Why I Wrote DEAR OPL- Part 3

Posted in Business, Education, Health, Humor, Nutrition, Parenting, School by Shelley Sackier

*Just a heads up to anyone new joining in–this is not my typical blog post. This is part 3 of 3 for a speech I’m preparing and posting here to get valuable feedback from my community. If you’re interested in joining in (and I so hope you are), and you’ve not had a chance to read part 1 or part 2, you might want to take a minute and get up to speed. I look forward to hearing what all of you have to say. It’s been wonderfully worthy and I thank every one of you for participating!

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What’s in it?

My sleuthing skills progressed mainly because food labels showed up. I, therefore, became obsessed in the pursuit of truth.

I suspected that every chemical I read about on the back of a label and couldn’t identify was likely a form of my mother’s mystery ingredients I had to watch out for. The only things I could trust were foods in their whole and original form. And this is something our culture has removed us from in a very real and dangerous way.

Despite the higher intake of calories our western diets have had us adopt, people are hungry. We’re now eating more food than ever before yet we are starving for nutrients. And our bodies are yelling this fact out to us. We’re struggling with these massive and overwhelming cravings for sugar. It’s hugely addictive and, in fact, scientists have discovered rats will work eight times harder to get sugar than they will to get cocaine.

Our average modern diet is not providing the nourishment our bodies require for good health, and because of it, our bodies are suffering more insulin spikes than a tumultuous day on Wall Street.

Basically, we have an abundance of calories, but a shortfall of nutrients.

I find this to be a shocking and saddening state of affairs, but if you really want to hear something that will make the hair on your arms stand at attention, here’s another one of those eye-popping statistics I alluded to earlier:

The junk food industry spends about 2 billion dollars each year targeting children. One scary study found that elementary school kids in the US see an average of 254 ads from McDonalds each year. That’s just ONE company in the sea of junk food advertisers.

We are bombarded with media that dictates what we want, what we’re hungry for, what gadgets we’re desperate for, what will make us feel better about ourselves or our lives, and what will make us feel included. Kids are targeted even more so. It’s overwhelming and impossible for them to filter these messages or tune them out, and certainly challenging for them to interpret and identify how they are being subtly and not so subtly molded.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now reports that around 12.5 million children aged 2-19 are obese. And this is just in the United States. If you need a mental graphic that’s like nearly the entire population of Ecuador. Or how about this one—two Norways, a Botswana and a Liechtenstein. Worldwide we’re talking about 43 million kids.

Yeah, it’s a lot. Want to elevate that arm fur another notch? The World Health Organization estimates that in ten years time, over 70 million children globally will be obese. And the most alarming surprise? This number is only including children from ages 0 to 5.

Diet-related diseases are the biggest killers of human life. Far bigger than homicides, pneumonia, kidney disease, accidents. The statistics are jaw-dropping.

It makes you want to curl up in a ball and cry, doesn’t it?

Or we can do something about it.

Which brings us to part three: WHAT WE NEED TO DO

No amount of exercise is going to help you run away from a bad diet.

It’s really hard to recognize a problem despite the fact that it’s growing right beneath our noses, mostly because it’s a fairly unremarkable one. It’s not remarkable because it’s become common.

We all know what a dog looks like—we’ve seen gobs of them over our lifetimes. Nothing too terribly novel about them from where we stand right now. But if you woke up one morning and looked outside and spotted a flying dog, you’d probably pause and really study the anomaly … until it wasn’t an anomaly anymore. If pretty soon flying dogs were just as common as grass, then no one would really see them any longer—which is what’s happening to our children. Obesity is becoming familiar, universal and ordinary.

We can’t let this happen.

It would be incredibly easy to point our extra pointy fingers at the heart of the problem and scream until we’re blue in the face at the food industry, but if any of you have ever been in a situation where you’ve pointed a finger at someone and assigned blame, I think you’ll also recall that they didn’t offer either an apology or any available energy to help solve the problem.

More often than not they likely gave you back a pointy finger as well—but facing in a different direction.

A better response might be to ask for partnership in problem-solving. Our food industries can make food education a top priority of their business. Help us shop, teach us how to cook, educate us about nutrition. A win for the public and a win for their public relations. Besides, it does not show savvy business sense to kill off your clientele.

