Sesame Street Teaches Tots about SUGAR SHOCK! By Jennifer Moore

I'm greatly indebted to Jennifer Moore's compelling entry. I sure needed the blog help during my hectic week of getting ready for my first book signing and other book promotional stuff.

Here's Jennifer's blog entry:

As mother to an impressionable 4-year-old girl, I’m pretty vigilant about what she sees on TV. The rule in our house is no more than an hour of screen time a day, and no commercial TV shows, so she won’t be bombarded with ads for sugary cereals, fast food, and other tempting junk. That means that “Sesame Street” is the only TV show my little girl watches, as she was one morning this week while I was combing her hair to get her off to preschool.

This episode included a scene involving a little boy and a little girl who were going to have a snack before going outside to play.  The boy chose a banana, while the girl decided to chow down on a cupcake. 

So what happened? The little boy had a great time and had lots of energy for running around.

The cupcake-eating girl, by contrast, started to lose steam after a while, because, a voice-over explained, she didn’t have a good, healthy, energy-boosting snack before heading outside.

I knew there was a reason I like “Sesame Street”! First, Cookie Monster reins in his cookie-gobbling habit, as Chelsea J. Carter of the Associated Press reported back in April 2005, and Connie wrote about on her blog here.

Now, the show show tells tiny tots why it’s good to eat fruit and stay away from unhealthy sweets.  Now, if we could just wean the show from its McDonald’s sponsorship….

Note from Connie: Again, thanks to Jennifer for today's contribution.