Nature Medicine | Spoonful of Medicine

Sizzling summer of fun

A few weekends ago I made the mistake of volunteering for a fund-raising festival at the local toddler stomping ground. The afternoon hit 90 degrees, with full humidity. Determined to be a good mom, and a good citizen, I went to the park anyway.

The place was packed with kids, whining to ride a pony and eat pink cupcakes. The adults were sweaty, distracted and grumpy. But at least they did not have my job!

I got to feed little children this:

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I knew, in a vague way, that mass-produced popcorn wasn’t a great thing. But this was in another realm entirely: a 2:1 ratio of popcorn to coconut oil, tinged with some yellow substance. My job was to extrude the pure supersaturated ooze into the sizzling machine and joyfully dispense the popcorn product.

Apparently it’s not too different from what kids must be eating every day. According to a September 1 report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM), “Local actions to prevent childhood obesity,” 16.3 percent of children and adolescents in the US between the ages of two and 19 are obese.

People started flocking to my hot corner of the playground. Parents tactfully steered their children clear of the plastic-colored cake items and to what they might have thought, in their harried state, looked a little more like normal food. Admittedly, the popcorn people did a good job with the artificial butter, it had a certain chemotactic pull.

Holding back an urge to run home fast, I instead carefully placed an unopened plastic pod of kernels on the table. Surely, with the goop right in front of them, people would hesitate before grabbing a bag of popcorn.

No such luck. Cranky parents yanked at the cheerful striped bags, shoving quarters in my hand. Grubby 8 year olds came back for seconds. It was like some sort of food hell. When a pregnant woman came up my frozen smile cracked:

“You might not want to eat that,” I said, imagining what Yellow #6 Lake (E110) did to embryonic digits. She was unfazed by my meddling, “Oh! It’s not for me! It’s for my son!”

My only conclusion from the experience is that kids will eat whatever is in front of them and that harried parents will do little to stop it. Parents are a poor filter against the proliferation of junk food targeted to children (my favorite is this baby-bottle-shaped candy, marketed by teeny bopper band the Jonas Brothers, in a wildly popular YouTube video).

If the IOM had its way I’d be prosecuted. One of their recommendations: “Implement local ordinances to restrict mobile vending of calorie-dense, nutrient-poor foods near schools and public playgrounds.”

During my hours pouring grease and yellow stuff into a machine, and inserting it into the veins of my neighbors’ children, only one child paused. He looked at the package, turned it over gingerly, and walked away.

I had poisoned many, and saved one. I went home with my two-year old, face flecked with neon frosting, to contemplate my crime.

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