The "New" McDonald's Happy Meals: Apple Slices in the Trash?

This week Michelle Obama proudly stood next to WalMart's executive vice president Leslie Dach as the chain and several others vowed to open stores in USDA designated "food deserts."  Almost all of these stores were already planned when the First Lady inaugurated her campaign against childhood obesity, and the total of 250 to 300 stores WalMart pledged to open within five years weren't mainly in response to a lack of fresh vegetables, but the healthy American desire for profit.  Only now, they'll increase it a lot more, on the backs of taxpayers, who will be subsidizing these new markets to the tune of $35 million this year and--hold onto your hats--$330 million in 2012.  Food Deserts: Helping to increase the urgency of raising the debt ceiling.

Then today, the New York Times featured a story on McDonald's completely altruistic move to cut French fries in Happy Meals by half, substituting three to five apple slices.  The company said it was making the revision "in response to parental and consumer pressure," phasing out Apple Dippers (8-10 slices with caramel dipping sauce) but offering families who eschew fries two smaller apple packs instead.  Parental pressure was not strong enough, however, to inspire the company to cease tucking colorful toys in their Meal boxes, despite some cities' passage of laws restricting their inclusion.

Some consumers scoff at McDonald's efforts to improve the healthfulness of their meals.  They feel their liberty to choose what they want to buy somehow compromised, as if eating high-salt, high-fat, fried-potato fast food is symbolic of freedom from a "nanny state" determined to make decisions for them.  Others suspect McDonald's vow to shave 20% of Happy Meal calories and include less salt and more veggies is simply a clever way to prevent government imposition of even more sweeping, and likely expensive, nutritional requirements for kids' meals.

As it is, there's still plenty unhealthy about those smiling red box lunches youngsters eat under the Golden Arches.  Happy Meals come September will contain a burger or Chicken McNuggets, the smaller pack of fries, apple slices, toy and choice of beverage--which includes sugar-packed, vitamin-free soft drinks as well as 1% milk and lowfat chocolate milk.  By popular demand.

While it could be that McDonald's is modifying its Happy Meals now to prevent legislation forcing their improvement, and despite the change being so minor that New York University nutrition professor Marion Nestle calls it a "sham," the corporation's steps are in the right direction.  It says it will set up advisory boards and phone apps for consumers to get nutrition information, embark on a national "listening tour" for feedback, and involve a third party evaluator (for as-yet-unannounced goals). 

They act despite little evidence that Happy Meals fueled the increase in childhood obesity; after all, they've been offered for 30 years-- since long before childhood obesity rates jumped in the last decade to the present 17%.  Rates for children rose slowly until 2000, peaking in 2003, according to CDC statistics.  Rates of "overweight" in the population have remained constant over time since the 1960s, however--important to note since few health dangers are associated with being "overweight," and articles and alarmists tend to lump together figures for both overweight and obesity.

Also, the literature tends to talk as if Americans have little control over their "poor lifestyle choices," which are the faults of food manufacturers, restaurateurs, cheap school districts that slash P.E. and sports programs, and those eeeeevil inventors of the personal computer, who've parked those kids yearning to be free in front of Hulu, College Humor, Facebook and Stumbleupon. Children have been receiving health education by state mandates for generations; it's not ignorance of the square, pyramid or plate of an ideal diet that has enlarged our citizens against their wills.  And plump is not the desired physique: Hollywood sylphs are still the role models that sell plenty of People and Us Weekly magazines at check-out counters.

Whatever McDonald's motivations for moving toward better nutrition in its offerings, we consumers ought to applaud the result.  After all, these efforts are undertaken for the most noble of reasons--doing well by doing good.  The company seeks to profit, and the way to do it under our free enterprise system is by providing the public something they want enough to pay for.

Does the public want healthier fast food?  Probably not, and if that is born out, McDonald's, like any smart business, will respond.  "McDonald’s has offered apples as a requested choice in Happy Meals since 2004," the company writes in their press release. "And, while recent research found that on average, 88 percent of McDonald’s customers are aware of the option, apples are chosen in only 11 percent of Happy Meal purchases."

At least they're honest--even as they succumb to pressures to health-up their offerings, they can't ignore the primary determinant of their success--the preferences of their customers.  I'd speculate that the trash cans of McDonald's everywhere will contain a lot of apple slices inside those discarded red Happy Meal boxes.  Kids don't clamor for McDonald's to get sliced fruit.

But let the market prevail, and let the nation save the $330 million earmarked next year to make sure apple slices (and other fruits and veggies) can be bought within a mile of all urban residents. That's the definition of a "food desert''--no fresh-food store in walking distance.  Is that the reason so many people are obese, or is it because they choose to buy other types of food at the stores they do patronize?

The do-gooders in government are likely off-track in assuming they know the causes for the rise in obesity between 1980 and 2000, and further assuming that they can manipulate the public back to its formerly svelte proportions with store locations, restaurant menu options, and praise for athletics.  There's much more to understand about the reasons why Americans are fatter (though overall no less healthy), but in the meantime, if McDonald's cuts back the fries and slices up some apples, the kid consumers will decide if that's really a happy meal.