The restaurant and fast food industry, which have gotten us hooked on the drugs of sugar, fat and salt by targeting consumers with their persuasive advertisements, could help wean us off the extremely unhealthful amounts or face selective taxation from the government to cover the skyrocketing cost of healthcare: a price tag we do not have the funds to pay for—no matter how far down into our purses we dig.

We need restrictions on advertising to children who are most vulnerable to these campaigns. We need to protect those who are easy targets, those who are easily preyed upon, and those who will suffer the most.

Also, we need clearer food labeling—something effortless and easy so consumers don’t have to count grams or teaspoons. Something like the proposed traffic light label. Red for high amounts of free sugars, yellow for mid-level amounts, and green for Go for it, buddy.

We need to give our children LIFE SKILLS. We can get in the kitchen with them, teach them the basics of nutrition, educate them about what they’re eating and illuminate how it will affect the quality and longevity of their lives. It’s going to be a mess, but maybe architects can start making kitchens with a large drain in the middle of the floor which allow you to just hose down the walls after a family cooking session.

We can take the necessary steps to overhaul our school lunch programs. And currently there are a handful of people pioneering over this treacherous landscape who are battling to illustrate that pizza should not be considered a vegetable because it has tomato sauce in it. Jamie Oliver, Alice Waters, Michelle Obama and Congressman Tim Ryan from Ohio are a few familiar names who have been leading the campaigns of international food revolutions. These folks are shaking up government nutritional guidelines, instituting school garden programs, and proposing ways to lower the cost of healthy foods so that everyone can have access to them. But there are many, many more who are working in the trenches and mostly without a spotlight. We need to support their endeavors.

The three points I’ve highlighted—what we eat, what we know, and what we need to do—are part of a task we need to knuckle down and get busy with—a cause we need to champion. Creating and implementing solutions to our epidemic is a global obligation we owe ourselves, our children and our children’s children.

We need a new killer slogan for our planet. Not a slogan that will kill us.

I propose something like this:

Planet Earth: come for the food, stay for the fun, die when you’re old.

~Shelley

Don’t forget to check out what we’re cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all talked about down in the pub. Plus, you can see more of Robin Gott‘s humor–all from the only pen carved from a human funny bone.

4Aug2013

Armchair traveling

Posted in blogging, Books, Humor, writing by Shelley Sackier

This week we interrupt our weekly blogcast with a little Q & A. Why? Because I was recently invited to participate in an international event called THE NEXT BIG THING blog tour by a very talented and keen-eyed manuscript critique-er, Abby Murphy.

I learned two important things from Abby. #1—She’s finishing work on a new YA historical fiction tale (Drawing from Life) that I can’t wait to get my hands on. #2—I will not have to move from my swivel chair in order to participate in this whirlwind tour. No packing, no passports and no postponed flights. My job? Just fill in the blanks. Walk with me.

1) What is the working title of your next book?

I’ve had several. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was my first. Anne of Green Gables was another. Obviously, I found out there was a serious leak in my writers’ group. After ferreting out the blabbermouth, I’ve remained reticent to unveil my latest, but for the sake of the interview … DEAR OPL.

I’m trusting you folks will keep schtum.

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

The Sydney Zoo in Australia. Specifically, the polar bear tank. It was here—after a couple of weeks into a family vacation—that I finally had enough mind-boggling questions about life, the universe and everything in between from my elementary-aged son to fill a Biblically-sized notebook. The questions were thought-provoking, befuddling, and on the whole unanswerable. I kept track of them though, as it was his insatiable curiosity that fleshed out a secondary character in a story that was beginning to take shape. (It also revealed just how little I knew and how much I depended upon Google.)

The main focus of the story came as a result of my addiction to all things Jamie Oliver. Watching him traverse America, desperately attempting to help folks make the important connection between school lunches and impending doom, had me itching to participate in a way unique to my skills. I could secretly hound children about making good food choices by disguising it beneath humor. It’s how I get most of my important parental messages across. With snark. But organic cane sugar coated snark.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

As defined by the industry, it would be classified as Middle Grade humor. As defined by the (not yet attained) blurbs that will eventually fill the backside of the dust jacket, it will be “Groundbreaking,” or “Revolutionary,” or “Impossible to define, you just have to read it.” Yep, I’m shootin’ big.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

That’s a toughie, as I’m guessing that some actors I’d find appropriate may not have been birthed yet, and by the time this gets optioned for film, a few others I’d put in my top five may have shuffled off this mortal coil. Suffice it to say, Johnny Depp should make an appearance. Maybe as a pirate, maybe as a Native American. It remains to be seen. And I’m guessing if it requires a few screenplay rewrites to make his character necessary, so be it.

