DH was watching TV the other night while I was playing on the computer and a commercial came on that just had me foaming at the mouth (good thing I didn't have a brick handy, we would no longer have a TV if I had). It's talking about healthy eating preventing all kinds of diseases, and one of the segments shows a kid saying something about eating fewer sweets because sugar causes diabetes. WTFing hell! Since when does eating anything with sugar in it cause diabetes? Sandy has a good post on this here.
Another segment was talking about eating fruits and veggies to prevent heart disease, high blood pressure, and cancer. Sandy has a good post on diet and heart disease prevention in women here, a couple on cancer prevention and diet here and here.
Seems to me that maybe some (most, I would hope) adults aren't buying the diet/lifestyle changes to prevent diseases, so now they have to start in on brainwashing kids into believing that how they eat is going to cause/prevent disease. None of those diet/lifestyle changes have been proved to prevent any disease, but that doesn't stop the media from continued publishing of mythperceptions, mythconceptions, and mythinformation. Who stands to gain the most from the continued propagation of these myths? It certainly isn't the public who is the target of this campaign. Could it possibly be pharmaceutical companies? How about the diet industry? Maybe bariatric surgeons? And let's not forget all those companies who make questionable supplements with incomplete ingredient lists that haven't been tested but will "cure" anything from an ingrown toenail to cancer.
I am so sick of being told that it's all my fault I'm fat, that's it all my fault if I get cancer, that it's all my fault if I have a heart attack, that it's all my fault if I have high blood pressure, that any illness I have is all my fault. That if I had just lived "right", eaten "right", and done just the "right" amount of exercise I would never get sick, and I would live forever young/rich/beautiful/smart/WTFever. What about all the people who have done all the "right" things? They still get sick, they still get diseases, and they still die, some of them sooner, some later. Ya know, life is a gamble, and even if you do everything "right", there is no guarantee of how much time you are going to have on this earth. Worrying and obsessing over everything you do is not the way to a long, happy, productive life (whatever that means to you, and each person's definition of that is unique, as it should be).
Has anyone else seen that commercial? What did you think of it?
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