your kids the responsibility for your consequences and those of

>your kids lie with you not nabisco.

So what are the consequences?

And if Nabisco and its ilk spend hundreds of millions of dollars, even

billions, creating bogus experts and fraudulent expert recommendations and

completely deforming the information environment, and as a result, many

people eat bad foods and get sick, why are they absolved of all

responsibility and consequences? They wouldn't be spending all that money

if it didn't often work.

>Yes the schools should stop taking their money, yes they should be

>forced to advertise fairly and truthfully, yes they should not be

>baiting children. Yes to all of these, but when someone plunks down

>4 bucks for a bag of oreos the responsibility is nowhere with anyone

>but the plunker.

It sounds to me like you're saying advertising, PR, persuasion, and lies

are all meaningless and ineffective, and I don't understand how you can say

that. If a Nabisco executive held a gun to a child's head and forced the

child to eat a package of Oreos, he'd be 100% responsible for the kid

consuming the Oreos. Why does the Nabisco executive's responsibility

instantly drop to 0% as soon as the gun is taken out of the equation, no

matter how much lying, bogus science, PR, corruption, and so on are

involved? It's a historical fact that spending all that money, corrupting

the system, creating bogus experts, waging PR campaigns, undermining

education, and so on and so forth all have consequences. People change

their buying and eating and living habits, and their kids habits are

changed too, as a result. Those are consequences. So why don't the

entities (corporations, executives, etc.) bear some measure of the

responsibility, and why shouldn't they suffer some portion of the

consequences? Right now the only people suffering are the sheeple, who

maybe deserve it, and their kids, who don't no matter how you calculate it.

-

May 17, 2003

In a message dated 5/16/03 6:39:49 PM Eastern Daylight Time,

heidis@... writes:

> Homeschooling is " cheap " mainly because you are not paying the Mom's

> salary. If I am worth, say, $20,000 a year, then my kid's schooling would

> cost $10,000 a year each, which is NOT cheap. And the fact is, I'm worth

> more than $20,000 on the open market. Having a stay at home Mom is

> priceless: it is NOT cheap!

I homeschooled for a year and a half or so when I was 15-16. I was lucky to

have a community center for homeschoolers in the area (about 40 minutes away)

that was started by two local teachers that " dropped out " of the school

system,and brought a bunch of kids with them. They helped out with legal

stuff, offered " classes " field trips, discussion groups, you name it. You

could come and go as you pleased and utilize it however you want. They also

had a sliding scale fee to allow everyone from any socio-economic background

to be able to attend (the only reason I'd ever have been able to go.)

The only reason they were able to do this was by killing their own salaries.

One of them lived for years very frugally off his life savings (before he was

a teacher he was a lawyer for musicians and had saved a bit of money), the

other just lived very very frugally, and took something like $5 or $10,000 a

year out. When I was going the membership was about 50 or 60 families, and

it is more now. But they still cannot raise enough money with membership and

fundraisers to afford the families that they both have now. They are trying

to get grants now, or else they will have to shut down.

IOW, education is expensive enough that they need government support to even

pay their staff. For some people, education is the cost of some books to

read, but not everyone can learn in that type of environment (or vaccuum?).

" Expensive " is relative.

Chris

" To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are

to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and

servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. " --Theodore

Roosevelt

May 17, 2003

Haven't we had this conversation before?

-chris

May 17, 2003

,

As much as I hate sugar, I'm not really with you on this.

Sugar is not comparable to PHVO for numerous reasons.

As to the rat study, first, it was a rat study. That's informative-- but

there is too much info to look at sugar's impact on humans to revert to a rat

study on it. Second, they were *only* fed sugar. Rats fed part of their

diet as sugar, like humans, do live a considerable length.

The difference between PHVO and sugar is that sugar in a proper context and

amount can be safe or perhaps even healthful in the proper form, whereas PHVO

does not occur in nature, and confers zero benefit at any quantity.

Define sugar. Fruit is mostly sugar. Table sugar is sugar. Rapadura is

sugar. Raw honey is sugar. Beets are largely sugar. Bananss are *full* of

sugar. Is *everything* with sugar to be banned?

If you want to ban only refined white sugar, there is an enormous burden of

proof on you to demonstrate that unrefined cane sugar is more than marginally

better than refined cane sugar that you probably cannot meet. Rapadura's

charts on how much more nutritious they are than other sugars looks good, but

if you compare it to non-sugar-cane foods the difference really is marginal.

