MOTUS A.D.: GenVeg: WTF?

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

GenVeg: WTF?

Four Words: Propaganda, dandy; tyranny, quicker.

Have you heard about the GenVeg campaign? No, it’s not a new youth-vote drive. It’s a collaboration between Birdseye and Lady M to promote their frozen vegetables and her No Child’s Fat Behind program.

The Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA), which works with the private sector and its honorary chair First Lady Michelle Obama to end the childhood obesity crisis, today announced that Birds Eye, America's leading vegetable company, is launching a three-year effort to encourage kids to look at vegetables in a whole new way.

Carrots are people too

It’s probably just me, butt I’m not sure “GenVeg” is exactly what I’d call a campaign aimed at making kids “healthier.”

Seriously: there are so many ways for kids to “veg out” these days that encouraging more of it doesn’t seem to be such a good idea. Look at all the ways there are for kids to waste time, just hanging out:

And now there’s an official YouTube Hangout and Google+ where you and your friends can simultaneously – in different locations - spend hours watching the baby panda-cam:

or just “hanging out” with the Preezy of the United Steezy:

Heck, you can even attend a Cinco de Mayo party

without ever having to leave your couch:

So like I said, it’s probably just me butt I don’t think GenVeg is the most inspired name for the effort intended to support Lady M’s Let’s Move! campaign.

Anyway, I guess the operative term in this latest Government-Private Sector partnership is “America’s leading vegetable company” – and looking to stay that way. So I guess you could say that Birdseye knows which side of the plate it’s bread is buttered on.

Birds Eye will invest a minimum of $6 million over three years and is launching a campaign that celebrates and engages GenVeg —a generation of kids who want to eat and enjoy their vegetables. This marketing and advertising effort will encourage children to eat more vegetables by going straight to the source, kids, through a partnership with Nickelodeon's hit live-action series iCarly in 2012 and one of America's most well-known young stars who will serve as campaign ambassador, reaching kids where they are, on their level and in their own voice. [ed: their iPhones and iPods]

Birdseye credits the idea for their new campaign entirely to Lady M’s inspiration: it’s called propaganda! Big Guy’s reelection campaign is using it too. And it’s perfect for getting people to change their behavior. In other words, eat more frozen vegetables! Or in the case of Big Guy’s campaign, vote for four more years of eating your vegetables.

“Kids empowering other kids to eat more vegetables.”

With the proper toolkit of carrots and sticks, you too can get people to do things that are good for them, butt they may not necessarily want to do on their own. Like buy an electric car made by Big Guy’s General Motors in order to save the world.

"Birds Eye understands that talking to kids differently about eating their vegetables is an important part of helping to change their eating habits.

And so, apparently, does the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, who wants the Wonce and Only to stop chowing down on unhealthy food in public. So that’s that: more veggies...

and no more dogs. At least not in public.

(I’ll stop when they stop)

So, we march on: with the Partnership for a Healthier America that was founded in 2010 in conjunction with Lady M to eliminate childhood obesity in one generation – and/or eliminate childhood hunger by 2016. I always get confused.

I suppose we’re due for an update soon on how our Central Planning Committee is doing with the plan to open non-profitable food stores in decimated urban centers (aka: food deserts). So far I think it’s coming along about as well as could be expected. Apparently even with taxpayer funded government initiatives, “underserved” areas aren’t really clamoring for more fresh veggies. They want more McDonalds. Just as well. It appears that food deserts aren’t necessarily the cause of obesity in America after all.

Butt one of Lady M’s other partners, Wal-Mart, has figured out that the mandate to eliminate food deserts is a sweet way to get around the objections from city councils across urban America who have battled against opening those nasty non-union stores in their cities!

Wal-Mart is trying to rekindle growth in the U.S. and has made opening urban stores a central piece of its strategy. The world’s largest retailer has encountered resistance from unions and activists who say Wal-Mart’s move into U.S. cities won’t create jobs that pay well and offer benefits.

As part of its effort to persuade Chicago officials to let it open stores in the third-largest U.S. city, Wal-Mart in June, 2010, vowed to open “several dozen stores” to “help eradicate food deserts and stimulate local economic development.”

Plus, if you play extra nice, you get Obamacare waivers too!

So all I can say is “kudos Birdseye!” It looks like you too have learned how to play Obama-nopoly! Go past Go without stopping, get out of jail free – all while helping Lady M create the ~~nanny state~~ mindset required to abolish childhood obesity/hunger in one generation. You, Birdseye, are yet another in a long line of real American Heros!