NY Gays Tie the Knot: What's Lost by Re-defining Marriage

When 84-year-old Connie Kopelov was wheel-chaired up to the Manhattan City Clerk Sunday for the first legal gay marriage in the state of New York (to Phyllis Siegel, 76), it was a touching scene of two elderly women publicly cementing their 23-year-long love.  Who could deny these ladies a recognized connection?

Why shouldn't Alvin Woods, 27, and Antonio Lopez, 25, enjoy the public revelation of their tattooed wedding rings at their legal linkage?  For these and the other happy couples newly wed in New York, to headlines celebrating the ability of same-sex partners to become "like everyone else," it's a day to proclaim love.

What could possibly be wrong with that?

It's true that people who believe that God gave us His commandments in the Bible--and that God is not to be dissed--won't accept two of the same gender as married.  History, too, would contra-indicate that two of the same sex qualify as spouses.  Dictionaries, at least until very recently, defined "marry" like mine does: "1. to join as husband and wife; unite in wedlock, 2. to join a man to a woman as her husband, or a a woman to a man as his wife... (Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language)"

But why not just change things?  History is no argument to continue an archaic institution; civilization is the story of improvement--for example, women now fulfll their potentials in far more than motherhood or as support for their men (or librarians, teachers, nurses and secretaries, the only four professions expected for women as recently as the mid-1960s).  Those who want to hold by the Bible's dictates don't have to participate in gay marriages, and dictionaries are easily re-written.

Certainly that's what's coming.

But in declaring the union of two men or women as exactly the same as the marriage of opposite genders, we lose an important distinction that in other areas we wish to preserve: male and female.  With gay marriage legally sanctioned, we are to believe that sex between two lesbians has the same consequence for society as sex between a man and woman. Male plus male? Male plus female? Female plus female?  It's all the same in marriage, under New York law.

Here's the hitch: In elevating gay relationships to be equivalent to straight marriages, we proclaim that it is no longer worth society's endorsement for a child to be raised by his or her biological parents. We no longer assert that our nation is best served when children live with their natural mothers and fathers, together.

Research on outcomes for children without that benefit suggest otherwise. Children raised by single parents, or in combined families, or by gay couples can certainly emerge healthy. However, in no gay family could a child be raised by both biological parents.  Kids learn different things from a mother and a father.  And have least complications when that mother and father are their own.

For that reason, the nation has a stake in promoting married biological families.  "Every major social pathology that can trouble an American child happens more often when his or her parents are not joined by marriage," writes Maggie Gallagher in The Meaning of Marriage (2006), "more poverty, dependency, child abuse, domestic violence, substance abuse, suicide, depression, mental illness, infant mortality, physical illness, education failure, high school dropouts, sexually transmitted diseases, and early unwed childbearing, and later on, divorce."

When we re-define marriage as the union of any two people who love each other, we change the focus from our nation's future to warm touchy-feelies of love, in the present.  We lose a long-term perspective, substituting a carpe diem, emotional priority.

As a nation, we need children to grow up with optimized chances to succeed, earn money, and create further happy families.  We like it when gay citizens can live with those they love, and feel respected.  But that's not the government's business or job--let religious officials, friends and family declare these unions permanent and appreciated.  Don't make these people go through expensive public courts to dissolve them when they fail, since their existence, while adding to personal satisfaction, contributes little to national goals that governments control.

Sari Kessler and Erika Karp were married 12 years ago in their synagogue by their rabbi. But that wasn't enough for them, despite having three daughters, ages 9, 6 and 3.  "People need to know we're just like everyone else," Sari Kessler said in explanation for why she is "absolutely elated" to gain legal married status. "Our families are just as valued and important and special as any other family in the world,'' affirmed her bride.

But actually, with all due respect, gay families may be important and special and valued--but not as much by a society with a need to encourage an ideal.  Yet officially, in the six states where gay marriage is legal, they are now just as ideal as marriages with the potential to provide children both a biological mother and father.

And that's what we've lost. We've lost the ability to say, "we have evidence that this is the preferred way to do it; this way, with both a mother and father raising their biological children, provides something our society values more because it offers the best chance to produce children that will turn out whole, well-adjusted and ready to emulate mothers and fathers they've had loving them and each other."

Men and women are not interchangeable.  All the brain research confirms that the genders have fundamental, irreducibile differences that complement each other.  The 1.4% of people who are homosexual deserve to spend their lives with whomever they please.  But we do ourselves and our children a disservice to suggest that the unions they form are the same as heterosexual marriages.

Distinctions serve a purpose, especially when based on replicated research--men and women are different, and the bond they form is different from the bond formed by two of the same gender.  But we're coming to a time when legally, we can know it and even demonstrate it but can't live it.  Now that gay marriages are becoming numerous enough to warrant widespread research and analysis, we'll soon have data, and from what studies I've seen so far, I suspect academics will confirm that yes, marriages of, say, lesbians are dfferent from, say, marriages of gay men. When we must deny reality, that will surely be a big loss.

