So I was watching Scrubs last night, enjoying myself and Elliot's engagement-neuroticism, when something inevitable happened: a commercial break. I part watched, part spaced as a car commercial (blah), Comcast commercial (you're practically a monopoly now, you don't need to advertise so much!), a Target commercial (okay, I like Target, that one's permissible) and a Burger King commercial were all aired. It was that last one that irked me.
In the commercial, a mom is trying to get her daughter to eat an apple. The girl, whiny, cries, "No!" in such a pleasant way. The mom offers to slice it for her so she won't have to strain herself ("No!"), bites out of it to show her how good it is ("No!"), and even begs a little ("NO!"). Then the Burger King comes out of nowhere to save the day. How? He offers her what appear to be French Fries, but alas, they are really apples just sliced to look as such. The girl, of course thinking that they really are French Fries, takes the oddly sliced apples without complaint.
Um. Seriously?
What is this? Do we really live in a society in which youth hate eating anything they can't buy at a drive-thru? Do we really have to fool kids into eating healthy by making fruits look like synthetic, processed junk?
I don't know about the rest of my generation, but I happen to think apples are delicious. Granny Smith, Rome, McIntosh, Gala, Red Delicious--I'll eat it. I can get kids being hesitant about asparagus, maybe, or squash, as they're a bit more exotic (but equally as good, in my opinion). I also get that some people just really don't like certain foods (pickles, cucumbers, whatever).
But apples?
Is it schools, who sometimes offer foods just as unhealthy as those sold in fast food restaurants? Is it parents, who are just too lazy to encourage their kids to try new or healthy foods? Is it the media, who can be blamed unfairly for just about every social ill out there? Or is it just that each generation gets progressively more junk-obsessed, be it food, entertainment, or choice wise?
I don't know, maybe I'm reading too much into this. But I guess I wonder what our youth will be afraid of next. Reading? Learning? Asking? Living?
That french fry thing is amazing. I mean, like the girl HAD to have her nutritious "apples" disguised as fries so she could obey her parents and take care of herself by eating healthy food. Problems like, not wanting to eat an apple after your parent begs you, I wonder what'll happen to the poor girl when she grows up and there's not a Burger King Hero and/or a french fry disguise slipped on life's normal problems.