I use it, but I don't consider it a healthy food, and I use it very, very,

rarely.

Raw honey is basically pure sugar. But it also has tons of benefits if used

in the PEROPER CONTEXT AND AMOUNT. But someone could *easily* damage their

health with enough raw honey if they used it as recklessly as people use

white sugar today. In fact, the could do the same with fruit.

Aside from nutritional history studies or whatever about people who eat fruit

(because they're also more likely to eat vegetables) you probably couldn't

find that great of a health benefit to fruit. And you could make a case

fruit is more toxic than glucose syrup, based on metabolism of fructose and

glucose. I don't agree with it, but you could certainly make a good case.

And *definitely* could for fruit *juice*.

I very much doubt fruit juice is better for kids than table sugar. Should we

ban that? If it is made with high fructose corn syrup, probably even worse.

Oh, but that's a dillema-- high fructose corn syrup and corn syrup are

essentially unrefined sweetneers. What makes them different than maple

syrup, or are we banning that too?

There are people who live into their 90s and eat sugar. Sure they might be

hidden away in the boondocks of Maine with a family of hunters eating moose

heart and liver every day, but they're there. Melvin Page found that about

20% of the people he studied could eat sugar without disrupting their

calcium-phosphorus ratios. This roughly corresponds to Barry Sears' claim

that about 25% of Americans do not have significant hyperinsulinemic

responses to sugar and starch.

The fact is that sugar affects everyone differently. It is a poison to some,

and not to others.

Moreover, for most people sugar must simply be prepared in the proper way,

used in the proper context, and used with the appropriate degree of

MODERATION exercised, in order to get the benefit of good taste without the

harm.

Chris

In a message dated 5/16/03 8:12:18 PM Eastern Daylight Time,

radiantlife@... writes:

>

> I think that there are good grounds to ban sugar altogether. It is

> addictive, and damages health beyond a shadow of a doubt. Sally

> regularly quotes the study which showed that rodents lived longer

> consuming just water I believe, than sugar. If a substance can't help

> you live longer than water fasting than it fails the most basic test for

> being called " food. " Anything that does not pass such a test, if it

> could be confused for food, should be labeled " NOT FOR HUMAN

> CONSUMPTION. " Heck, put " or animal " ( " or rodent? " ) on the label too.

>

> One could argue that the government is already dictating the foods we

> can and can't eat to a very large extent. Look at stevia, raw milk,

> laws against small farming/butchering practices, subsidies of big

> agriculture while small farms go broke by the tens of thousands,

> labeling laws that deceive and benefit the big guys, crackdowns on

> really effective supplements and healing technologies, and the last 50

> years of gov./biz collusion around fats and oils and the low-fat

> paradigm. Not to justify the government's practices, but to point out

> what is already happening. I would be in favor of a radical honest

> independent reassessment of the food supply, and subjecting every

> coloring, flavoring, excitotoxin, sweetener, preservative, additive, as

> well as any other proposed food substance sold in the US, to independent

> scrutiny - demanding that proof be shown (independent, not

> corporate-funded studies) that the substance actually supports human

> health both in the short- and long-term (and intergenerationally most

> importantly of all!) with no side effects. Nice fantasy eh?

>

> My grandfather, Herbert Dutton, is a lipid chemist who blew one of the

> first peer-reviewed whistles on trans fats around the time that

> Enig published her original papers on the subject. He is quoted in

> " Facts about Fats " by Finnegan as saying that if trans fats were brought

> before the FDA today, they would not be approved for use in the food

> supply. Why should foods be " grandfathered " into the food supply (is

> that a pun or just a play?) just because they were approved before we

> knew better?