Weather, Weather, Debt Ceiling, Shooting, Weather

The financial world may collapse imminently, according to my husband and the many nail-biters watching the stand-off between Pres. Obama and John Boehner on the debt-ceiling vs. spending cuts.  The stalemate in world views (raise the limit but with new taxes vs. spending cuts) could bring down the US credit rating, which in turn means we pay more interest immediately on what the US has already borrowed, never mind what extra credit we have to take.  There goes the stock market.  There goes stability, which brings more job cuts, lower housing prices, and Americans' nest eggs cracked and oozing.

Meanwhile, horrific events in Norway have blasted the tranquility of that happy, quiet country, killing at least 92 in an Oslo blast and a heinous shooting of youngsters on the isle of Utoya.  At first blamed on Muslim jihadists, (because they eagerly jumped in to grab the credit), the jaw-dropping display of human monstrosity by Anders Behring Breivik is too surreal to contemplate. Identified as an anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant extremist, the perpetrator--who cannot get the death penalty since Norway has none--curiously chose to deliver his message by decimating privileged Norsk teen summer campers rather than a Muslim target.

And then there's the weather. Weather, weather, more weather. Hot enough for you?

I live where the weather's also on the newspaper's front page--because it's so unseasonably chilly.  Summer gave Seattle a snarky tease on July 4th, then decided to ship out to the Midwest and east, leaving us under a gray, shivering blanket.  Drizzles, jackets.  I wrote to a friend in New York the other night wearing three layers of sweaters and my down coat--inside at my desk--with the space heater going full-blast.

You can't focus on the shocking realities of the political sphere, or the spectacularly awful events in Norway when physical needs intrude uncomfortably.  If your air conditioner died and you're adding ice cubes to your bath, or even if you're like me, tired of wearing thermal underwear, the situation now reveals the nature of our attentions, to our own needs first, often to the exclusion of anything else.  With the heat dome sealing our priorities, even a renewed deep recession, and reminders that bizarrely unpredictable events can snatch away life, crouch in the background.

Today, we experienced some warmth and a breath-taking view of Mt. Rainier, and our Sabbath guests cautiously lauded the day's beauty, unwilling to assume summer has actually arrived (the prediction is for a second nice day before more rain). But we're blessedly free of humidity, and keenly appreciative not to live in Atlantic City or Washington, DC . As one friend said, "I can always put on another sweater."

Coffee: for Seattle and the Soul

Coffee.  It's what Seattleites like me think of on a day like this: gray, drizzly, cool.  The rest of the country may be sweltering, but we're hunkered down (again) with our noses perched above steamy mugs, not just warming our nostrils but inhaling the aroma, assessing the brew's perfection. Or lack thereof.

Perfect coffee started here, in a small shop at the Pike Place Market that expanded to 17,000 outlets, 11,000 of them in the U.S. I'm talking, of course, about Starbucks, loved by most, eschewed by some, but undeniably the force that made taste complexities, mouth-feel, aroma, and presentation style of coffee drinks important to the masses.

My husband requires coffee to start his day. Black. When we had a morning ceremony with breakfast welcoming our baby boy into the Jewish faith nearly 19 years ago, my husband insisted on good coffee.  Starbucks was relatively new in Los Angeles, our home at the time, but we went out of our way to get it.  People kept telling me how delicious the coffee was, and it changed the ambiance of our whole event.  Just as it changes the outlook for every day.

An article recently in the New York Times describes the mania the popularization of excellent coffee has unleashed. The piece is about the rush to capitalize competitive coffee roasters who seek to top off what is arguably the most sophisticated array of coffee offerings ever.  For example, Stumptown Coffee Roasters of coffee-competitor Portland, Oregon, mentioned in the article, currently features Guatemala Finca Semillero-Tekisic, traced to a five-acre family farm (The Zelaya family's at Finca Semillero) and a special bean, the Tekisic, which is "a dwarf mutation of the Bourbon varietal," blah blah blah.  The result? "Honeysuckle and butter interweave through flavors of nectarine, cocoa and graham cracker."

Caffe Vita, a local Seattle roaster is similarly descriptive. For example, its Sumatra bean from the Gayo River produces "A rich, aromatic cup with well balanced flavors of dark berry, vanilla, baking spice, smoke and earthiness. Accented with notes of tobacco and hops throughout the warm, comforting finish."  Another Seattle homie, Zoka Coffee, offers "Sulawesi Totaja Jaya...from the Rantebua Disctrict in the Nothern Toraja province of Sulawesi," with flavors of  "Summer Squash, Honeydew, Chamomile, and Portobello."

To appreciate the contents of one's mug in Seattle means to know the name of the family who owns its land of origin, the history of its cultivation and roasting, and details of its first taste through lingering post-swallow notes.

Coffee writer Oliver Strand asks, "Does this sound too elitist for the average American?" rhetorically answering, "Remember when the idea that millions of people would spend $5 for a latte seemed absurd?"

We live in a suburban Seattle town of 22,000, and we have 5 Starbucks outlets, a Tully's and an independent drive-through kiosk. It is normal in our overcast part of the world to nurse a cuppa joe at (nearly) all times. Certainly while shopping. Often a coffee cup is seen perched near exercise equipment, next to the Nalgene water bottle.

