Sesame Street promotes incorrect nutritional advice (Opinion)

Wednesday, March 16, 2011 by: Nancy Piscatello
Tags: Sesame Street, superfoods, health news

(NewsTarget) Apparently, Sesame Street will be hosting new characters called "The Superfoods" Muppets. It is being sponsored by the pharmaceutical company, Merck. "The Superfoods" are broccoli, a banana, a whole wheat bun and cheese. This is an effort to teach children about better choices in eating and to help fight obesity. Although this list includes foods that have some nutritional value, do they qualify as superfoods? Are they the best foods for most children? What might the "superfoods" characters be named if healthy pre-modern cultures around the world were to name them?

Superfoods generally are considered the superstars of nutritionally healing foods, or supplements, amongst the "healthy foodie" groups. Foods/supplements that meet this criteria: Spirulina, Bee Pollen, Butter (raw, grass fed on rapidly growing green grass), High-Vitamin Butter Oil, Cod Liver Oil, Colostrum, Glandular and Organ Extracts, Evening Primrose and Noni Juice are some of the most highly esteemed.

These items, and those like them, will not likely ever be found as a "superfoods" character on Sesame Street. This may be because they are not known by the general public; but more importantly, pharmaceutical companies, like Merck, have no interest in them. Many superfoods, from nature, leave no room for patents and profits for these companies.

A banana, although enzyme efficient when very ripe, is healthy, but not quite a superfood; whole wheat, if not properly soaked, can cause digestive problems, and many children have sensitivities to it; and, lastly, cheese, unless from pastured animals and unpasteurized, is another highly allergenic food to many children.

Pre-modern cultures, that were not exposed to modern foods, ate many "sacred" foods that helped them "make healthy babies". Many of these foods were full of vitamins and minerals, enzymes and probiotics. Their drinks were mostly fermented, for a probiotic benefit, and their milk was served raw, for all the live enzymes. They used grass fed butter, the color of an orange (today`s consumer believes butter comes only in pale yellow), in abundance and ingested fish eggs, shellfish and organ meats to produce glowingly healthy humans.

Their "Superfoods" Muppets might have had names that followed their dietary principles: Liver, Kefir, Egg Yolk and Butter! A far cry from the names of today`s version. Their version would most certainly deserve the title "superfood", however.

Traditional people's knowledge of healthy foods was passed down from generation to generation. Most of the foods touted as health food today are backed by an industry that wants people to eat them. Wheat and soy are both traded in the stock market as commodities, and the dairy industry is heavily lobbied.

About the author

Nancy Piscatello has a healthy foodie blog at www.nourishingnancy.com and also writes for Examiner.com as the NY Healthy Food Examiner: http://www.nottheexaminer.com/healthy-food-i.... Nancy is studying Holistic Nutrition at Clayton College of Natural Health and an accomplished singer for the New York based band Millennium (www.eastendorchestras.com). She is mother of three children living on the east end of Long Island with her husband.