>

> One key (and essential) victory for consumers would be a change in the

> powers of corporations, as others have mentioned on this list. Taking

> away corporate limited liability and the current corporate right to

> personhood would strike fear into the scheming hearts of thousands of

> CEOs and executives who now sit around all day long and devise new

> colorful, impossibly sweet and tasty confections to lure kids/parents

> into dropping $5 on $.50 worth of wheat, sugar, trans fats, and

> colorings (cereal). It figures that most of these guys answer to a

> master that has already addicted and killed too many millions - the

> tobacco industry (their parent corporation). If Price were still around

> I'm sure he would have created another maxim: that food must never

> become a commodity like oil or computers, which is bought and sold

> between strangers and where the primary motivation is profit. We must

> resist the commodification of our lives, and work to regain the richness

> of our natural context, which as Irene pointed out, is community. In

> that context, it is hard for people to sell poison to each other, and

> they certainly wouldn't pollute the river upstream of their neighbors if

> they could help it. It will be a long road to get back to some kind of

> bioregional self-sufficiency and sustainability for most of us, but

> that's where high-quality nutrient-dense community oriented food systems

> lead us whether we realize it or not.

" To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are

to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servi

le, but is morally treasonable to the American public. " --Theodore Roosevelt

May 17, 2003

Theresa,

I too knew that smoking was bad for you when my mom smoked as a kid (of

course I was bombarded with this information day in and day out from school,

etc.)

But it really seems irrelevant. If I was running a car in a closed garage,

I'd get the sense that those exhaust fumes are poisonous pretty fast. But I

don't get that sense walking down the street, even though the car exhaust

fumes in the air are likely wreaking long-term slow damage in my lungs

comparable to that of cigarettes.

Even when I smoked, I wouldn't want to be in a closed room where someone

smoked 2 packs of cigarettes a day, even though I smoked a pack to a pack and

a half a day. If you smoke a cigarette outside, you breath in fresh air too,

and the smoke doesn't fill your eyes up. It's just two different things.

And American Indians and other " primitive " groups that used tobacco (however

often they did it) and believed in some health *benefit* to it, did not do so

in closed rooms either. And it was not " obvious " to them it was bad for

them. If anything makes it obvious, maybe it is smoking them indoors.

Moreover, all this is missing the point-- because your own experience gave

you a certain impression, does not mean that your impression is " obvious. "

Dr. Mike used the word " myopic. " I don't know what is more myopic than being

unable to see beyond your own personal experience and believing it applies to

everyone else.

Chris

In a message dated 5/17/03 2:08:53 AM Eastern Daylight Time,

Polyclean@... writes:

> I must agree with with Dr. Marasco on this one too. I too grew up in a house

>

> with a Dad who smoked 2 packs a day (and still does by the way). Sitting in

> a

> smoke filled living room was enough information for me to decide I wanted

> no

> part of it. O.K., I did smoke one time as a teen-ager under peer pressure,

> but only once. YUK! No thanks.

> My father is a very intelligent man, and is fully aware of the dangers of

> smoking. He knows he is addicted, but also knows that there are many ways

> of

> quitting if he chose to do so. Unfortunately, his life experiences cause

> him

> to CHOOSE to continue to smoke for the pleasure it gives him while he is on

>

> this earth. I don't agree, but it is certainly his choice to make.

>

" To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are

to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and

servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. " --Theodore

Roosevelt

May 17, 2003

In a message dated 5/17/03 10:25:12 AM Eastern Daylight Time,

s.fisher22@... writes:

> >>>As much as I hate sugar, I'm not really with you on this.

>

> -------->for the record, I don't agree with banning sugar either, for the

> same reasons you presented.

>

Oh, there was one thing I forgot to mention in my earlier post: ,

kudos to your grandfather!!!

Chris

" To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are

to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and

servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. " --Theodore

Roosevelt

May 17, 2003

>Kids eat it because their parents tell them to!!!!

>>>>And every parent who tells a kid to eat margarine or oreos or whatever

is

doing a very bad thing, and is responsible for the kid eating those bad

things. But at the same time, companies creating poisonous products and

marketing them directly to kids are creating demand among kids. They're

responsible too. We have to oppose those companies just as much as we push

parents to be more educated and responsible.

-------->and along those lines, here's an article that was posted to the

chapter leaders list recently (the actual bill of rights is in the sidebar

at this link):

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15754

The Parents' Bill of Rights

By Rowe and Ruskin, Mothering Magazine

April 28, 2003

Kurnit is the president of KidShop, an advertising firm that

specializes in marketing to children, and he has plans for our kids.

" Kid business has become big business, " Kurnit says. To make it even bigger,

he preaches what he calls " surround marketing " - saturation advertising that

captures kids at every possible moment.