Studies released this month show that drinking at least four cups of coffee per day brings health benefits, significantly lowering one's chances for Alzheimer's, certain cancers and perhaps diabetes.  It's definitely an antioxidant, though decaf doesn't seem to confer the same benefits as regular caffeinated  brew.

The big drawback for me was taken as the name of a coffee kiosk chain here in the northwest: "Jitters."  It's an unpleasant buzz that interferes with my normal peace.  Also, for me, coffee is a food.  Unlike my purist hubby, I doctor my mug with copious sugar and half-and-half.  The "enorme" Mexican Mocha I got instead of breakfast at a Nordstrom's espresso bar was listed on the menu board at 790 calories (photo, right).

Did the calories posted in red deter me? Not at all.  I want what I want.  And I'm not the only coffee drinker in our region who's determined to have her drink exactly the way she enjoys it most.  The string of adjectives many customers feed baristas was even the subject of a local insurance company ad profiling weird Northwest types, this one the "super long coffee orderer" (hear it here).

Coffee in a morose climate not only elevates the spirits with nervous energy, but roasting, brewing and serving it becomes a culture that gathers people together.  Classes are held in Starbucks stores.  Independent coffee houses boast unique blends, weekend music, latte-foam designs, and a strong connection to their neighborhoods.  Of course, there's free wi-fi.

And here, to grab a coffee is to come closely face-to-face with some very uniquely adorned folk.  Multiple facial piercings, lavish tattoos and creative garb under their aprons are de rigeur.  Along with unflagging cheerfulness and a very serious dedication to the nuances of coffea aribica.  Even vaccuum-pumped coffee at the supermarket or corner bagel joint has to have a card proclaiming the liquid's fancy name and special qualities.

I host a class weekly in my home, and of course strive to please with excellent coffee.  Brag: some of the members say they come not only for the enlightenment but the flavor of my java.  I watch the participants compose their cups: one puts her half-and-half and flavoring in the cup first, then adds decaf, no stirring.  Others want caffeinated, with milk, or soy, or what-have-you, in their particularly favored mugs.  Coffee is a comfort not only because it warms from within, not only because it delights several senses, not only because it provides a welcome kick in our cloud-darkened town, but because it allows us to have one small part of our day that goes exactly as we desire.

Now, I wouldn't mind if we got a little summer sunshine.  I'll just put some ice cubes in my cup and an even bigger smile on my face.

Jumping through Hoops: Why go to College?

In the new flick "Larry Crowne," which I viewed a couple nights ago, the lead character (Tom Hanks) gets downsized from his do-everything clerk job at a big box store--despite multiple "employee of the month" honors and pride in his work--simply because he never went to college.  Later in the film, we see his colleague dismissed because he only completed three years post-high school education.

Besides the development of a sparkless connection with a speech teacher (Julia Roberts) when he enrolls at a community college, the take-away from "Larry Crowne" is that being enthusiastic and competent counts far less for advancement than some arguably meaningless hours in a classroom.

Coincidentally, my fave radio host just spent an hour interviewing John Stossel about whether or not college is worthwhile.  Stossel, on the show to promote a TV special on the topic, emphatically championed "not."

But "worthwhile" was only defined as college's import or impact on the careers of its graduates.  Are most jobs that require a college degree really performed better because their holders possess a sheepskin?  Probably not, if the employee has enough smarts to otherwise pick up the skill set.  Are graduate degrees worth the thousands of dollars of debt they usually incur?  That's getting to be a tossup, with many occupations now overloaded with applicants.  Get a juris doctor from a good though not top school, and you're no longer guaranteed a position in a law firm when you finish.

Vocational schools do an admirable job preparing students for real-world wage-earning.  I hired a young woman to baby sit my children partially because she had a certificate from a "nanny school."  Years ago, when earning my counseling credentials in Los Angeles (yes, at a university--more on that later), I toured and admired a regional vocational center, where high school students took courses on real-life skills, like how to plate meals at restaurants, how to repair a Ford carburetor, how to manage a hotel, and how to organize an office.  The graduates of these programs were immediately employable--if they'd been subsidized by Obama's stimulus, they'd be called "shovel-ready," though these folk won't need to wield a shovel to earn a paycheck.

There are plenty of very clever entrepreneurs who didn't need college classes to put their creativity and industriousness to lucrative work.  Everyone points to Harvard dropout Bill Gates as a premier example.  But lots of dot-com and smartphone app-designers learn how to write code and instantly launch businesses that answer a need or desire, with no need for pre-requisities.  If you're smart, you'll succeed with--or without--a college degree.

If you're not at the IQ or achievement apex, though, college has some benefits--for you and your future employer.  Possessing a four-year degree shows tenacity, the ability to play by the rules successfully to conclusion of task.  Dropping out suggests failure, no way around it; extenuating circumstances must be explained.  Nowadays, those who don't even attempt college are assumed unintelligent or incapable or disadvantaged.  None of those terms describe highly-desired employees.  College completion is a gate-keeper, a screening device simplifying the employee selection process.  Earning a professional degree is similarly the red rope allowing the plucky few through to highest-paid echelons.

