I never made it to the cleaning products aisle. I got caught in the organics, healthy, and pseudo-healthy products aisle. It’s pretty fantastic in there. You just never know what you’re going to find. As evidence, check out this breakfast cereal:

I just knew I had to have it. I reached up and grabbed it from the shelf, but swallowed heavily when I saw the price. For this small 8oz bag, more than $11.00! Before putting it back on the shelf, since it was clearly too expensive to buy simply as a gag, I reviewed the ingredients. Turns out you only need two tablespoons of this Canadian-made cereal each morning and the ingredients are heavenly healthy.

Well, that sure made justification easy! In my grocery cart it went.

I’ve tried it twice now. The first time sprinkled on yogurt, which was pretty good. And the second time was on its own with milk, which tasted like a gravel mixed with ashes from an old fire pit.

You win some, you lose some. And in this edition of impractical purchasing, I lost.

p.s. In a “Holy Crap!” moment this morning, I received an email informing me that the Coffee with Julie blog has placed 2nd in the Family & Parenting category of the 2011 Canadian Weblog Awards. The 1st place award went to Home to Heather, and the 3rd place went to Under the High Chair — both of which I plan to drop into my Google Reader this morning. These awards have a special place in my heart because they’re juried by bloggers and blog enthusiasts for quality, not popularity. It must be a hella lot of work organizing and judging these awards (all volunteers) so I feel very honoured and grateful.

I don’t even really care for downhill skiing though. It’s just an experience that I’d like my children to have. But when you visit a ski resort for a weekend, it is a HOLIDAY! And I love holidays. So I am so excited that we’re going to visit Smuggler’s Notch, or “Smuggs,” as it’s often called.

I’ve heard about Smuggler’s for ages and the thing that really caught my attention was the stellar reputation of their kids’ programs. The resort has invited my family to visit for a three-night stay this winter season. To help us learn more about the resort and plan our stay, we were sent a package, which arrived this weekend.

Wow, this is no ski hill and a few restaurants. This is like a winter Disneyland — there is so much to do!

We watched the DVD that came in the package on Sunday evening. Stella, who’s nine, is particularly excited about the zipline and the arts & crafts programs. Max, who’s three, is interested in the skiing with other children. And Hubby, who is snow-crazy, is excited that not only can he ski and snowboard, but he can also go ice-climbing.

As for me, I’m looking forward to having a proper ski lesson (normally I just point my skiis straight ahead and hold my breath down the green hills!) and taking part in a guided snow-shoe trek. But I’m also hoping that if the kids’ programs are as great as they are reputed to be, that I can grab a bit of “me time” while we’re there as well. Is that so wrong?

So, in the meantime, I’m going to take solace in these vintage advertisements. Won’t you join me?

More ads can be viewed (and deeply enjoyed!) over at Babble.

If you’ve gone into hibernation early, there’s the possibility that you’ve missed the fact that all around us, the men in our country are sporting moustaches. Or what their particular genetics happens to allow them to grow as a moustache. No, you’re not having a bad flashback to the 70s, it’s Movember.

Movember has two goals: to raise funds to battle prostate cancer and to raise awareness of men’s health issues in general. It’s a great charity. Last year, 88% of all funds raised went directly to charity, with only 12% going to fundraising and admin costs. That’s 22.3 million dollars directly to Prostate Cancer Canada.

This is the first year that Hubby has participated. And in doing so, I’ve discovered three disturbing facts that I feel I should share with you. Because they’re important.

Fact #1:  1 in 7 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Fact #2:  Studies show that men don’t get health checks regularly, but prostate cancer is 90% curable if detected early.

Fact #3:  You may find yourself irresistibly attracted to this new moustache-ioed look of your man.

The moral of the story? Call your husband/partner/friend/uncle/brother/father and tell them to go and get a health check!

Now, pass it on …. let’s keep raising awareness around prostate cancer and men’s health in general. Cause, for better or for worse, life just wouldn’t be the same without them.

Like most women my age, I have friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances who’ve had to face this diagnosis and live through it the best way they can. Some have been more fortunate than others. And I am so grateful for those who still stand beside me and have been able to resume a life a of mothering, and working, and living all that regular life entails when you are not sick.

