Whoopi on the Cookie Monster

This video is hard to watch because they all talk over each other. But there’s an interesting discussion in here. After all, I grew up watching Cookie Monster on Sesame Street and I have a problem with sweet cookies. I don’t blame the Cookie Monster though, I never really liked him. Grover was always my favorite. 

I get that he’s just a puppet. All kids love love cookies and they know that cookies aren’t something they should eat all the time. Given the choice between cookies and a healthy meal, kids know what’s right for them and they’ll choose the healthy food.

But if Cookie Monster was fat then we could see an issue, right? Or if the Cookie Monster also drank soda while he ate cookies. It would be over-the-top if he ate ice cream as well. He’s just the cookie monster after all, not the junk food monster.

What about if Cookie Monster was a woman? Would it be an issue if the female Cookie Monster loved and ate cookies in the same exact way? What if Ms. Piggy loved to rabidly binge on cookies? Easy, she’s just a puppet!

Maybe Cookie Monster could meet a woman called Veggie Monster and she could teach him about the value of a healthy meal. In return, Cookie Monster could teach Veggie Monster how fun and satisfying it is to uncontrollably binge on sweet cookies.

I don’t blame Cookie Monster for my sugar addiction, all of those sweet cookies and cereals were at my fingertips. I was just a kid who didn’t know any better. It took me well into my adult life to realize that junk food was killing me. Hmmm… Maybe a Veggie Monster wouldn’t be so bad after all. It would certainly make the job of parenting just a tiny bit easier. And maybe, just maybe, it would spark an idea in some kid’s head that vegetables are worth freaking out over.

Center for Consumer Freedom - Part 2

According to their website, the Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit coalition of restaurants, food companies, and consumers working together to promote personal responsibility and protect consumer choices*. Their “Funny Lawyer Commercials” attack hypothetical situations in order to make a mockery of anyone who thinks High Fructose Corn Syrup isn’t okay for us to eat (in moderation).

Take a closer look at the judge in the commercial. He’s Rick Berman, the man behind the Center for Consumer Freedom and owner of the lobbying and consulting firm it employs. I wonder if he cast himself for the fun of it or if he’s trying to say something about who is making the decisions in this case. Let’s be real, the defense is not a girl scout. It’s Kellogs, Keebler, Interbake Food, and George Weston Limited—the companies that baked Girl Scout cookies in 2008—and companies like them who want the contracts in the future.

What if Girl Scouts changed gears and sold gardening seeds? What if they sold information? What if they sold anything but cookies? Cookies are old fashioned, sexist even. People are catching on. GS Cookies are crap food. Why not make your own Girl Scout Cookies at home? Because you’ll let down that little girl in your life. What a racket!

“Learn more about who is cashing in on obesity at Consumer Freedom dot com.”

Wait. Aren’t food companies cashing in on obesity? I don’t doubt that some people—lawyers and individuals alike—want to make a buck off of large corporations. It’s been happening for years. Recently a Florida woman sued tobacco companies and won millions of dollars in damages for her emphysema caused by smoking. Imagine that. Are the Consumer Freedom people worried that lawyers and the people that fund them are going to start suing the food industry for feeding people High Fructose Corn Syrup for all these years, even though they knew it wasn’t good for us?

The above mentioned tobacco lawsuit happened in 2009. Cigarettes now have warning labels and you’d have to be living on Mars your whole life to not know smoking is bad for you. Imagine if cigarette companies ran ads that claimed smoking was equally as bad as walking on the sidewalk of a busy city street or that having a cigarette once in a while was as dangerous for your lungs as watching fireworks on 4th of July. Everyone knows smoking should only be done in moderation. Soon the “smoke police” will ban smoking from restaurants in an unAmerican attempt to limit our freedoms. Then they’ll ban tobacco companies from advertising on television. Laws might even get passed to prevent kids from smoking. That’s crazy! It’s a parent’s responsibility to monitor their kids. 

Sorry, I’m digressing from the topic. My point is that I’d love to see someone (from the Center for Consumer Freedom or sugarscam.com) live on HFCS for a month like Morgan Spurlock did in his Supersize Me documentary. Everyone knows McDonald’s is not good for us and none of us would attempt to live off it, but we all wondered what would happen it we did. Morgan put it to the test. Still, there are plenty of people out there who do live on junk food but hopefully the tides are shifting.

The Internet is getting information out to people. It’s changing things. We can easily research issues and communicate with each other. If you like sugar and how it makes you feel, keep eating it. For the rest of us, we can stop eating it. Because, no matter who tells me what, I don’t need a doctor or scientist to let me know that sugar always makes me feel lousy.

* Taken from the description in their website’s meta tag.

The Center for Consumer Freedom - Part 1

My Year Without recently turned me onto a website called SweetScam.com. It’s purpose is to teach people that High Fructose Corn Syrup is not the cause of obesity. Truth is, I have to agree with them. HFCS doesn’t make people fat. People who lead a sedentary lifestyle and eat too much junk food laced with HFCS make themselves fat. So, who’s to blame? According to this commercial, there’s no cause for a case.

Meanwhile, you can’t turn a corner without someone slapping the soda out of your hands on a hot day, smashing your food at a diner or stomping on your hot dog in the street. 

Both ads came from the Center for Consumer Freedom. According to their about page, the center is a full non-profit organization dedicated to… something. I can’t tell what exactly. They say, “Consumer freedom is the right of adults and parents to choose how they live their lives, what they eat and drink, how they manage their finances, and how they enjoy themselves.”