" You've got to reach kids throughout the day - in school, as they're

shopping at the mall, or at the movies, " says Carol Herman, a senior vice

president at Grey Advertising. " You've got to become part of the fabric of

their lives. "

This is what parents today are up against - corporate advertisers who seek

to entwine themselves with children's lives. By most measures, they are

succeeding. Each week, the typical American child takes in some 38 hours

(yes, a full work week) of commercial media, with its endless ads and

come-ons. And that's not counting the ads that commandeer their attention

from billboards and the Internet, the omnipresent brand logos, and the

advertising that increasingly fills the schools.

The merchandise pushers have invaded the commons of childhood, the free open

spaces of imagination and play, and turned it into a free-fire zone of

commercial importuning. In some quarters, this appalling situation is seen

as success. " There have never been more ways in the culture to support

marketing towards kids, " enthuses Kidscreen, a publication for ad firms and

corporations that target kids. (That there's a market for such a publication

is revealing.)

Corporate advertisers have contrived to wedge themselves into the space

between parents and their children. They enlist the best psychologists and

market researchers money can buy to lure kids to products and values many of

us don't approve of and even abhor. Parents find themselves in a grim daily

battle to keep these forces at bay.

On their own, parents cannot contend with the nation's largest corporations

and their weapons of mass childhood seduction. It's time Washington stood up

for parents. It's time for politicians to recognize that raising children is

the most important task of our society.

It's time, in other words, for a Parents' Bill of Rights.

Not that long ago, parents actually had control over the front doors of

their homes. Sure, a kid might hide a racy magazine under the mattress, but

little came into the house without the parents' okay. Even outside the home

and school, for adults to approach kids with the thought of influencing them

was considered an antisocial act, and offenders could be put in jail.

The invention of electronic media changed all that. The history of the last

century, in fact, could be written as the story of how marketers contrived

to bypass parents and speak directly to impressionable children. The front

door became a permeable membrane, admitting the advertising industry to its

promised land. Children are " natural and enthusiastic buyers, " a child

psychologist wrote in the 1938 book, Reaching Juvenile Markets. For

advertisers, he went on, there was a " tremendous sales potential. "

Psychologists, who are supposed to help children, were now employed to help

ensnare them. No longer were such adults considered predators; because they

wore suits, sat in offices, and operated at a distance through the media,

they were respectable executives and even " pioneers. " In the 1930s, the

medium was radio; sponsors of children's shows included Ralston cereal and

Ovaltine - products that parents actually might want their kids to have -

and the ads themselves seem almost tame by today's standards. The young ear

is not as impressionable as the eye, and advertisers were still concerned

that Mom or Dad might be listening.

Then came television and the beginning of the modern era in the assault on

kids. Television is inferior to radio as a story-telling medium; radio

engages the imagination, while television numbs it. But as an advertising

medium, television is unsurpassed. Children want what they see, and with

television advertisers could offer an endless parade of things to want.

After Welch's grape juice became a sponsor of the Howdy Doody show in the

1950s, sales of grape juice to families with young children increased almost

five-fold.

With television, moreover, the ads weren't just between the shows. They

could be in the shows as well. The Disney Corporation created a series about

Davy Crockett, starring the actor Fess in a coonskin cap. In short

order, kids throughout the country were nagging their parents for the mock

coonskin caps that coincidentally appeared in the stores. Crockett gear

became a $300 million business - roughly $2 billion in today's dollars.

Increasingly, advertisers had the children to themselves. Few parents sat

through the Mickey Mouse Club or the Saturday morning cartoon shows. Even

shows for general audiences held untapped possibilities. Since kids are the

most impressionable audience in the house, why not enlist them as sales

agents in regard to everything the family bought? " Eager minds can be molded

to want your products! " enthused a firm that produced " education " materials

for schools. " Sell these children on your brand name, and they will insist

that their parents buy no other. "

Corporations literally were alienating the loyalty of children away from

their parents and toward themselves. Rejection of parental authority became

a persistent and embedded theme, even in seemingly innocuous shows like

Howdy Doody. Television figures became surrogate parents who pushed

consumption at every turn. Dr. Frances Horwich, the kindly " principal " of

Ding Dong School, popped vitamins and urged her preschool viewers to tell

their mothers to pick the bottle with the pretty red pills at the drugstore.

Perhaps it was not entirely accidental that the generation weaned on such

fare would become, a decade later, the " Me Generation " of the 1960s.