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

In a post-America sci-fi world called Panem, a common teenage girl finds herself fighting for her life in the cruel and deadly Hunger Games held yearly and enforced by the oppressive—

No. Wait. That’s the Hunger Games. Yet another previous working title for my book.

The synopsis for DEAR OPL is:

After two years of hiding beneath a sugar-laden junk food diet meant to soothe the bitter loss of her dad, thirteen-year-old Opl Oppenheimer is told she’s gained so much weight she’s pre-diabetic and now must start weighing more than she bargained for.

A laugh a minute. I promise.

6) Who is publishing your book?

Ah, the six million dollar question. I’m going to go with, a publishing house with impeccable taste and the desire to spread goodwill onto all of mankind. If you think you fall into that category, there is still time to apply for consideration. But please, if querying me when submitting your request, I ask that you do your homework and personalize your letter. There is a plethora of information about me out there on the web, and there is nothing worse than seeing a publisher write a “request to purchase your manuscript” email and seeing that I was part of a mass mailing. Be specific. Flatter me.

And if you can’t do that, call and flatter my new agent, the clever, talented, not to mention incredibly good looking Jennefier Unter from the Unter Agency.

7) How long did it take you to create the illustrations?

As this question doesn’t apply to me specifically, with my book, I think it might be nice to ask my partner in blog crime about his weekly labors. Rob?

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

This is a troublesome question to answer as I’ve found it challenging to locate books that encourage kids to handle their pie share of the growing epidemic of obesity using methods other than quick fixes and magic formulas. Diet is a word that confuses a lot of teens—and I think it’s necessary for us to make a global effort at redefining it. This is no Maggie Goes on a Diet, or Eddie Shapes Up kind of a tale. The story addresses so much more than body image. It speaks of unearthing and responding to more of the core issues of what it is we truly hunger for.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Again, I’d have to go with Johnny Depp. I’m absolutely positive I will always find a way to weave a scene into the manuscript where either Captain Jack Sparrow or Tonto makes an appearance. The rest of the plot is simply supporting material. With a very important message.

English: Johnny Depp during the Paris premiere of Public Enemies at the cinema UGC Normandie. Français : Johnny Depp lors de la première parisienne du film Public Enemies au cinéma UGC Normandie. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

Within the story, Opl discovers a series of ten minute videos that teach her incredibly easy and straightforward recipes by the celebrity chef she once abhorred. Mastering them is an adventure she undertakes and finds success with. I want the reader to have access to the same videos, which are real. They’re a series created by Jamie Oliver called Jamie’s Ministry of Food. I think having an element of interaction with the book engages the reader and gives them a tangible participation, allowing them to share Opl’s experiences in the kitchen.

As this tour is supposed to bring awareness to authors & illustrators and the projects they’re currently working on, my only other contractual obligation is to make you aware of two others who likely set the bar higher than I do.

The first is Katherine Erskine, a lawyer turned author who writes about tough topics with respect and humor. Her newest book is GLORIOUS AND FREE. When Shannon is dragged on a road trip to Canada with her annoying brother and even more annoying gravely ill grandfather, she begins to see that life cannot be planned and controlled the way she’d always thought, but it can still be a wild and wonderful ride.

Katherine’s latest book is Seeing Red.

Also, make sure you check out Deborah Prum, whose career started at age seven when she wrote stories about children whose parents met catastrophic ends (plane crash, plague, etc.) after which the sturdy little orphans create blissful utopias on deserted islands. Someone should have called a child psychiatrist, but they didn’t, so Deb continued writing. Most recently, she’s released a young adult novel, FATTY IN THE BACK SEAT, about a boy who can’t seem to keep himself away from the long arm of the law.

Make sure to check out both Katherine and Deborah’s posts next week!

~Shelley

Don’t forget to check out what we’re cookin’ in the Scullery (here) and what we all talked about down in the pub (here). And to see more of Robin Gott’s humor–all from the only pen carved from a human funny bone–click here.