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Rebranding Carrots as Junk Food

thedieline.com

51–59 of 59 posts

Re: Rebranding Carrots as Junk Food

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Japan a good example? If any country is second to the USA in packaging products to appeal to kids (or, as you put it, "BSing them"), it's Japan: http://japanfix.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/DSC_0019.jpg http://s7.thisnext.com/media/largest_dimension/23448865.jpg (I think this is a good thing if, and only if, the food is healthy and worthwhile to eat - as here. It's easy to rail against branding and advertising -…

Yes. Yes it is. Just because they have lots of fancy candy packaging doesn't mean that Japanese kids eat tons of it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_obesity#Japan Just look at photos of what the Jap kids eat for lunch: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lunchinabox/1378172475/ This is actually what they eat for lunch everyday. It's amazing.

Cool picture but I have no idea what any of that is. Obviously rice 3 of the plates have what I would guess are eggs, beyond that there are some random vegetables about like putting lettuce, tomatoes and pickles on a hamburger.

Re: Rebranding Carrots as Junk Food

#52
post #36
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really that inconvenient to clean a carrot? Just peel it and eat it. I can peel a carrot quicker than most people can even decide what to have at a vending machine.

You're leaving out the bit where you find a knife and a cutting board, and then you wash the knife and the cutting board, and the bit where you throw away all the peel you cut off, and the bit where some of the peel winds up on the floor so you have to bend over and pick it up, and... wait, can't you just buy packaged prepeeled babby carrots anyway? They sell 'em at my local supermarket.

I can't tell if this is tongue-in-cheek or not, but I'll reply seriously anyway:

When I want a carrot I grab one out of the fridge, grab the peeler off of the counter, pull my compost box out from under the sink and peel it directly into the compost. Why would you need a cutting board?!

Re: Rebranding Carrots as Junk Food

#53
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with you, I notice that I eat disproportionately few carrots than their taste would suggest (they are pretty delicious), and it's mostly because of the inconvenience of cleaning them and their relative unavailability. If I had a vending machine with carrots, I'd definitely choose them over the other snacks most of the time.

I agree. I'd love to have the option of getting carrots (if they were in decent condition) out of the vending machine at work.

Why don't you just keep a bag of carrots from the supermarket in a desk drawer instead? If put them in a paperbag instead of the plastic they usually come in (or else condensation will rot them), they'll easily keep for a week.

Re: Rebranding Carrots as Junk Food

#54
post #9
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with you, I notice that I eat disproportionately few carrots than their taste would suggest (they are pretty delicious), and it's mostly because of the inconvenience of cleaning them and their relative unavailability. If I had a vending machine with carrots, I'd definitely choose them over the other snacks most of the time.

The longer I live in the "real world" the more cutting carrots while watching bad television has become a part of my routine. I can really eat them faster than I have the patience to shell them. And if we want to make them junk food, all we have to do is up the sodium content to about 25% of that of a bag of chips, and kids will be gobbling them up just as if they were any other snack food. Of course, they won't be s…

>all we have to do is up the sodium content to about 25% of that of a bag of chips, and kids will be gobbling them up just as if they were any other snack food

I thought the process was mince the food up, add salt, modified soya protein and flavour enhancers, some sunset yellow (or other diabolical food colouring) and then reshape the resulting mush into mini carrot-ettes.

Finish by frying in a vat of lard, dip in HCFS and then in sugar and crisp on the grill.

Voila, fast-food-ised carrots.

Re: Rebranding Carrots as Junk Food

#55
post #24
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really that inconvenient to clean a carrot? Just peel it and eat it. I can peel a carrot quicker than most people can even decide what to have at a vending machine.

You don't need to peel carrots, really. They are nice to eat just like they are!

When I was young we used to pick carrots from the field and wash them in the irrigator before eating them, good times.

Re: Rebranding Carrots as Junk Food

#56

1. Nice packaging has a marketing merit no matter the product. Think how a beautiful gift wrap elevates an average gift. So why no have a nice packaging without the "Junk" logo? 2. Never a good idea to assume that the kids are stupid.

>Think how a beautiful gift wrap elevates an average gift.

Beautiful gift wrap always makes me think "what a waste of resources" it's even worse if it's plastic.

I don't think we should be trying to trick people into following what we've decided they should eat.

Re: Rebranding Carrots as Junk Food

#57

Clever idea. I subscribe to the wacky theory that kids prefer junk food to vegetables because it tastes better rather than because they've been brainwashed by evil advertisers, but either way this will provide useful data.

I'm kind of a crazy person when it comes to eating healthily, but I wasn't always. It's clear to me now, sitting on the other side of the chasm, that your notion of what "tastes good" is completely fabricated by marketing and a lifetime of consuming foods that soak your brain in feel-good chemicals.

I literally can't stand the taste of junk food now, on the rare occasions I'll try a bit just for contrast.

It'll take a year or two for your body to reacclimate to what real food tastes and feels like, but once it does, you'll realize what a terrible fog you've been in all this time. That's exactly what happened to me, and I'd bet money that would happen to you if you gave it a shot.

Re: Rebranding Carrots as Junk Food

#59

Clever idea. I subscribe to the wacky theory that kids prefer junk food to vegetables because it tastes better rather than because they've been brainwashed by evil advertisers, but either way this will provide useful data.

I'm kind of a crazy person when it comes to eating healthily, but I wasn't always. It's clear to me now, sitting on the other side of the chasm, that your notion of what "tastes good" is completely fabricated by marketing and a lifetime of consuming foods that soak your brain in feel-good chemicals. I literally can't stand the taste of junk food now, on the rare occasions I'll try a bit just for contrast. It'll take…

I agree. Same thing happened to me. Once I learned how nutrition and diseases are linked I started paying attention to what I ate. My wife reversed her type 2 diabetes entirely through nutrition as have thousands of others. I reversed years of severe food allergies. We know many people who have reversed heart disease and cancers through intensive nutritional therapies as well.
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