Savoy Truffle

I'm still chuckling about a new report from the Institute of Medicine on junk food ads and children's eating habits. The report seems to say that because junk food makers use SpongeBob and Dora the Explorer, children are eating poor-quality foods and getting fat. The morning news shows were full of wringing hands and hair pulling over this topic.

As Lenin once asked, What is to be done?

At my news budget meeting when we editors discussed this story for A1, I told me coworkers (none of whom have children): Yes, my kindergartner and third-grader often buy SpongeBob candy instead of apples or bananas when they take the minivan to go shopping at Meijers. I don't think they got it.

The children aren't buying this junk. The parents are. We parents are supposed to know what's good for our kids. So, the problem is that logical, intelligent, job-holding, sometimes-voting, bill-paying, shower-taking, hat-and-glove-wearing adults are ignoring nutrition and opting to silence the whining children.

I've fallen into this trap, believe me. My children know exactly when and how to push the buttons that may make me act, but I'm the adult. I know how to say no. That's my responsibility. Not SpongeBob's or Cosmo's and Wanda's from "Fairly Odd Parents." I. Me. Mine.

So, therein lies the rub. We adults have a hard time controlling ourselves with all our toys -- the new cars, the gadgets, the computers, the bloated credt cards -- so how can we expect our children to control themselves? There's the lesson and I didn't need a panel of scientists with a federal grant to come up with it (But I'd like a federal grant!).

So, I ask myself when I stand before the pop machine: Do I buy the Pepsi because Mean Joe Green once chugged a bottle on TV? Do I buy a Coke because I'd like to teach the word to sing?

My answer: I'll have a cup of joe because John Elway was part of the coffee generation.

Thought: You know that what you eat, you are. What is sweet now turns so sour.