New Editions to the Endangered Species list: Toucan Sam, Tony the Tiger and the Trix Rabbit

By Rebecca DiFede


Recently, First Lady Jill-of-all-trades Michelle Obama added another job to her ever-expanding repertoire: poacher. When speaking to reporters at an event at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on May 11th, she unveiled her "Let's Move" campaign to stop childhood obesity which included getting rid of popular cartoon characters in the marketing of unhealthy foods (such as sugary cereals) and using those characters to only promote healthy alternatives (perhaps a donkey who eats veggies?).

Madame Obama claims that this program is meant to lower rates of childhood obesity and diabetes by encouraging kids to eat healthy and watch their weight, however she is missing one key fact: the foods that children eat are the choice of the parent, not the child. If a parent wants to buy their children Fruit Loops, they will, regardless of advertising. And by the same token, if a parent only wants their child to eat granola, it doesn’t matter how “Gr-r-reat” Frosted Flakes are, their child won’t be eating them.

This war on the General Mills characters (and any other animations related to the sale of children’s foods) is only a reprise of a previous war on Joe Camel, the popular cartoon camel who once adorned magazine pages and TV ads selling Camel cigarettes. This campaign was done to help prevent kids from smoking, however it goes without saying that juveniles are no less inclined to smoke cigarettes now that Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man have gone the way of the Dodo.

Michelle Obama’s campaign is not only patently ridiculous, but also a gross waste of our country’s time and energy. We need to be focusing on the economic crisis and the debt ceiling, not trying to stop kids from being “coo coo” for coco puffs.

In the weeks following this announcement, a campaign to combat this graphic slaughter was created, known as the Sensible Food Policy Coalition, which is ironically being headed by known Mao Ze Dong enthusiast and former Obama Administration communicator, Anita Dunn.

One main reason that changing the marketing strategy of so-called unhealthy products to children will fail in preventing them from becoming obese or contracting diabetes is because of the simple fact that kids do not like the taste of vegetables, preferring a sweeter snack. Not only that, but because of their parents insistence that they are “good for them”, they become rebellious and refuse to eat them (as we all did as children), and that wouldn’t change, even if Tony the Tiger suddenly became a fruit lover (eat gr-r-rapes!) or the Lucky Charms Leprechaun sang “catch me lucky carrots, they’re magically lowfat” (it’s just not as catchy).
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