Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Lettuce.

From Meet Britain's new healthy eating guru on www.stuff.co.nz today:

Forget all the pizza and doughnuts - the British government wants fans of The Simpsons to ditch junk food and eat more healthily.

The Department of Health is spending £640,000 to sponsor episodes of the long-running US cartoon series broadcast on Channel 4, as part of its Change4Life campaign.

Before the start of the sponsored shows, cartoon characters pretending to be the members of the dysfunctional animated family are shown sitting on a sofa tucking into ice cream and chips which then morph into more healthy alternatives.

The government hopes that viewers will realize they should follow that behavior, and not the beer-swilling, doughnut-guzzling diet of Homer Simpson and his family.

Public Health minister Gillian Merron said the aim was to produce new and innovative ways to reach the target audience..

The Simpsons are a much-loved, close-knit family facing some of the everyday challenges that modern day families go through," she said in a statement.

"Whilst they certainly make some questionable choices about how they go about things, they provide a popular and engaging way to get the message to real-life families about simple ways of improving their diet and activity for a healthier lifestyle."

Memo to British Government: it's a CARTOON.  The whole joke is that Homer Simpson does not eat healthy food.  This is why he is overweight and has regular heart attacks and has no physical stamina whatsoever.  If Homer Simpson lost weight, that would be the end of the show.  If you bothered to watch The Simpsons, you would see that it is already very effectively pushing the healthy eating message.  You are preaching to the converted.

Give the £640,000 back to taxpayers.  That would be a more constructive use of the funds.

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