Urban Thought Collective

So I got to thinking the other day while I was at the grocery standing in line. What if when we bought our food, instead of only the price of the item being scanned coming up on the register and being printed on the receipt, we were also given the fat calories, and a letter grade for that item in terms of healthy eating?

Follow me.

Picture it. You’re at the grocery store in line behind some lady who is overweight, and I don’t mean white people’s definition of overweight. I mean she’s clearly got some weight issues with three kids all headed straight into Type 2 Diabetes.

So as her cart is being rung up and she’s standing there watching the scanned price come up to make sure she’s not being overcharged, she sees:

1 Ltr. Coke $1.79
300 Calories Per Serving
F

1 Lucky Charms
700 Calories Per Serving
F

And on and one and on.

But wait there’s more…

After everything was rung up it’d be great if the register then averaged out the food items being bought and gave the purchase a healthy eating letter grade.

An added bonus would be if the register had one of those human voice simulators just loud enough to shock the shit out of some of the people buying things they know they don’t need to be eating or feeding their already overweight kids…

Thank you for your purchase.
You are buying 11 food items for a total of $104.67.
You saved $6.50 today.
Your selections earned you a F on our healthy eating scorecard.
Thank you. And if you live long enough, please come again.

I wonder if that would help people like me and the sista I stood behind in the store this week get our acts together. Maybe. Maybe not. Knowing some of us the way I do when it comes to our weight and denial, we’d probably cuss the register out and keep stepping, lol.

But still…can someone get on that invention pronto?

Jasmyne Cannick is a critic and commentator based in Los Angeles who writes about pop culture, race, class, sexuality, and politics as it relates to the African-American community. A regular contributor to NPR’s ‘News and Notes,’ she was chosen as one Essence Magazine’s 25 Women Shaping the World. She can be reached at www.jasmynecannick.com or www.myspace.com/jasmynecannick.