Little Debbie mini muffins for lazy parents

But I notice you don't mention getting kids ready for the day, so that's different, that might be more comparable to the Lean Cuisine commercials instead. But if you're too busy to give your kids real food, you're too busy to have kids, period, you can't just give them junk every day because it's quick and easy, that's where we get 70 pound toddlers from and there's an epidemic of those in this country.

I have heard of cases where obesity has killed kids as young as say, 11, but I didn't know it was that bad. But that is true, THAT is the cost of only feeding kids what will make them happy because you're too busy, stressed out, inconvenienced, etc., to do otherwise, you want something quick and easy to shut them up, but you do it too much and it's going to shut them up permanently.

And THAT'S what you really never hear about, as long as they're not fat, nobody cares how crappy their diet is, it's so much easier to pretend it's not going to kill you if it's not making you weigh 400 pounds, but crap is still crap is still crap, and I'm not opposed to crap, I like crap, but I also grew up eating real food, vegetables every night at dinner and fruit every day for snacks. And the older I get, the more I learn how nutrition works, and to me it's very interesting, the soluble fiber in oatmeal, bran, beans, fruits and vegetables attaches to cholesterol to remove it from the body, vitamin A in carrots, sweet potatoes, leaf lettuce, spinach, pumpkin, milk, hell even dried cherries and mangoes, helps the immune system to fight against viruses like measles, I've made an effort to get more of it and it also seems to be helping fight off viruses like cold sores. Sweet potatoes, cabbage, apples, berries, etc., all help fight against kidney disease. Cherries, tart berries, watermelon etc., act as a natural ibuprofen for muscle pain and reduce inflammation, how many people eat them for a backache instead of popping pills? Most fruits and vegetables have antioxidants that help fight against cancer, again, cherries, berries, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, bell peppers, oranges, sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, etc. So with all this information out there, why would people continue to kill themselves and their children by feeding them crap all day?

Have to agree, and my mother would certainly agree about gluten, you ever look at that gluten free food that gets its own aisle in the store? No wheat, etc., so you have spaghetti that's made from 100% corn, what the hell? How the hell is that supposed to be healthy? And there's the issue is corn healthy? And is it particularly UN-healthy when you eat it all the time, as you would if you live off this gluten-free crap?

But it's funny, last night I was thinking about an old Betty Boop cartoon I watched as a kid, she's singing about getting pep from food, 'vitamins from A to Z, to give you speed and energy, milk and eggs will give you dancing legs, fruits and greens, peas and beans' etc., back then they didn't have the paleo diet, they didn't have the vegan diet, they didn't have low fat diet, they didn't have Lean Cuisine, they just ate what there was, and what there was most of all WAS fruits and vegetables and milk and eggs, even when there was no meat that's what they ate, and it was just a part of daily life, and all these same foods are still available now in every grocery store. But now we demonize them, 'eggs, CHOLESTEROL, BAD!', 'nobody should be drinking milk', 'all sugar is bad, even in fruit', etc. So is it any wonder people get confused about nutrition? Especially people with lower education to begin with, they're the least likely to make anything that has a long and complicated recipe, and probably far more likely to just order fast food where you don't even need the name of the item you're getting, just a number and point to the picture, and unfortunately there are far more of those people in the country than we're comfortable with acknowledging. But that could very well be the key culprit to most of fast food's thriving business, and it's also a key culprit in overall poor health, much of which IS caused by poor diet. I was reading an article about adult illiteracy, and it said the worst diabetic patients are the ones who don't take their medicine, and they don't take it because they don't understand the directions for the pills. That's a very scary reality, and then these people have kids who likely don't turn out any better, and the whole ugly cycle continues.

And there are very subtle hints all around the grocery store that they cater to people who likely aren't well educated and don't pay attention. Perfect example, something I saw that %&@)%&@# me off, 'Orange Breakfast DRINK', a carton that LOOKS like orange juice, it has a picture of an orange on it, but there is NO juice in it whatsoever, it's just orange flavored sugar water, and people buy it because it's $1.25 a carton instead of $6 for real orange juice. My God, when I was a kid we couldn't afford bottled juice so we bought frozen concentrate, that still advertised 100% juice once you poured in 3 cans of water. But if it says right on the carton no juice whatsoever, why would you buy that?

Or, another one for me, likewise, bottles of fruit juice that are only 27% juice...and to be fair, I didn't always pay attention to that. It wasn't until I saw an interview with Lisa Lopes from TLC talking about getting people to pay attention to the labels, and get 100% juice and not just water and sugar, then I started paying attention, anything that's 10%, 27%, 50% lite, I don't buy it. When people need cranberry juice for their kidneys, I would NOT trust it to 27% juice cocktails, but how many people will never even realize it?

It's a good point, why is it the MORE diet products and diets we have, the more fat people there are? And then you go back to when there was no diet soda, no low fat this, no low salt that, and nobody was fat. Now people will say it's the hormones in the food, it's the artificial sweeteners, it's this, it's that, etc., all of which might have a part in it, but the fact remains when everything was 'whole', and not lite or organic, very few people were fat.

And I saw on a talk show a while back, a woman showing the only size of soda available when McDonald's first opened, vs. the kiddie size soda now, and it's about 200 calories more worth of soda than the original ever was. And when I saw that, I really started thinking about the small, medium and large at Dairy Queen for their shakes or sundaes, why would anybody need anything larger than a small? And in fact, since they now list calories for everything, knowing you're only supposed to have 2000 calories a day, why would anybody knowingly order a shake that's 1300 calories?

It's a good question, and that is why my car has a drink holder, and anything that could spill gets put on the passenger side holder.

And yeah, you'd have to be pretty stupid to expect anybody to believe you didn't know there's sugar in jelly beans. Just wait until the people who live off diet soda find out it still has sugar and calories despite the label saying 0, there'll be lawsuits out the yin-yang then.

This is true. And it's like I've said, back then if you were a couch potato, you had to actually GO home to do it, you couldn't just veg out to a screen wherever. Or back in the 80s, yeah there were the home video game systems, but more commonly were the big consoles at the arcade, you had to GO to the arcade to use them and you couldn't stay on them all day, only as long as the quarters lasted, then you had to leave. Not the same thing whatsoever. And in fact, because so many kids DO spend all their time just sitting on their butts looking at screens all day instead of playing, a new report found that most teenagers are as inactive as retired people are, which is greatly decreasing their odds of living to see that age. And still people don't have any problem with the way things are going, they call it 'progress'.