Advertisers were thinking long term. " Think of what it can mean to your firm

in profits, " Clyde wrote in " The Process of Persuasion, " " if you can

condition a million or ten million children who will grow into adults

trained to buy your products as soldiers who are trained to advance when

they hear the trigger words 'Forward, march.' "

These developments did not go unnoticed at the time. In his landmark book

" The Lonely Crowd, " Riesman observed that corporations had designed a

new role for children, as " consumer trainees. " In the process, Riesman said,

they had turned traditional values upside down. Earlier in the century,

children's publications had promoted such qualities as self-discipline and

perseverance. " The comparable media today, " he wrote, " train the young for

the frontiers of consumption - to tell the difference between Pepsi-Cola and

Coca-Cola, as later between Old Golds and Chesterfields. " (The latter were

popular cigarette brands.)

Some parents did resist. In the 1950s there often were a few kids in the

neighborhood who weren't allowed to watch TV. But most parents then, as now,

were reluctant to deny their kids what their friends had. Moreover, parents

themselves were caught up in the commercial euphoria of the post-war years,

when a new car or television seemed a just reward for the hardships of the

Depression and a world war.

Soon the commercial saturation of childhood became the new norm, and people

hardly noticed any more. An entire industry arose to mold young minds to

crave products, and to cast parents into the subordinate role as financiers

for these fabricated wants. U. McNeal, a former marketing professor at

Texas A & M University, is perhaps the most influential advocate of modern

marketing to children. " [T]he consumer embryo begins to develop during the

first year of existence, " McNeal writes, without a hint of embarrassment or

shame. " [C]hildren begin their consumer journey in infancy and certainly

deserve consideration as consumers at that time. "

It is not comforting to know, as we cuddle our newborns, that there exists

an industry of McNeals eager to prod them onto their " consumer

journey. " Nor is it comforting to know that there are marketing consultants,

like Cheryl Idell of Western Initiative Media Worldwide, advising

corporations on how to harness the " nag factor " to increase sales. Idell

contends that nagging spurs about a third of family trips to fast-food

restaurants, and of purchases of videos and clothing.

And what about the naggees in this arrangement? In the writings of people

like McNeal, parents exist as deep pockets to be siphoned by kids whose role

is to influence purchases. This mentality has become the dominant force with

which parents must contend. They encounter it at every turn: They take the

kids to a sports event and are barraged by ads. They buy a video for them

and find that it is choc-a-bloc with " product placements " - brand-name

products that are built into the story.

Parents feel the heavy breathing of the marketers even on their little ones.

Teletubbies, for example, is an animated TV show aimed at toddlers as young

as one year. The producers portray it as educational. But Marty Brochstein,

editor of the Licensing Letter, is more candid, calling Teletubbies a " major

big bucks opportunity. " The show has done promotions with Burger King and

Mcs. If that's education, it's not the kind most parents have in mind.

The morphing of advertising into life extends even to the schools.

Corporations have taken advantage of tight school budgets to turn classrooms

and hallway walls into billboards for junk food and sneakers. As for the

Internet, it's a marketer's dream, a technology that children roam

unsupervised, and that offers endless opportunities for getting into

children's minds. " Kids don't realize they're reading advertisements, " says

Lloyd Jobe, the CEO of Skateboard.com.

Marketers know exactly where to find children, too. The collection of

children's personal information, and the invasion of their privacy, has

become commonplace. American Student List LLC

(www.studentlist.com/lists/main.html), a list broker, sells a list of " 20

million names of children ranging in age from 2 to 13, " along with their

addresses, ages, genders, telephone numbers, and other personal information.

For advertisers, it all has been a bonanza: Market researchers estimate that

children ages four to twelve influence some $565 billion of their parents

purchasing each year, and McNeal calls children the " superstars in the

consumer constellation. "

For kids, however, the role of consumer " superstars " has meant an epidemic

of marketing-related diseases. American kids are fatter than ever, and rates

of obesity and type-2 diabetes are soaring. Teenage girls have become

obsessed with their bodies, due largely to the images of physical perfection

that barrage them in fashion magazines and ads. More than half of all high

school girls say they were on diets during the previous month. Likewise,

eating disorders are now the third leading chronic illness among adolescent

girls.