So it's true that education is the key to success.  The more educated, the more income and less unemployment.  Here are the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Earning a degree is an achievement. Admittedly it's a very narrow type of achievement, showing short-term mastery of material, compliance with requirements, and the ability to show up at lectures or share notes with someone who has.  With "distance learning" the new trend, now even face-time on campus is optional.

Higher education is also an industry.  Confession: I have a master's degree in...believe it or not, Higher Education. It's an actual major in the Graduate School of Education at UCLA, and I earned an MA in it.  In fact, I was a happy customer for the industry of college for eleven years.  Because what one is prepared for when one completes high school is...to go to school.  For me, and many others, college is an extension of high school where you get to decide when to come to class.

Throughout my college years, I was self-supporting through a variety of lower-paying jobs, and had no help from parents.  And I finally did have to decide what I wanted to do, and it did require the ultimate degree I earned.  But being in college gave me lots of time to figure that out, as my professors urged me to go on to higher levels, to stick around sitting in the front row taking copious notes and memorizing the words that came from their mouths.

College has plenty of perquisites, including fun. Not just in the getting drunk kind of way (wasn't my thing) but in the pleasure of learning stuff and then spewing it back, with the reward of credits, and ultimately, a degree.  And respect.  I didn't really understand why simply continuing to be a subordinate, an older child, earned such kudos, but I also didn't care. The process was excellent.  The campus was beautiful, with exotic botanics punctuating every season, lunchtimes on broad expanses of lawn eating unreasonably cheap meals, a built-in friendship network and exciting events publicized in a free daily newspaper.

Tip to youth: When you don't really want to grow up, collect graduate degrees.

The infrastructure supports it.  Professors want to keep their jobs and, as I implied before, enjoy the ego boost from attentive and interested students. To support their administration and auxiliary services, as well as the faculty, colleges want to attract and matriculate good students. The counselors want clientele; the cafeteria staff wants to keep making delicious soups with free crackers and selling them for two dollars a bowl.  The point is that higher education is an enormous industry that exists to perpetuate itself.  It's invested in its own prestige, and a gullible society buys in.
 
Because of its historical importance, and the fact that decision makers went there and passed through its gate, and mainly because of higher education's own survival mechanisms, politicians like our president seek to expand the market for colleges and funnel more tax funds their way.  Speaking at the University of Texas, Austin, last August, the President said, "I'm absolutely committed to making sure that here in America, nobody is denied a college education, nobody is denied a chance to pursue their dreams, nobody is denied a chance to make the most of their lives just because they can’t afford it. We are a better country than that, and we need to act like we’re a better country than that."

So, in his view, a "better" country channels everyone into college, in stark denial of the realities of the marketplace.  The new workforce can now design websites from home. It can telecommute and use flat-screen TVs for group meetings.  It can outsource manual manufacturing to China from computers by the pool.  Did Bill Gates need college?

Does America?  If, as Pres. Obama envisions, ours becomes a country where everyone is college educated, who will serve your Starbucks?  Who will deliver the replacement windows that are energy-efficient?  Who will staff the restaurant where you have your raw food salad?  (Answer: the barista, delivery truck driver and waiter with BAs in sociology, psychology and history.)  Truth is, not everyone is academically inclined, and our country would be in trouble if everyone were.

I have three children, two with bachelor's degrees, but my third child is poised to start college this fall.  Would I advise him not to--rather to create another iPhone app? He's computer capable but not code-savvy, not mathematical, not even really academically enthused.  But he knows without my saying it that he will attend and graduate a 4-year college, because in present cultured society it's the minimum acceptable, the first rung on the success ladder.

A college degree is what a high school diploma was perhaps forty years ago.  Adolescence has expanded, and my son knows, having grown up in this overly-diploma'd family, what's honored and expected.  But were he to start his own company, and were it to grow and succeed, and, were he to then come to me and say he wanted to drop out of college to pursue his business...I'm not sure what I'd say.  Probably something like, "Keep working on your enterprise, but you ought to finish what you start."

That's the hoop of college, the jump that requires a smooth execution, not a stumble.  Completion.  I think we ought to drop the stigma for the working person who didn't attend college, but at the same time recognize that we're not returning to the old days when a high school diploma was sufficient.  Success is sufficient. Nobody cares that Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard, in fact to the contrary, there's something humanizing about it. I think the big box store unfairly axed the Larry Crowne character, because he showed not only competence but superiority in his work; he was successful in his position.

But when you're 21 and heading out to the world, it's still nice to have enjoyed the perks of college at a time of life when you're unencumbered.  And a diploma is still a symbol to the world that you finish what you start.

There are other issues at play--the left-leaning political bias among college professors that gets transmitted to impressionable students eager to please, the social milieu that promotes drinking and fraternizing, the blossoming of "disciplines" (e.g. Women's studies, "Queer" studies, Environmental Studies) that used to be subsumed under standard departments like history and biology, and plenty more--that complicate college's assessment.  Also, not all colleges are equal.  The benefits of attending an elite college are tangible while those for a non-selective institution may be minimal, especially when the financial toll is figured in.