I also know it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month because my email box tied to this blog is filling up with “pitches” for me to help raise awareness. But it’s not a request to create awareness around how to do a self breast-exam, or how research dollars are making a difference, or even how fundraising dollars are helping women of low-income families to receive treatments in countries that don’t have socialized health care. These pitches are to raise awareness about the company’s particular cause marketing campaign related to Breast Cancer Awareness Month — i.e. we have a pink-coloured product, that when purchased will result in a donation of $X to X charity.

When I receive charitable requests, I always consider them. They certainly pull my strings more than any other kind of request. But in reading a few of these, I didn’t quite feel “right.”

What’s wrong with pink marketing?

In theory, if I needed to buy a particular product and it also happened to result in a donation if I buy the product, it’s a win-win, right? But the more products that are turning pink, the more I start to think that this must be a profitable endeavour. Just like selling a “green-ified” product is au courant, so it seems is the “pink-ified” product.

Yet, we all know that not all “green” products are actually doing much for the environment. Rather the term “green” is simply a way to help sell more product. Thus the term “green-washing.” And, in turn, a new term “pink-washing” is being used by a number of organizations.

Breast Cancer Action, in particular, is a strong voice on this issue of “pink-washing.” This organization has produced a list of critical questions to ask yourself before buying pink. These five questions are:

• 1. How much money from your purchase actually goes towards breast cancer?
• 2. What is the maximum amount that will be donated?
• 3. How are the funds being raised?
• 4. To what breast cancer organization does the money go, and what types of programs does it support?
• 5. What is the company doing to assure that its products are not actually contributing to the breast cancer epidemic?

To learn more about the rationale and concerns that lay behind these questions, click over to the Think Before You Pink site. While I cannot refute the fact that pink marketing has raises millions of dollars over the years, I still think these questions are important to ask before pulling out your wallet.

And it’s fraught with pitfalls – pitfalls that are just waiting for me to fall into!  So, with school just around the corner, I thought I’d gather some tips for myself. And hey, I might as well share while I’m at it!

Pitfall #1: What to pack

So, first of all, you have to actually have food to pack. But what? That’s easy, right … just make a sandwich and throw in a couple of those nifty little snacks and do-dads easily found in the grocery store developed precisely as a solution to this daily quandary. Nope, not anymore. Lunch needs to be litterless! Which means, absolutely nothing should be put in the lunch that is packaged. (Okay, yes, litterless lunches ARE good. But sometimes things just get a bit nonsensical. Read this post by Finola to get a feel for what I’m talking about.)

• Tips for what to pack? Check out: A Peek Inside the Fishbowl’s post “It’s a lunch revolution” includes Andrea’s ideas as well as tond of great ideas in the comments section.

Pitfall #2: What to pack it in

The days of the plain brown paperbag are sooo over. Can you even buy these any more? Now, with so many different (and high-tech!) options out there … how do you pick? Yes, you want to be that perfect mom and not pack your child’s food in chemical-ridden plastic (yes, the ones that we all ate from! haha!), don’t you? So, there’s that to consider. But also, considering all the tupperware-style containers I need to use in a single lunch these days (a la litterless lunch, see Pitfall #1), I also find that some lunch bags are just too small. But you also don’t want your child toting around an enormous box the size of a construction worker’s lunch, either. So finding the right size can sometimes be tricky too. Plus, there’s the whole temperature thing … can it keep the food cold enough or hot enough until lunch time?

• Tips for what to pack it in? My post “Lunchbox past its expiry date” shares my research on this oh-so-fascinating topic. (And for the record, I ended up buying the L.L. Bean lunchbag are we’re still using it.)

Pitfall #3: Will they eat it

This is the newest pitfall on my list. My grade 3 daughter Stella has always been a great eater, but lately her lunches are coming back un-eaten. When I dug a little deeper into this with her, it seems that sandwiches turn her stomach because they get a bit soggy while waiting to be eaten. But this also applies to boiled eggs (now I leave the shells on), baby carrots (now I cut up the large, full-size carrots), and most fruit (now she eats fruit at breakfast and dinner instead).

