Me versus a bag of chips

Hey, fun. This poster is part of the American Cancer Society's Eat Right campaign. If you go here, you can make a customized poster for yourself (I chose my comic book porn name/alter-ego, Muffin Force, as drawn by my sister) versus whatever diet/nutritional challenger you choose. For example, mine is bag o'chips. Some advice to avoid frustration - don't use the back button on your browser while creating your poster or your work will be flushed. Also, when you finish your poster, select the print option, then "print to file" and save it as a jpeg. I didn't the first time and because the link generated when I chose the e-mail option didn't work, the poster was flushed (again).

The poster game is a gimmick intended to get you into the contentful part of the site (the "interactive tools" part). Unfortunately, the eat right campaign is partly funded by Weight Watchers - although they are not the worst of the diet peddlers out there. As a point of comparison, Jenny Craig is horrible (I feel their ads irresponsibly prey on and promote unhealthy body image ideals as well as anti-female sentiment in general).

Back to the American Cancer Society.
The "tools" are a little hokey, full of flash movies that are clearly intended for people who, well, people who aren't really like me apparently. This is probably a sign the tools will have the intended broad appeal in the larger target audience though - people like my ex mother in law and my friend Tory from Michigan.

The messages seem quite reasonable and hokey or not, I'm glad the ACS put this together. The overall point is to eat healthy, not simply to lose weight by any means possible ("Weight Watchers asks Have you tried crack?"). On the healthy eating pages, while there is a constant subtext and assumption that people accessing this information are overweight, it is not something they hit you over the head with like some sites I've seen do.

The simple fact is you can be over or underweight and still be malnourished to the point where you are doing serious damage to your health short or long term. Contrary to the commercial ideals we receive, skinny doesn't always equal healthy. Unfortunately, our bodies will work on total shit for fuel (e.g. a diet consisting primarily of items from the hostess, frito-lay, and sarah-lee food groups) allowing you to starve your body of needed nutrients while filling your belly (and perhaps your arteries with fat....MMMmmmmm). Human bodies are really very good at going on as if the shit we are consuming is what we need. But eventually, if you keep running on crap, you're gonna pay for it.

So me and Bag O'Chips are gonna go a few rounds. Since today is a grocery store day for me, I think I'll pick up some nuts and popcorn (the kind w/o the goop). Bag O'Chips, you're going DOWN!!!!