Food Monsters is a new game to teach your families how to make healthy food choices.

By Alex Trivas

Consider this list of pleas —
But, Dad, it’s the third grade winter performance.
It’s the third grade spring performance.
It’s Aunt Michelle’s anniversary dinner.
It’s the town parade and who can miss Freddie and his “famous” funnel cake.
It’s the first day of school ice cream sundae day.
It’s the last day of school ice cream sundae day.
It’s the 100th day of school. Blue -dyed cookies shaped like ones and zeroes. Why not?
It’s pancake day at school two days before Thanksgiving. (That makes sense. And by the way pancakes and muffins are just euphemisms for cake)

It’s a birthday party, Mom.
It’s your birthday, Dad.
It’s my birthday, Dad.
It’s a 6 hour flight ,and it’s not like there’s a Whole Foods on the plane, Mom.
It’s Lucy’s bat mitzvah party and there’s a room ringed in glow -in- the- dark candies.
It’s our first soccer game.
It’s our fifth soccer game.
It’s our last soccer game, and Mrs. Watson always brings her “famous” red velvet cupcakes (what happened to orange slices?).
It’s our first win.
It’s our first loss, but we played super hard.
Mom, it’s just a hot summer day.
***

And that’s just the tip. We can’t forget the holidays and their obligatory treats:
Thanksgiving, Halloween, Valentine’s Day (Halloween’s ½ birthday) , Christmas, St. Patrick’s Day and its unnaturally bright green shamrock cookies, Hanukkah, and Easter with its scavenger hunts to track down fluorescent jelly beans jammed in plastic eggs.
Children and, of course, many adults argue that these special days are junk food worthy and demand our complicity in providing them sweets. And provide we do — whether we do so out of habit, tradition, guilt, pressure, and even love. I’ve always found it disturbing that injecting globs of sugar and artificial dyes into our children’s bodies is so often associated with caring and adoration.

All of the aforementioned events and “special” occasions add up. All the “just this once” add up to pretty much ‘just this week” (it’s vacation) and to “just this month” (it’s the holidays)… and to “just this year” – our new reality as it’s who we are becoming as a nation, a nation who gets a significant portion of its calories from sugar, flour, oils, and other fake foods.

And do we really even know what these fake foods may do to us?
I could no longer just complain – I was saturated with the endless amount of school events, parties, and celebrations that called for sugary poison and artificial dyes. I created The Food Monsters site to teach kids and families and anybody else interested in the often dangerous, secretive, and confusing ingredients that plague so much of our foods. And to learn more about the Food Monsters, play our Memory Match Game — then go out and buy foods that do NOT contain The Food Monsters.

Let’s stop the fake food anarchy and find the Food Monsters before they find you.
http://www.thefoodmonsters.com