Post: Food For Thought: Media to Digest for Healthier Kids
Food For Thought: Media to Digest for Healthier Kids
March is National Nutrition Month, so Shaping Youth is adding to the ADA’s Eat Right Web resources with some fun and worthy positive picks in food media to share with your kids, boost their media literacy IQ, and counter-market the cartoon pitches for empty calorie crud. Here goes:
I’ve always loved the SmartMouth interactive site for kids, but my new discovery is the U.K.’s “Which?” site, revealing kids’ food marketing ploys in a fabulously engaging digital ditty called “The Interactive Bedroom.” The cartoon door entices, “Knock, Knock! Open the door to find out who’s manipulating our children’s diets!”
Click through their interactive media as cartoon bubbles and factoids note the impact of celebrity endorsements, food playset product tie-ins, online gaming, branded playgrounds, in-school promos, lunchbox snack attacks, viral marketing, clubs, incentives and irresponsible hammering of unhealthy food choices into the pop culture with kids and you’ll see why we feel so undermined...it’s not your imagination!
Their glib site is brilliant, and their “Food Fables” report and genetically modified food explanations are enough to convert even the most diehard, anti-regulatory, free market foodie to call for ethical guidelines in food marketing to kids!
For animated shorts that wallop with impact, check out the Food Film Fest site which the fun-loving folks at the Mouth Revolution blog shared. (Also read their blurb on Girl Scout Cookies finally doing something about transfats, yay! Thin mints, ho!)
I’ve written about the Meatrix trilogy, Mouth Revolution, SuperSize Me and the snarky animation on "gassing" meats for eye appeal, but this meaningful film fest media runs an even deeper gamut into the documentary realm. Some cartoon clips are funny. Some inspire. Some jolt you into action. All entertain.
Insightful films touch on the environmental impact of the food we consume (Sierra Club’s “True Cost of Food”) genetically modified food, (The Future of Food) the politics of food, (The Global Banquet) and more.
You may end up shaking your head about the massiveness of the food chain conundrum but at least you’ll see the whys of how we got here, what we can do, and where we need to go for kids’ health and well-being. Add this to your media diet, and enjoy!
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Date: October 9, 2008
On October 5, 2008, the CW Network premiered a new drama from the creators of The Sopranos. The new show, called Easy Money, is said to be about a family who owns and operates a “high-interest loan” business called Prestige Payday Loans. It’s always great to see shows being produced in an effort to bring underrepresented cultures or things into the limelight; as long as it constitutes a fair and balanced portrayal of the subject matter at hand. However, by taking one look at the trailers for the new drama, as well as a few of the episode synopses, my biggest fear is that the premise for the show is based solely on vicious media stereotypes. With this in mind, think of the last time that you viewed a news story either online or on television news talking about the payday loan industry. Chances are the story you saw or read wove tales of “real” persons’ woes fueled by their getting bogged down in an “endless cycle of debt.” Worst of all, according to such “articles,” it all started when they needed to borrow money to fix their car or pick up the tab on another unexpected bill. Such stories are further proof that, for the sake of winning the ratings wars, news networks will latch on to and report only the juiciest, most scandalous aspects of any big story and completely ignore everything else. It seems as if the CW network is following suit in an effort to recover viewers lost during the Writer’s Strike. One, for instance, opens with the tag line, “for this family of loan sharks, money is easy.” Surely, it’ll be interesting to see whether or not the CW or the show’s creators learned what the industry is really about. Chances are, probably not.
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Date: October 12, 2008
It’s always great to see shows being produced in an effort to bring underrepresented cultures or things into the limelight; as long as it constitutes a fair and balanced portrayal of the subject matter at hand. October 5, 2008, the CW Network premiered a new drama from the creators of The Sopranos. The new show, called Easy Money, is said to be about a family who owns and operates a “high-interest loan” business called Prestige Payday Loans. However, by taking one look at the trailers for the new drama, as well as a few of the episode synopsis, my biggest fear is that the premise for the show is based solely on vicious media stereotypes. With this in mind, think of the last time that you viewed a news story either online or on television news talking about the payday loan industry. Chances are the story you saw or read wove tales of “real” persons’ woes fueled by their getting bogged down in an “endless cycle of debt.” Worst of all, according to such “articles,” it all started when they needed to borrow money to fix their car or pick up the tab on another unexpected bill. Such stories are further proof that, for the sake of winning the ratings wars, news networks will latch on to and report only the juiciest, most scandalous aspects of any big story and completely ignore everything else. It seems as if the CW network is following suit in an effort to recover viewers lost during the Writer’s Strike. One, for instance, opens with the tag line, “for this family of loan sharks, money is easy.” Surely, it’ll be interesting to see whether or not the CW or the show’s creators learned what the industry is really about. Chances are, probably not.
Post Courtesy of Personal Money Store
Professional Blogging Team
Feed Back: 1-866-641-3406
Home: http://personalmoneystore.com/NoFaxPaydayLoans.html
Blog: http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/
Link: http://personalmoneystore.com