Hide and Trick the Treaters

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."-- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 3

This is true. I could not make this stuff up. Seriously.

The United States Department of Agriculture is giving $2 million to food behavior scientists to use marketing tricks to encourage kids to pick fruits and veggies over cookies and french fries.

Some of the ideas include hiding chocolate milk behind plain milk, putting the salad bar near checkout, placing fruit in pretty baskets and accepting only cash as payment for desserts.

“I’m sorry, cash only for the croissant.”

They could have given me $2 and I would have told them the same thing. This is why my mom used to hide the Christmas cookies from us. But really, the key word to what the USDA is encouraging is “trick” and I find that quite scary. Will they start piping subliminal messages during school announcements when they are telling the kids the featured “good food” on the day’s menu? Chocolate milk is bad…eat your salad…desert will make you fat.

The dirty trick of a treat we used to get at Halloween was the apples and popcorn balls. I could get apples anytime stolen from the neighborhood Catholic retreat house orchards (will probably burn in Hell for those youthful offenses) and stale popcorn balls were no treat. And then the food safety risks of those foods destined most of them to the trash bin. Wrapped candy was more desired than produce.

At least we got exercise while running around collecting candy on Halloween. After all, you had 2 hours to hit every house in the town, sometimes twice if you came up with a creative second costume that disguised your identity enough to fool your neighbors.

So remember what food was like in the past. Chocolate milk tasted like chocolate. We could eat Wonder Bread around peanut butter and jelly (made with real sugar). Cap’n Crunch cereal could get you high in the morning before school. And we ran like banshees till the street lights came on.

So keep control of the past by remembering the good things we had so we can guide the future.