It's all the cartoons fault!

I saw on the news last night that Kids cereal choices are affected by cartoons on the box.  This came after I saw that Ronald McDonald is being attributed to kids unhealthy food choices and should be "retired".  Really? Seriously?

You know I may be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure that it's part of my job description as a parent to make sure my kids know the difference between junk food and healthy food.  When my husband and I were kids (way back in the dinosaur age) there were no video game consoles, cell phones, computers and sometimes no air conditioning (GASP!).  We got our entertainment by getting up on the weekends at the crack of dawn, getting dressed and grabbing our bikes only to come home to pee or when it was too dark to see six feet in front of us.  Even when Atari came out with such fascinating games like Pong, we still played outside on nice days.  My Dad came out into the backyard to play wiffle ball, or have a catch, and even built a baseball back stop in my back yard.  The entire neighborhood gathered at my house for day long wiffle ball games.  I tell my husband (who laughs at me in pity when I remind him of this) that when I was growing up we weren't allowed to watch tv during the day, if it rained we read a book, we watched tv at night, all together as a family and at no other time during the day.

Is your kid obese or overweight?  You know what advice I'd give?  Get up off YOUR OWN ass and cook them a healthy dinner 5 out of 7 nights.  Get up off YOUR OWN ass and take them outside for a walk, or have a catch with the baseball/softball, DO SOMETHING other than sit in front of your own computer and drag them away from theirs.  Stop blaming cartoon characters (unbelieveably they were the same cartoons when I was a kid) or Ronald McDonald and the Hamburgler for YOUR kids food choices.  Really people, stop blaming everyone else for your lack of good parenting.