Perhaps the best solution would be to eliminate federal tax subsidies for students, and for states to restructure.  Some of the least financially viable schools would close; those that attract a clientele would remain.  The remainder would become even more selective, allowing the most academic applicants access, and the rest a reason to explore vocational training or entrepreneurial outlets.  In the end, no matter how urgently the administration presses for universal college attendance, the reality of individual differences will prevail.  And because of that, the broader goal should be to honor honest, dedicated effort--hard work, self-sufficiency--rather than a certain number of hours in a lecture hall or a passing score on a final exam.

Every Thug A Star: Vancouver Riot Fueled by YouTube Wanna-Bes

The devastation last week when the Vancouver, BC hockey team, the Canucks, caused a riot by losing the Stanley Cup Final to the Boston Bruins, was shocking--and not just because sports fans can turn so mean.

Though it was appalling: A downtown destroyed, a hundred people arrested, nine policemen injured, 15 cars burned...because of a game?

To my feminine brain, the idea that team supporters could get so worked up that they go on a burning, looting, stampeding, violent rampage en masse--abandoning all morals!--is incomprehensible.  But when you start watching the YouTube videos, you're transported to the thick of it, and the outrageous mob mentality fomenting evil becomes real.

What was different about this monstrous reaction to something inherently minor in the scheme of life?  Canucks fans probably don't think their team loss was minor--after all, Vancouver has no other major sports team, and viewing the Finals' Game 7 was organized to be a city experience, with bleachers and seven huge screens set up on Georgia Street downtown. But sports, while a major business and industry, is merely peripheral to life's necessities, such as food, shelter, a source of income, family connections, and health.

The thing that made this urban outburst unique was that something new, beyond masculine idiocy and selfish thievery exacerbated the destructive mentality:  ubiquitous cell phones.

When you look at the YouTube videos posted, you realize that the mere fact of their availability means somebody was abetting the havoc and mayhem by standing there recording it.  Observers posting their videos undoubtedly felt they witnessed something significant--but failed to join with the overwhelmed police or lone citizens trying to quell the throngs to stop it.  In fact, their actions added to the difficulties.

The second thing you notice when watching is that nearly everyone else on screen not actively bashing or kicking or crashing something is also taking a video or a photo. No longer are news events "covered" by reporters sent belatedly to the scene. Now, when something unusual happens, individuals become device-holders; recording one's surroundings becomes integral to participants' experiences.

What that does, again visible on the posted videos, is encourage criminals' bravado.  You can see the thugs standing on overturned, burning cars, making muscles posing for a friend. You see them running in front of burning stores for the snapshot, then running back into the mob.  You see guys grabbing wooden planks, shoving them through glass into window displays, then raising their fists triumphantly, proclaiming their macho act, posing for the semi-circle of cell phone-holding spectators, heard cheering their subject.

And the hoodlums have no fear that their performances will bring reprisal, even as they show off for the phone-wielding hordes.  Instead of encouraging restraint, since they can be identified and more easily prosecuted, the cell phones seem to make every thug a star, every evening's anarchist a hero.

Rather a famous bad guy on this "reality TV" than a decent person with what used to be considered "normal" values.  Could it be that all the sluts-as-celebs and jerks-as-leading men on cable shows fascinate the public so much their despicable behavior is now seen as compellingly benign? What is it about a dozen cell phone cameras trained on him that makes a guy completely negate his upbringing?

It's true that religion in BC is in retreat, and latest census data shows "no religion" as the most popular option, selected by 35% of the population.  But don't even atheists have a concept of being a "good person"?  Wouldn't that include refraining from bashing in store windows with posts--and then when a singular man protests "What is this? Are you guys insane?" attacking him, kicking him and bashing him until he's a crumpled heap in the gutter?

I gasped when I watched that, a burly guy who'd answered the hooligans, beaten down by six or seven creeps, until he lay motionless in the street.

I was also agog to read the coverage of the riot in the press.  All written in the passive voice--so that nobody's actually responsible. By using that grammatical structure, the perpetrators aren't criminals or thugs or hoodlums or looters but rather, neutral forces:  "Windows were broken..." "A large two-by-four was jammed..." "A Honda was overturned..."  "It started with a couple dozen plastic bottles being thrown...then fireworks were ignited...a gray SUV was set on fire..."  All this from a single Seattle Times report of the mayhem.  What usually might say "A young man in a Canucks jersey stomped on a mailbox..." reads instead "A mailbox was stomped." The subjects causing the verbs are missing.  Can't imply these are bad guys breaking the law.

To be sure, many Vancouver residents are ashamed of their neighbors. Volunteers assembled to clean up the mess.  But the chutzpah of rioters to brag about their criminal acts on their Facebook pages, and post shots of themselves in the midst of burning mayhem shows the devolved character of too many people in chaotic circumstances.

My husband thinks the Canucks' loss was just the excuse for pent up anger, perhaps a "spring fever" delayed by bad weather, like what used to appear as annual college campus protests.  That suggests that the riots would have happened whether the Vancouver team won or lost.  Certainly the setting was right--crowds compressed into a tight downtown area, loosened by alcohol, anxious over their athletes' success.  But these were not downtrodden societal underdogs rebelling against broader injustices--rather, they were a mix of ordinary Canadian sports fans, more of whom should have stood up to blatant criminality occurring before their eyes.

