Cookie Monster Madness

Apparently the Cookie Monster, the big furry muppet from Sesame Street, has now realized that cookies are only a "sometimes" food as opposed to nutritional foods that are "anytime" foods. I'm sorry Mr. Monster, but you can't do this to me. I won't let you tarnish my memories of Sesame Street simply because we've got millions of fat kids out there. I used to be one of those fat kids, but I didn't become fat because I ate a shit-ton of cookies after I saw the Cookie Monster do it on my favorite childhood show. No, got fat because I was lazy and didn't eat healthy in general. What really got me the most was this quote:

The furry one also plans to try different kinds of cookies (read: healthier cookies) rather than his just staple, chocolate chip.

But will he still scarf his food? Yes, plus the occasional object, Truglio said.

But isn't that unhealthy? Her reply: He's still Cookie Monster.

Ok, so let me get this straight. Cookie Monster used to eat only cookies and eat them by the truckload. Now he only eats cookies "sometimes". On top of that, he is going to try out new cookies healthier. Ok, fine, I suppose I can go along with that. Teaching kids not to eat tons of cookies all of the time is a good thing, even though I don't think Sesame Street's Cookie Monster has been one of the causes of mass cookie consumption but that's neither here nor there. What blows my mind, however, is the fact that he's just fine to gorge himself on other food, even to the point of eating an occasional object.

Let's look at the logic of this. Sesame Street's creators think that by seeing Cookie Monster eat tons of cookies that they will do the same. In fact, I'm sure most kids don't have the ability to do that if their parents are doing even a halfway decent job of raising their kids. Any child who has unrestrained access to cookies and candy is a victim of terrible parenting. Even though most children should not be able to stuff themselves on cookies because they saw Cookie Monster do the same thing, the creators thought that it was a bad image to purvey. Fair enough.

The image that Cookie Monster will now exude is one that is probably more dangerous, though. Children eat meals, that's obvious and undisputable. By seeing Cookie Monster overeat on his "anytime" foods, kids will supposedly get the idea that they should also ingest as much as they can when presented with a meal instead of pacing themselves or limiting their portions. Now I don't care how healthy of food you feed your child, if he/she is eating every last thing that's put in front of them, they're going to get just as fat as if they were occasionally eating a large batch of cookies.

What's even more disturbing is that Cookie Monster will occasionlly ingest objects. Yeah, let's tell kids that it's ok to eat random crap. Don't want to clean up that fork after you're done eating? Just scarf it down with the last bit of green beans. Napkin touching your food? Why not use it to pick up what it's touching and just eat the whole damn concoction!

Cookie Monster, I am pleading with you, don't change! Stay the big, blue, cookie scarfing, gravelly voiced, monster I've always known and loved.