The Broken Chair: Rocks Over Bananas

I was told recently, that some television news show had a segment on the influence of brand names on children, specifically when it comes to food.

It's bad enough that a friend of mine has two nephews, aged between 8-11, who refuse to use any ketchup other than the McDonalds packets of ketchup. But now, apparently in this news piece, kids were given the choice of eating either a banana or a rock. The rock was adorned with stickers of cartoon characters, and the banana was just, well a banana. All but one kid picked the rock…to eat! Now you might think they didn't know it was a rock, but they were told, 'you can't eat a rock' and some replied 'yes I can!'.

I can't find any resources on the story but I'll keep looking. I'd be interested to know the ages of the kids and how many they tested, but any way you peel it, our kids want to eat rocks.

**UPDATE**

Reader JenW was kind enough to find the background info on the story. It was a Dateline piece called Food Fight.

So finally, to see just how far these characters could sway kids, we asked: what would they rather have for breakfast? A banana or... a rock? We decorated the rock this character stickers this time.

It seemed pretty clear companies can count on Scooby-Do when they’ve got some work to do. An overwhelming majority went straight for the rock.

Source: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14415766/

A big thanks to JenW.

Comments

Sounds like an Urban Legend to me. Snopes.com doesn't have it as far as I can see.

One of those, "We are raising really stupid kids." stories.

Google doesn't seem to have it with all sorts of key wordds.

I have a feeling that when Google finds this page and adds it to their collection this posting will soon be at the top when searching for more on this story...

Posted by: prying1 | August 21, 2006 10:50 AM