Drinking is a problem, too. A study by the National Institute on Media and

Family found that the more a beer company spends on advertising, the more

likely seventh- to twelfth-graders are to know about that beer - and to

drink it. Perhaps not coincidentally, alcohol is a factor in the four main

causes of death among young people ages 10 to 24: car crashes, other

accidents, homicide, and suicide.

The merchants of death are adept at using marketing to undermine the good

influence of parents. Tobacco marketing is especially successful at

counteracting parents who encourage their children not to smoke. Each day,

another 3,000 children start to smoke; roughly a third of them will have

their lives shortened due to smoking-related illnesses.

Added to all this is the production of misery and dissension in the home.

Our children are being coached and prodded in the arts of petulance and

nagging, by those whose sole purpose is to turn them into conduits for their

parents' money. As the anthropologist Jules Henry once noted, advertising

has become an " insolent usurper of parental function, degrading parents to

mere intermediaries between children and the market. "

A survey by the Merck Family Fund found that 86 percent of Americans think

that young people today are " too focused on buying and consuming things. "

Business Week, no enemy of corporate America, perhaps put it best: " Instead

of transmitting a sense of who we are and what we hold important, today's

marketing-driven culture is instilling in [children] a sense that little

exists without a sales pitch attached and that self-worth is something you

buy at a shopping mall. "

You might think our representatives in Washington would show some concern,

but politicians in both major parties seem reluctant to stand up to

commercial predators. Back in the late 1970s, for example, the Federal Trade

Commission (FTC) proposed an end to advertising to children too young to

grasp that ads aren't necessarily true. In response, Congress stripped the

FTC of any authority to enact rules against advertisers who take advantage

of the vulnerabilities of impressionable youth. J. Beales III, chief

of consumer protection in the current administration, is an economist

perhaps best known for his scholarly defense of R. J. Reynolds and its

infamous " Joe Camel " ad campaign. And Scheffman, the new head of the

FTC's bureau of economics, also worked for the tobacco industry.

Parents deserve a little more respect. Their job is hard enough without the

marketing culture treating them as cannon fodder. The technology of

seduction has increased tremendously in sophistication and reach, and

corporate seducers have gained new legal rights too. Yet the means for

parents to contend with these intrusions, and to talk back to the intruders,

have scarcely grown at all. In many respects they have diminished.

The time has come to right the balance. The government can't do parents' job

for them, but it certainly can give them the legal rights they need to stand

up effectively to corporations that target their kids. Parents should not be

second-class citizens. They should not feel under siege by a culture

designed to shake them down for money, and to usurp the function of

instilling values in their kids.

The time has come for a Parents' Bill of Rights.

Rowe is director of the Tomales Bay Institute. Ruskin is

executive director of Commercial Alert (www.commercialalert.org), whose

mission is to keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere and

prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of

family, community, environmental integrity, and democracy.

Suze Fisher

Lapdog Design, Inc.

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg/

mailto:s.fisher22@...

May 17, 2003

,

Your points are well made, and aside from the (perceived) practical

applications of them (i.e. banning sugar) I agree with them. I've read half

(maybe more, I forget) of Sugar Blues, but had to put it down at one point

due to time, and will probably read the rest soon.

But as to banning-- and now I'm not completely sure what your position is-- I

don't think there is really even grounds for it (if the criteria is more than

that a substance be evil). Aside from the complexities I mentioned before,

there are the added complexities of what people will do. If sugar were

banned, I think it would just go underground like drugs have. Whereas if

PHVO were banned I think companies would just start using lard and coconut

oil again. Our culture, or " vulture " is not conducive to banning sugar,

because everyone resents being told what to do, especially eat. If people

were more health conscious, more respectful of ancestral ways of life, etc,

the whole sugar issue would just become a non-issue any way.

I agree with what you said in your first post about the maxim Dr. Price would

add, due to his profound respect for the cultures of the groups he studied.

I don't know what he would view as political applications of that though, as

I have no idea what his political views were.

I have to leave-- fascinating conversation I don't have time for at the

immediate moment would love to have sooner or later.

Ciao,

Chris

May 17, 2003

,

No, but I do know many, many people who would willingly take drugs that they

know to be harmful if it gave them relief from their present health issues.

Rather than take a long, hard approach to health, they want a quick fix and

would sell their souls to the devil if it meant they didn't have to suffer

the consequenses of the choices they have made.

Theresa

May 17, 2003

>>>As much as I hate sugar, I'm not really with you on this.