Their YouTube page says, “The Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit watchdog group, protecting consumer choices and promoting personal responsibility.”

What’s more, if you look at their YouTube page, one of their favorite video is a mean spirited parody of a video starring Paris Hilton and a tofu/alfa sprout sandwich. Kind of a strange pick for a large non-profit interested in helping me make the right food choices for me and my family. Wait—they never said they were going to help me make the right choice. They just said they would make me responsible for my choice as to what I feed myself and my family.

Personal responsibility. We, the consumers, are responsible for what we put in our mouths. If we want to buy a boat load of junk food and eat it, then so be it! We’re free to do so. However, I do feel that we should have a right to know everything that’s in our food and that includes the labeling of genetically modified foods. It doesn’t need to be a warning, just an indication.

Consumer freedom should include consumer education and transparency. However, the Center for Consumer Freedom says their funders are afraid of radical activists and that’s why they don’t disclose their list of funders. I, as a consumer who believes in freedom, would love to know who funds this organization. That would make a big difference in how I feel about them. So I did a search.

On the website Consumer Deception it says the following:

Rick Berman founded and runs a trio of shadowy tax-exempt food, tobacco, and beverage industry front groups. For a hefty fee, these nonprofit organizations hire Berman as executive director. Berman then uses his own privately owned public relations company to do work for the nonprofit organization. In this way, Berman channels between 49 and 79 percent of the donations given to these nonprofit groups into his own pocket. In 1998, this amounted to more than $1 million for just one of these groups.

The Center for Consumer Freedom is one of Rick Berman’s tax-excempt groups. (Check the Consumer Deception webpage for interesting quotes and source links about the Center for Consumer Freedom.)

We as consumers have freedom. What we need now is reliable information. The HFCS people are always reacting to accusations that their product promotes obesity. They do not advocate a SuperSize Me style diet. Moderation is their motto.

Let’s face it. EVERYONE KNOWS THAT TOO MUCH SUGAR IS BAD FOR US or else we’d eat nothing but junk all day everyday. Believe me, I’ve tried to live on sugar and it’s just not sustainable. I’m sure people have tried to live on cigarettes and found the same thing. No matter if you believe sugar is the devil or not, it always comes back to personal responsibility. What you put in your mouth is your choice. Make it a good one.

Related Posts:

Center for Consumer Freedom: Part 2
High Fructose Corn Syrup Commercials Cause Controversy

Should You Keep Sweets At Home?

You made it through the day without candy. You didn’t have soda at lunch. You said no to sharing a chocolate bar with your friend. You get home from work and you’re tired from a long day.

Even though you’re not hungry, you still open the kitchen cupboard. There, on the shelf is a box of sweets. You don’t need them and you don’t want them but you know they’ll make a great end-of-the-day relaxation device.

“I made it through the whole day, I can have one thing at the end of the night,” you tell yourself.

Two hours later the whole box is gone, you’re about to go to bed and you feel awful.

The answer? Don’t keep sweets at home. The reason is because sweets are available to you all day every day. Everywhere you go sugar is there. Waiting. It’s there when you’re strong and it’s there when you’re weak. Not everyone is born strong. Some of us have to work at it.

Your willpower is like a muscle. You need to flex it. You start small and increase over time. Doing so makes you stronger.

With sugar, you have to remove the hardest stuff from your diet. So let’s say you remove all of the candy from your house. When you’re hungry you either have to go out to get candy or figure out something else to eat or do.

Next you go to work, or to wherever, and there’s candy. They have it in a bowl at the office. You can purchase it next to the cash register at nearly any large retail chain. Everywhere you go you are tempted to want to buy and eat candy. With each successfully refused temptation your are basically doing a repetition, just like curling a barbell. The more successful repetitions you do the stronger your willpower gets. But you must be careful!

You can overdo it when lifting weights. Go to any gym or read any fitness book and they’ll tell you to workout and then give your muscles a rest. That’s just what you’re doing when you take all of the junk food out of your house. You’re giving your willpower a rest. You’re allowing yourself to reflect on a day of no sweets. You’re not tempting yourself in your own home. And, most of all, you’re giving yourself a break form the relentlessly constant workout that is saying no to sweets.

What Can You Eat When You Stop Being Sweet?

Many people ask me what’s okay to eat. It is up to you to figure out where you draw the line. That’s what it means to Stop Being Sweet. It’s not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. What works for me might not work for you.

There are many foods that people might be surprised to know I eat. For instance, I still eat bread. I eat bagels from time to time. I eat pasta and rice. I eat fruit and fruit smoothies. I do this because I chose to stop being sweet instead of trying to quit sugar. Quitting sugar might be impossible and I’ve never met anyone who really quit sugar—nobody.

For the record, I do not eat (but for once a year) candy, ice cream, cookies, cake, brownies, or any of the “fun” sweet stuff that I’d still-to-this-day get the desire to spend an afternoon consuming. I avoid refined sugar unless it comes as an ingredient in bread in which case I choose the healthiest bread I can find. In Portland we have Dave’s Killer Bread which is a favorite of many. I also like Vita Bee which Oregonians can find at Fred Meyer stores. Those are two decent sliced breads that do not contain High Fructose Corn Syrup.

So, to Stop Being Sweet is not all or nothing. It’s fundamentally about identifying and avoiding your trigger foods, breaking and replacing your negative behavior patterns.

Stop Being Sweet is not a diet, it’s a movement! If you want a prescribed diet, see a nutritionist or doctor. When you stop being sweet you learn about your behavior around food and YOU decide what you will or won’t eat of your own volition.