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 A friend of mine recently gave a talk to an audience of 35 rural kindergartners. Her topic was nutrition. She asked them to draw a picture of where their lunch came from. Two kids drew pictures of cows. The remaining 33 drew one of the following: chicken nuggets, an Oscar Mayer “lunchable” and Chef Boyardee microwaveable ravioli. When she told me this I wanted to cry.
We Ohioans take our agriculture pretty seriously. After all, it’s the backbone of our economy. The children to whom she spoke grew up in the middle of cornfields and yet they believe their lunches emanate from some sort of pre-packaged heaven rather than an actual animal, vegetable or mineral.
Our little “farm” kids are doing exactly what the rest of the country is doing—mistaking lunchables for food.
How can we be so stupid, I wonder. Lunchables are not food. They are processed meat circles, cheese-product squares and over-salted crackers in plastic containers. When did a bunch of food product begin to qualify as food?
And yet I see the same confusion in my urban community. I see parents feeding their babies microwaveable entrees made by baby-food companies. I see kids eating frozen pizza and hot dogs in school lunchrooms. I see children gorging themselves on snack bars and “juice” made mostly of water and sugar—or sugar substitutes.
And this sort of behavior is always justified as a way to save time.
How familiar is that argument in the green movement? Folks don’t want to recycle because it takes too much time; they’d rather drive than walk with a similar sort of excuse. It seems to be part of the human condition to know better but not necessarily act upon that impulse if it causes too much discomfort or inconvenience.
However, these little people are the future of this planet—the very entity we are interested in saving, correct?
Even if you have elected not to perpetuate your genetic line, you must acknowledge the fact that the children we feed today will become the adults we are counting on to take up the green mantle and save this planet tomorrow.
And we are nourishing this generation of future eco warriors with a bunch of processed garbage.
We know that this country has some of the most overweight and behaviorally challenged children in the world. With diagnoses like Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Attention Deficit Disorder exponentially growing and the known link between diet (preservatives, sugar substitutes, etc.) and behavioral issues, we still elect to save time and turn a blind eye.
With childhood obesity at an all-time high and the known correlation between high fat content, over-processed carbohydrates and excessive weight gain, we continue to justify antiquated solutions. After all, we ate pizza and macaroni and cheese growing up and we turned out fine… Wake-up call, folks: the pizza and macaroni of our generation is not the same pizza and macaroni being genetically modified and mass produced today.
So what are we doing to our nation’s children?
I would wager that we are raising a generation of slower, fatter and less-intelligent beings who will be expected to take up a complex task (saving the planet) with a compromised skill set. With these handicaps, will they be able to meet the critical environmental challenges they will face?
So I urge you, wherever you are, whoever you are—parent, child, sister, brother, son, daughter… If you believe in ecology and the importance of passing on a message of sustainability to future generations, start asking questions about your food. If possible, begin implementing greener technologies into your dining practices. Buy organic and local, avoid genetically modified and genetically engineered food, etc. And please do it now. There are little eyes watching, little ears listening, little hands imitating everything you do.
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