Cloudy With a Likelihood of Obesity

So we've established that obesity is a super-sized health problem for Americans. According to a study published in July, the obesity rates have increased in 23 states and declined in none. What kind of danger does this pose for both adults and children? And what can we to do about it?

There's been talk of taxing sugared sodas, and Mary wrote of a North Carolina plan to impose higher health insurance rates on obese state workers. I'm sure Domenica and Linda would do a big happy dance if those stealthy, insidious high fructose corn syrup additives went away. Michael Pollan, author of "In Defense of Food," is soliciting New York Times readers for their wisdom about eating. Donna David served up my favorite: "Avoid Snack Foods With the 'Oh' Sound in their Names: Doritos, Fritos, Cheetos, Tostitos, Hostess Ho Hos, Etc." That could work.

Or . . . we could take our kids to see the box office hit , "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs." Admittedly a sedentary, rainy-day activity, this film affected my kids as "Scared Straight" did me. The film features Flint Lockwood, a misfit inventor/mad scientist who lives with his father in a depressed fishing town. The townspeople subsist on diets of tasteless sardines, so Flint becomes a hero when he invents a machine that produces "food weather," manna in the form of hamburgers, pizza, gummy bears, and an entire Las Vegas buffet. When it starts raining Paul Bunyan-sized steaks, Flint's wise father warns him against the growing portion sizes. Encouraged by the gluttonous mayor, Flint continues to create super-sized chazerai.

The film also has an apocalyptic scene where the cop, a modern-day Noah voiced by Mr. T., helps the townspeople construct arcs out of oversized pieces of toast. The mayor, unable to control what former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler would call "hypereating," eats his raft.

After the movie ended, my 6-year-old son peppered me with questions about the narrative, and it wasn't too hard to infuse my answers with subtle commentary about the dangers of excess and the wisdom of portion control. (There was another great message about a woman meteorologist who dumbed down and prettied up to earn her spot on the news, but that's fodder for another conversation!)

Thanks to the visual pyrotechnics created by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, I now have rich and resonating cues to reinforce messages about wise eating. But how do we protect our children against media and movies that promote unhealthy messages?

Here's an idea for the hopper: The National Institutes of Health developed "Media-Smart Youth: Eat, Think, and Be Active," an interactive after-school education program for 11- to 13-year-olds to help young people understand the connections between media and their health. The program teaches them to build essential skills that encourage critical thinking and healthy lifestyle choices by asking such questions as: What is the message? Who is the sponsor? What information is missing? What techniques are used to attract your attention?

As we left the theater, my kids continued to laugh at the silliness and grossness of the flying foodstuffs, projectile and other, while I tossed the remnants of a large vat of popcorn. Buying too many servings of popcorn was way more cost-efficient than purchasing a healthy portion. What a super-questionable idea.