Now, however, eyes are electronic, removing their owners from responsibility and direct connection to what they view.  At this point, the Vancouver riots are another form of entertainment; something else to raise our eyebrows for a moment, before we upload other scraps of life into the ether.

Veggies in "Healthy Food Deserts" Won't Cure Obesity

Hand-wringers in universities and government care-for-you offices have rearranged urban geography to stop the obes-ifying of America's children--by deeming certain neighborhoods "healthy food deserts." That's deserts, like the Sahara, not desserts, like what kids are actually eating.

They say that communities lacking large supermarkets, but boasting a plethora of convenience and corner stores, prevent residents from consuming the veggies and fruits that would keep them svelte.  Time and cash-strapped neighbors feed their families the fried chicken, corn dogs, chips and soda these mini-marts sell--but the experts insist that if the same stores featured cucumbers and apples front-and-center instead, parents would opt for the healthy choice.  And they, as well as their children, would be thinner.

This speculative chain of thinking led the "do something" activists--progressively-bent feds, local governments, university researchers and foundations-- to attack the problem the only way they know how: by throwing money at it.  Pres. Obama's stimulus package--our tax dollars at work, through the Centers for Disease Control bureaucracy-- has awarded thirty communities $230 million in grants to prevent childhood obesity.  Local United Way offices have funded "healthy corner store initiatives," like $50,000 to three stores in Franklinville, Ohio, and an unspecified amount in Seattle to upgrade the healthy-food stock and displays in 22 convenience stores in the Delridge neighborhood.  In addition, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan, funded nine sites nationally, including $500,000 to Seattle's King County. In Pennsylvania, $30 million of state grants over three years was triple-matched by $90 million more in grants and loans from The Food Trust, used for 78 grocery outlets in poor neighborhoods.

But the front-page lead article in this week's Sunday Seattle Times paper, combined with its Sunday magazine cover story (funded as a grant project by a California endowment through the University of Southern California) exposes how ineffectual throwing money at fat-causing behaviors really is (even as the feature lamely offers sidebars advising parents on curbing kids' expansion).

The article says that here in my state of Washington, the feds and foundations tossed mega-bucks ($15.5 million from stimulus funds alone) at the "food desert" problem without results. It describes how food-access advocates finally convinced the Delridge "Super 24" corner store to revamp its stock, adding refrigerated cases with an assortment of fruits and veggies. A KOMO TV news story features United Way rep Lauren McGowan pointing to the new cases effusing, "you've got lettuce and limes and lemons and cucumbers, and stuff that families can go home and make a salad, make a fresh meal for their family!"

The news video laments that small convenience stores don't take food stamps, suggesting illogically that this forces homeless customers like Jose Lopez to buy junk food instead: "Oh, I like to have these fruits..." Mr. Lopez, holding a freshly-purchased large coffee says, pointing to a basket of apples, oranges and bananas by the cash register.  He's cut off mid sentence by reporter Elisa Jaffe who finishes, "but they don't take your food stamps."  Lopez shrugs. "They don't."

It's wonderful that kindly community members want their poorer brethren to eat well. But the brethren themselves don't choose to. Bhim Singh, the Delridge store's owner, was lauded in December, 2009 when his new refrigeration units and "healthy choice!" signs touting nutritious items went up. This week's newspaper article, however, provides an update:  "We would spend $200 on vegetables and make only $10," he admits.  He's back to stocking only the longer-shelf life produce he carried before the hoopla, like potatoes and onions.  His clientele, it's clear, keeps him afloat with their fried-food-and soda purchases.

"Officials say they have learned valuable lessons," says the Seattle Times story. "Maybe they didn't spend enough time selling the idea.  In any case, they've budgeted another $1.8 million in hopes of enlisting at least 25 stores."  Don't bore them with facts.

The research considered most definitive on the question of access to healthy food was conducted by the US Department of Agriculture, published in June, 2009.  In it, a national questionnaire (which, when examined, is a pretty poor measure of food access) found that 81 percent of respondents "always had the kinds of food they want to eat."  Sixteen percent had enough, but not "always the kind of food they want to eat." Of that 16%, five percent said they didn't "always have the kinds of food they want to eat" because "it was too hard to get to the store, or the kinds of foods they wanted were not available."  Elderly or infirm people, and those who didn't have the money for food--even if it were easily available--made up more than half of those people--leaving less than 3% of respondents overall who don't "always" have what they want because "the kinds of foods they want are not available."

This calls for another government grant.

Now, nowhere in the study does it ask exactly what are the kinds of foods that respondents wanted.  Might be hallal food, or kosher food.  Might be gluten-free, or sugar-free foods. Might be gourmet cheeses or craft beers.  And of course the questionnaire asked if their desired foods were "always" available. If your market runs out of your brand of cereal or the kind of milk you like, then you aren't "always" able to get what you want.

