Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Sudbury Hospital Says Eat Blizzard Cupcakes To Support Cardiac Programs

From the Annals of Junk Food Fundraising I bring you this gem from Sudbury's Health Sciences North Foundation. Buy a half dozen Dairy Queen Blizzard cupcakes for $15 and the hospital's cardiac programs will receive $2.

Just in case you want to take the position that you'd be buying them anyhow, looking to Health Science North Foundation's Facebook page you'll see their encouragement to buy them
"for a good cause",
that you should
"#treatyoself",
and that,
"now's your chance to eat cupcakes without guilt".
Remember too, you can't buy just one, you need to buy a half dozen, and each and every one packs 240 calories along with 5 teaspoons of sugar.

That hospitals and their Foundations are comfortably shilling half a dozen cupcakes in return for $2 isn't so much reflective of incompetence but more that junk food fundraising is so normalized that no one bothers giving it a second thought.

And it's not as if this sort of fundraising can't be done right. Also for heart month, last week my inbox saw this initiative from Roots and Canada's Heart and Stroke Foundation (HSF). Buy a Roots toque for $26 and $10 will go back to the HSF. Buy a $10 bracelet and $5 goes back to the HSF.

[Thanks to RD Ashley Hurley for alerting me to the cupcake campaign]