Thursday, January 27, 2011

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with the Heart and Stroke Foundation?


I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but I can't help it.

Yesterday morning I was flipping through my various RSS feeds and I came across the latest post on the Heart and Stroke Foundation's Health Check blog. It written by Devon Peart, a registered dietitian who also has a Masters in Community Nutrition. In the post Devon applauds Domino's for making a "healthy" pizza to offer kids as part of their school pizza days. Moreover she quite literally challenges Canadian pizza producers to make a Health Check approved pizza to serve to kids in schools for what Devon calls,

"a welcome change from routine for many school children"
And she ends the post with, "Let's hope they take up the challenge!"

So I guess you should forget about the fact that childhood obesity rates are still rising and that kids as young as 6 are now developing type 2 diabetes. Forget too that every school food reform policy ever written feels school pizza days are anathema to healthy school food. You'd better also forget about the fact that our societal shift from actually cooking to the normalization of fast and restaurant food is stoking the rise in obesity and chronic disease and that food dollars spent outside the home have risen from the low 30s to nearing 60% since the 1970s. Not to mention that you should forget about the fact that the Heart and Stroke Foundation, as a for-health organization, should be bending over backwards to encourage home cooking, discourage processed foods, and all in all help to protect our children from the purveyors of fast food.

Why should you forget all of those things?

Because if you don't forget them how else are you to explain that here we have a registered dietitian with a Masters in Community Nutrition, supporting school pizza days as, "welcome changes from routine", explicitly inviting Canadian pizza makers to apply for a Heart and Stroke Foundation Health Check which the pizza folk would then use to help to dupe school children into thinking that store bought pizza is a healthy, good for them, Heart and Stroke Foundation approved, at least weekly meal.

Mind boggling, horrifying, and heartbreaking.