• Tips for the “will they eat it” pitfall? Are you kidding? I don’t have any tips! Share all of yours with me in the comments please!

Disclosure:  This is a sponsored post. The school lunch topic is one that is up for discussion on the Kids Matter forum, created by the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO). Feel free to join in the discussion there too!

Of particular interest to me is the connection that the author, George F. Will, makes between North Americans’ waistline and individual self-control. Sure, it sounds obvious … if you can enact self-control over what you put into your body, then you don’t become obese. But in a country where there is just SO MUCH abundance, one needs to use an insane amount of self-control each and every day. From, as Mike Goad pointed out in the comments section, the constant advertisements in the media to eat-eat-eat to the easy credit urging you to buy-buy-buy, to the lack of anticipation that Javamom notes and which this article links to the appearance of microwaves in the kitchen.

The oven is emblematic of the plummeting effort required per calorie ingested. One estimate is that Americans’ per capita caloric intake has increased 22% since 1980, and the number of diabetics has more than quadrupled.

Microwaves, processed foods and drive-thru dining … food is all around us and so easy to consume. And even when you’re not burning a single calorie as you sit on the couch, your television will call out to you to dial-in some pizza or gobble down some chocolate and ice cream. It would seem, then, that someone in North America’s level of self-control has to be much grander in scale than someone living in an environment where food and water is scarce.

But how many times can we say “no” and do the right thing and resist? Most of us cave — at least here and there. And here’s why, posits Will’s article: self-control is like a muscle and like any muscle, it gets fatigued. In fact, the article concludes with this:

Did you tell lots of people — did you blog about — your New Year’s resolutions? Akst [author of the book We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess] knows why you didn’t: “self-control fatigue,” which is as American as microwaved apple pie.

But, silly me, I did blog about my new year’s resolutions ….

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Here’s a quick check-in on my personal resolutions for 2011 (which I detailed here).

#1:  Make time for girlfriend time

I have two girlfriends in particular (Kathryn and Girlie M — are your ears ringing??) who I’ve been wanting and meaning and planning to get together with since well before Christmas. But we haven’t managed it yet. So, with them, I have failed. But I did get in a last minute date with Trish to see the film The Black Swan and it was a fantastic film with fantastic company. Also, my girlfriend Jacquie is always a phone call away and has, thankfully, joined me again for Boot Camp.

#2: Get fit and stay fit

Yes, I started up Boot Camp again last night. I feared that all the insane overindulgence of Christmas feasts over the holidays would land me back to my starting point … but happily, no. My body seems to have rebounded nicely to the exercise again. And, I actually think it’s much happier when I force it to sweat than when I simply wrap it up in flannel and feed it red wine. Strange.

#3: Learn to enjoy winter

Nothing to say here … moving along ….

#4: Say “yes” more

Well, er, let’s just say I was invited to go cross-country skiing and skating at least three times and “yes” was not the answer (refer back to #3).

#5: Give myself the gift of anticipation

I am thrilled to say that I am really, really anticipating a big trip now! I am going to South Korea for one week in February. Not only will I have the natural anticipation of getting to see (and hug!) my sister Megs again, who has been living in Seoul for two years now, but I’m going to pick up some books to learn more about the culture and really ramp up the anticipation even higher. Woohoo!

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So, did you end up making any resolutions this year? How’s it going so far?

Your comments on my post have been particularly insightful and have given me lots of food for thought (pardon the pun!). Many of you, like Ads, agreed that the obesity epidemic, while certainly a problem worth tackling, does need to be put into perspective. Krista, who lives on the African continent and knows first hand the struggles to get basics such as food, water and electricity to her home, noted how North America is undertaking “consumption to the point of destruction.” I cannot agree more wholeheartedly.

And both Krista and Meg rightly pointed out that this kind of overconsumption does affect the rest of the world — from the environment and availability of resources to the “force-feeding” of our junk into third world nations – and so it is important to talk about it and, by extension, try to do something about it.