-------->for the record, I don't agree with banning sugar either, for the

same reasons you presented.

Suze Fisher

Lapdog Design, Inc.

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg/

mailto:s.fisher22@...

May 17, 2003

Thanks Suze - get me going on Price, corporations, and my grandfather

and look out!

;-)

RE: Re: oreos

>>>>>It will be a long road to get back to some kind of

bioregional self-sufficiency and sustainability for most of us, but

that's where high-quality nutrient-dense community oriented food systems

lead us whether we realize it or not.

---->this is such a good post! thank you for an amazing combination of

good

sense and eloquence, chris :-)

Suze Fisher

Lapdog Design, Inc.

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg/

mailto:s.fisher22@...

May 17, 2003

No I don't assume that corporations are out to harm people however they are

quite willing to cover up that fact their products will harm people if they

think they will get away with it. So they might actively try and hinder

science and information catching up with people. In other words Nabisco

doesn't make oreos in an evil plot to make American children sick but they

sure won't advertise the hazards of hydrogenated oil. They might also take

an extra step and try and prevent the hazards of HO from being promulgated

by the government either.

I really think when the information really gets out the majority of parents

will avoid them. Most parents try and do the right thing. I get tired of

talking about trans fats etc because everyone thinks I am a nut. They won't

believe it until they see it on TV.

Irene

At 10:59 PM 5/16/03, you wrote:

>Irene,

>

>Point well stated. I do not disagree with accountability. My point is that

>accountability is more lasting and life changing when it happens at the

>individual level. The only flaw with your point though, is that is suggests

>that the corporations we are speaking of intentionally are out to harm

>people. When the science and information catches up with the market, it then

>becomes each individuals responsibility to opt out of the game, addicition or

>not.

>

>Theresa

>

May 17, 2003

I am not sure which comment you are refering to because it was not attached

to the email but I think you are refering to the rant about guns.

No of course I don't believe that HO kills like guns do . I was drawing a

distinction between making and providing a product in a passive sense where

if you want something, such as a gun or junk food you go out and find it.

And contrasting it with a situation where a product is actively pushed,

sold, and advertised to children in many ways. Then absolving the producer

of any responsibility for people buying the stuff saying that no one was

forced to buy it. I think the producers are responsible for their

advertising and for attempting to get their products into schools where

parents have less control over what their children eat.

If in fact a producer made a product and made no attempt to get it into

schools or advertise it then I think the argument that they are just

providing what people want would be true. People would decide they wanted

it and search it out themselves.

Irene

At 11:30 PM 5/16/03, you wrote:

>Irene,

>

>Are you concluding beyond a reasonable doubt that Oreos kill? What exactly is

>Nabisco supposed to be being held accountable for? Making cookies? I

>personally believe the information that says hydrogenated oils are unhealthy,

>but I'm sure you can find many who disagree.

>

>Theresa

>

May 17, 2003

I wasn't saying that sugar should be banned, just that there were

grounds for banning it. As for all the complexities of other refined

sugars, I think it comes down to whether a substance comes straight from

nature and whether it has been approved for human consumption by our

ancestors (that is having a history of sustainable, intergenerational

human consumption). When we master the integration of those foods again

we can talk about fudging around with newfangled technology-derived

sweeteners. Again, this is my fantasy world here.

Two points to make: first, I think in order to continue the

conversation on this thread we must have read Sugar Blues to fully grasp

both the shocking and devastating power of sugar on health and society

itself, and also the importance of appropriate scale and context of

human society. Price called them " the displacing foods of modern

commerce. " This is how they spread - by infiltrating (and eventually

undermining) local economies and food systems. Rebuilding local

economies must start by rebuilding local food systems, educating the

community, and nurturing culture. Helena Norberg-Hodge's " Ancient

Future, " Schuman's " Going Local, " and " Short Circuit " by Douthwaite are

all incredible resources in this regard.

Second, what Dr. Mike keeps arguing for is a very heavy burden - for

individual parent/units living unbelievably busy lives and being

shamelessly lied to by the corporations & government - to make

consistent, informed, good choices for themselves and their children.