There's an assumption that people in low-income areas crave fresh fruits and vegetables, but that a nefarious capitalistic force thwarts their innate healthy-food proclivities.

There are indeed market forces at work, and what they do is push shop-keepers to provide their local clientele what that clientele wants--or risk going under.  It's an insult to suggest that poor people don't know the difference between healthy and junk food.  Anyone with a television hears the news stories about Michele Obama's "Let's Move!" program, and watches reports like the video of the Delridge Super 24's new offerings. In 2007 alone, the USDA spent $697 million in classroom education, and every child in school over the last 20 years has, usually by government mandate, learned about good nutrition--but it does no good.  Ask the convenience-store patron buying grease-fried chicken wings about his purchase, and he knows darn well it's less beneficial than the apples he ignored near the cash register.

In fact, that's the exact scenario on the KOMO TV video about the Delridge store.  It opens as heavy-set Joseph Munnerlyn is selecting his purchases. Caught in the act buying junk, he explains, "I'm hungry, I'm trying to get something fast and quick, so I..." A voice-over then interjects that he's "a connoisseur of corner-store meals." Voice up. "Oh, I love it all," Mr. Munnerlyn intones with affection, waving his hand by the fried offerings in a heat-lamp-warmed glass case. "The wings, I mean come on! The breasts, the burritos, the Jo-jos...!" (Jo-jos are breaded and fried potato wedges.)



Bhim Singh owns "Super 24" store

 He gives a sly smile. "I know it's not healthy, but at the same time..." He lifts up an apple from the basket of fruit in front of him at the register. "...It's hard for me to pick up an apple when I've only got two bucks and I've got to feed myself for the rest of the day."  The unchallenged assumption there is that he gets more satisfying food for his money buying Jo-jos than a Jonathan.  It's not his fault.

When it looked at healthy food access by social variables, that Department of Agriculture national study about Americans' access to food found some astonishing conclusions--about supermarkets, typically stocked with a wide assortment of produce-- that the reform-corner-stores crowd might want to consider, such as:

"Overall, median distance to the nearest supermarket is 0.85 miles. Median distance for low-income individuals is about 0.1 of a mile less than for those with higher income, and a greater share of low-income individuals (61.8 percent) have high or medium access to supermarkets than those with higher income (56.1 percent).

"Overall, ethnic and racial minorities have better access to supermarkets than Whites. Median distance to the nearest supermarket for non-White individuals is 0.63 miles, compared with 0.96 miles on average for Whites.

"Similarly, a smaller percentage of non-Whites (26.6 percent) have low access to supermarkets than do Whites (48.2 percent)."

Given failure to influence purchases when corner stores feature fresh fruits and vegetables, and the fact that poor people and minorities have better access nationally to supermarkets than the financially better off and whites, why are anti-obesity experts so gung-ho on watering so-called "healthy food deserts" with tax money and foundation donations?

Because they're desperately searching for do-able solutions to a problem whose cause has still to be defined, and which has foiled all efforts to solve.

It's really not as if gluttony, sloth, inactivity and even childhood obesity are novel foes. According to CDC statistics, the steep increase in childhood obesity began in 1980 and after reaching an alarming peak a few years ago, has leveled off.  Throughout those years, and particularly since 1990, attention at all levels has focused on the issue.  It's just that these problems have proven resistant to even the most expensive and valiant efforts to overcome them.

For decades, millions of dollars have poured into nutritional education.  At the same time that carbonated soft drink consumption declines (every year for the past six!) organic food options burgeon, gaining by 20% every year in the last decade.  Health food stores, once a niche market, have gone mainstream; a case in point--the Whole Foods supermarket chain, begun in 1980 in Austin, now boasts more than 300 outlets.

Still, the mantra throughout professional obesity-world literature is that the problem requires still more investment of public funds. A 2007 book by the Food and Nutrition Board, Progress in Preventing Childhood Obesity: How Do We Measure Up? notes that "Government, industry, communities, schools, and families are responding to the childhood obesity epidemic by implementing a variety of policies, programs, and other interventions," but decides "the current level of investment by the public and private sectors still does not match the extent of the problem."

Of course, its main finding is that we just don't know if all the spending and talking and teaching and fruit-and-veggie-touting is making a difference, phrasing this conclusion in admirably academic terms: "Current data and evidence are inadequate for a comprehensive assessment of the progress that has been made in preventing childhood obesity across the United States."  Ahem.

Obesity in children--and adults--is a far more complex phenomenon than well-meaning agencies and pundits are willing to admit.  And because its causes are not yet understood, creating innumerable boards and bureaucracies to eradicate it (and make food deserts bloom) have failed. To be sure, some money must go toward innovative medical research to tease out the true sources of obesity--and whether the future generation is as doomed by it as alarmists insist.

I suspect that genetics and environmental influences (A virus, like the Adenovirus 36? An "obeso-genic" substance or situation that, like carcinogens, throws cells out of whack?) will prove contributors to the problem, and that unfair stereotypes that suggest all fat people are ignorant, have no self-control and need patronizing interventions will be squashed like the unsold tomatoes at Super 24 in Delridge, Washington.