But when I think about this … which I do a lot …. I can get overwhelmed. Where to start? And can my small actions actually make a difference when the issue is so systemic? Well, we’ve got to start somewhere, right? And where better than in our own homes and with our own buying power.

So I thought I could use this blog to raise and discuss some of this. However, I need your help. I’ve got a couple of ideas brewing for posts, but I want to know what things irk you about our over-consuming nature? Tell me (either in the comments or by emailing me directly) and together we can look at those things and dig a little deeper into them.

As always, thanks for being here and chatting with me. Your coffee pal, Julie

I had a few dissenters in my comments (which I love – thank you for sharing your views!) on that post and it made me question why exactly it feels wrong … Is it because I don’t want to acknowledge the issue? Or perhaps I am embarrassed about crunching the numbers and realizing that this “obese” category  being discussed is actually a category into which I fall?

I’ve decided that it is indeed because I am embarrassed. And here’s why:

• 33.4 million people live with HIV/AIDS worldwide, the vast majority of whom are in low- and middle-income countries. An estimated 2.7 million people were newly infected with the virus in 2008 (source: WHO).
• 1.5 million children under the age of five die each year from unsafe water and poor sanitation. That is more than 4,100 deaths per day (source: WaterCan).
• Diarrhoea is the second leading cause of death among children under five globally. Nearly one in five child deaths – about 1.5 million each year – is due to diarrhoea. Today, only 39 per cent of children with diarrhoea in developing countries receive the recommended treatment, and limited trend data suggest that there has been little progress since 2000 (source: UNICEF/WHO).
• In 2008, malaria caused nearly one million deaths, mostly among African children. Malaria is preventable and curable (source: WHO). 
• In 2010, the number of children worldwide who have lost one or both parents to AIDS is expected to reach 25 million – equivalent to the number of people living in New York, Paris, and Bangkok combined. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, over 15 million children have been orphaned by the pandemic (source: World AIDS Orphans Day).

I sit back and imagine … if I lived in a community facing one of the above epidemics, how would I feel about reading a headline from Canada about an “obesity epidemic”? I can’t answer this question, since I’ll never know how it feels to face such life-threatening and difficult life circumstances. But I can tell you that if I was sitting beside this same person who was reading that headline, I’d definitely be embarrassed. Shamefaced, actually.

If you believe the headlines, Canada is in the middle of a serious epidemic. One of such enormous proportions that 1 in 4 Canadians is already affected – and the number is rising!

*yawn*

Yeah, that’s right, I’m tired of hearing about our so-called “obesity epidemic.” From public service announcements, to newspaper headlines to CBC’s latest “Live Right Now” series … please! Sure, we might be a little heavier than the generation before us, but is it really an epidemic – a word associated with the rampant spread of disease?

If 1 in 4 Canadians is now obese – and weren’t just a generation ago – wouldn’t that mean that 1 in 4 of us could no longer sit in an airplane seat? That all of our cars would need to be built with larger seats? That king-sized mattresses would make queen-sized mattresses obsolete? Or worse, that 1 in 4 of us is suffering from illnesses linked to obesity?

I would think that if one out of every four people in my community was obese, I’d see a whole lot of very large people waddling about my neighborhood. But I don’t. I just see the same old mix of people I’ve always seen.  

And the same thing goes for children. We hear so much about how this ”obesity epidemic” is impacting our children the hardest. But where are all these poor children because when I look at the class photos of the children I know, I see maybe one or two slightly larger children in each class. But this has existed since the beginning of time – there’s always a few bigger kids, a few smaller kids and a bunch in the middle. Wasn’t it like that when you were a kid too?

So what does “obese” really mean anyhow? I’ll tell you what it means. It means anyone who scores a BMI of higher than 30. Which is me. Yep, by the BMI, I am obese.

But I would never refer to myself as obese. Sure I’m no bikini model, but by medical standards, I am perfectly healthy: blood pressure, glucose levels, cholesterol … you name it.

Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s important to try to restrict processed foods, eat junk only on Halloween, and do some physical activity every day. I just don’t think it’s worthy of headline space and the term “epidemic.”

Do you agree that this issue has been blown out of proportion or am I sorely deluded? Tell me!