From my studies of anthropology I would say that culture is what informs

us, guides us, and helps us make good choices among the infinite choices

that exist, to live a healthy balanced life. It was culture that helped

traditional cultures to navigate the many dietary choices they did have,

often in very difficult circumstances. We don't have culture today. I

would call it " vulture " because it doesn't come from life but feeds off

life. To rebuild culture, again, we must rebuild local economies and

food systems which by increasing wealth, giving us our time back, making

affordable high quality foods available, and encouraging us to work

together and know each other, provide the breathing room from the global

economy to do more than tread water - we can build sustainable wisdom

cultures! Simply trying to create and enforce a native diet in one's

family today is as we all know - very difficult. The best activism

would make it easy like falling off a log. Having said this I do feel

that every person must constantly think for themselves and not just

follow blindly -any- cultural dictates.

One might wonder whether a healthy culture can really maintain itself

against the full might of corporate confections given that we can look

around and see that most cultures have fallen victim to them around the

world. This touches on the prospect of banning sugar. This is a

question that could never have arisen before the 20th century. We don't

know the answer but I have faith in humans and hope that if we are able

to rebuild sustainable wisdom cultures, that we learn the lessons of our

history and take appropriate precautions. We now have a century of

tragic evidence to take into account and we must do so before it is too

late.

Cheers,

Re: Re: oreos

,

As much as I hate sugar, I'm not really with you on this.

Sugar is not comparable to PHVO for numerous reasons.

As to the rat study, first, it was a rat study. That's informative--

but

there is too much info to look at sugar's impact on humans to revert to

a rat

study on it. Second, they were *only* fed sugar. Rats fed part of

their

diet as sugar, like humans, do live a considerable length.

The difference between PHVO and sugar is that sugar in a proper context

and

amount can be safe or perhaps even healthful in the proper form, whereas

PHVO

does not occur in nature, and confers zero benefit at any quantity.

Define sugar. Fruit is mostly sugar. Table sugar is sugar. Rapadura

is

sugar. Raw honey is sugar. Beets are largely sugar. Bananss are

*full* of

sugar. Is *everything* with sugar to be banned?

If you want to ban only refined white sugar, there is an enormous burden

of

proof on you to demonstrate that unrefined cane sugar is more than

marginally

better than refined cane sugar that you probably cannot meet.

Rapadura's

charts on how much more nutritious they are than other sugars looks

good, but

if you compare it to non-sugar-cane foods the difference really is

marginal.

I use it, but I don't consider it a healthy food, and I use it very,

very,

rarely.

Raw honey is basically pure sugar. But it also has tons of benefits if

used

in the PEROPER CONTEXT AND AMOUNT. But someone could *easily* damage

their

health with enough raw honey if they used it as recklessly as people use

white sugar today. In fact, the could do the same with fruit.

Aside from nutritional history studies or whatever about people who eat

fruit

(because they're also more likely to eat vegetables) you probably

couldn't

find that great of a health benefit to fruit. And you could make a case

fruit is more toxic than glucose syrup, based on metabolism of fructose

and

glucose. I don't agree with it, but you could certainly make a good

case.

And *definitely* could for fruit *juice*.

I very much doubt fruit juice is better for kids than table sugar.

Should we

ban that? If it is made with high fructose corn syrup, probably even

worse.

Oh, but that's a dillema-- high fructose corn syrup and corn syrup are

essentially unrefined sweetneers. What makes them different than maple

syrup, or are we banning that too?

There are people who live into their 90s and eat sugar. Sure they might

be

hidden away in the boondocks of Maine with a family of hunters eating

moose

heart and liver every day, but they're there. Melvin Page found that

about

20% of the people he studied could eat sugar without disrupting their

calcium-phosphorus ratios. This roughly corresponds to Barry Sears'

claim

that about 25% of Americans do not have significant hyperinsulinemic

responses to sugar and starch.

The fact is that sugar affects everyone differently. It is a poison to

some,

and not to others.

Moreover, for most people sugar must simply be prepared in the proper

way,

used in the proper context, and used with the appropriate degree of

MODERATION exercised, in order to get the benefit of good taste without

the

harm.

Chris

In a message dated 5/16/03 8:12:18 PM Eastern Daylight Time,

radiantlife@... writes:

>

> I think that there are good grounds to ban sugar altogether. It is

> addictive, and damages health beyond a shadow of a doubt. Sally

> regularly quotes the study which showed that rodents lived longer

> consuming just water I believe, than sugar. If a substance can't help

> you live longer than water fasting than it fails the most basic test

for