{"id":99177,"date":"2009-12-23T16:59:09","date_gmt":"2009-12-23T21:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/calorielab.com\/news\/?p=6669"},"modified":"2009-12-23T16:59:09","modified_gmt":"2009-12-23T21:59:09","slug":"santa%e2%80%99s-too-fat-the-annual-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/99177","title":{"rendered":"Santa\u2019s too fat, the annual edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every year for the past few years some health expert has come out against Santa, saying that the big man is just too big to be a good role model<\/a> for our children. One year there was even a skinny Santa who refused to wear padding<\/a> because he didn’t want the kids on his lap to think that being as heavy as Santa is typically portrayed was a good thing.<\/p>\n

This year the criticism of the jolly elf comes from Nathan Grills of Monash University in Australia, who says that Santa should start walking<\/a> instead of relying on his sleigh to get around.<\/p>\n

The trouble with Santa<\/h3>\n

Grills noted in his report in the British Medical Journal that there’s “very high Santa awareness” among young children, but he is a poor role model because of his size, frequent reports of cookie binges and refusal to wear a helmet when he slides down chimneys. <\/p>\n

He said there’s a correlation between countries that have Santa as part of their tradition and overweight children, and Santa “is a late adopter of evidence-based behavior change and continues to sport a rotund, sedentary image.”<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

What’s more, Santa presents a public health nightmare as a potential vector for the spread of colds and flu among children who sit on his lap. (While the report is light-hearted, this is probably a real concern.)<\/p>\n

The paper suggests Santa should ditch the cookies and start sharing carrots with the reindeer.<\/p>\n

Skinny Santa no help<\/h3>\n

We’ve noted before that we don’t think a slimming Santa would help kids get the message about healthier eating, mostly because kids understand that he’s not real and therefore shouldn’t be a role model for any sort of behavior. <\/p>\n

As we noted a couple of months ago in reference to a British anti-obesity campaign featuring “The Simpsons,”<\/a> most kids know the difference between stories and reality and know not to take advice from folks who aren’t real. Which is a good thing, or we’d have a lot more kids trying to be superheroes out there.<\/p>\n

(By Sarah E. White for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)<\/p>\n

From the RSS feed of CalorieLab News<\/a> (REF3076322B7)<\/p>\n

Santa’s too fat, the annual edition<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every year for the past few years some health expert has come out against Santa, saying that the big man is just too big to be a good role model for our children. One year there was even a skinny Santa who refused to wear padding because he didn’t want the kids on his lap […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}