Bluff The Listener
NPR
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Update RequiredTo play audio, update browser or
Flash plugin.
Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
Our panelists tell three stories about a crazy way to get kids to eat their vegetables, only one of which is true.
Transcript
BILL KURTIS, BYLINE: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago this is WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis. We're playing this week with Amy Dickinson, PJ O'Rourke and Paula Poundstone. And here again is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you Bill.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Right now it is time for the WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME Bluff the Listener game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play our game on the air. Hi, you are on WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME.
MARK KANEGIS: Hey, this is Mark Kanegis from Rockport, Massachusetts.
SAGAL: Rockport, Massachusetts?
O'ROURKE: Hey, Mark.
SAGAL: That was a summer destination of mine for many years growing up. .
PAULA POUNDSTONE: Do they still have - remember the restaurant that was out in the water? Do they still have that?
KANEGIS: Restaurant out in the water?
POUNDSTONE: There used to be a restaurant like...
SAGAL: No, that sank. Turned out to be a terrible idea.
POUNDSTONE: It was the coolest thing. The only thing that didn't have was good food, but other than that.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Well, welcome to the show Mark. You're going to play our game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. Bill what is Mark's topic?
KURTIS: Welcome To the Clean Plate Club.
SAGAL: Parents try all sorts of tricks to get their kids to clean their plates, from empty threats to bribery to not so empty threats. But this week we read a story about an ingenious or perhaps insane way to get kids to eat their vegetables. Our panelists are going to tell you about it. Guess the real story, you'll win Carl Kasell's voice on your voicemail. You ready to go?
KANEGIS: Sounds good.
SAGAL: Let's hear first from Amy Dickinson this week.
AMY DICKINSON: McDonald's has successfully artificially cross-flavored many different foodstuffs, making chicken look and taste like hockey pucks for instance or making slivers of potato taste like a deep-fried salt lick. But the food giant suffered a big fail recently when they tried to sneak in a healthier menu for kids by making broccoli that tastes like bubblegum. Company executives would not disclose how they achieved this or why the new product failed. Was it because kids prefer their broccoli to taste like chewing tobacco? Or was it because kids would rather eat eggplant that tastes like Tootsie Rolls? Maybe it failed because their trademark Ronald McDonald vomited on his giant clown shoes even thinking about it.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Bubblegum flavored broccoli from McDonald's, an idea that went nowhere. Your next story of the things we do because force-feeding is frowned upon comes from PJ O'Rourke.
O'ROURKE: Well Whole Foods organic grocery chain tried a new approach to helping parents get children to eat healthier food. The marketing campaign was tested at three Southern California stores. The idea was to appeal to a child's imagination instead of a child's taste buds. Tests by food psychologists showed some differences in foodstuff appeal between boys and girls. For example, little boys could be induced to eat cooked beets if they came with plastic eyes, mouth and tail, and instructions to kill Barney the dinosaur and eat him. Ditto for Brussels sprouts, packaged as cut-off heads of Kermit the Frog. Little girls, on the other hand, responded to fava beans sold as magic fairy eggs, bean sprouts labeled as My Little Pony hay.
(LAUGHTER)
O'ROURKE: And tofu, the edible Barbie facial. Whole Foods' problem was parents are highly suggestible too. A Whole Foods store in Malibu was sued for $6 million by the mother of a four-year-old girl. The mother claimed that the magical fairy egg fava beans she bought hatched, leaving her house infested with thousands of tiny fluttering supernatural creatures.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Whole Foods tries to rename their healthy foods for kids in imaginative and sometimes kind of disguising ways. Your last story of kids at the table comes from Paula Poundstone.
POUNDSTONE: Just in time for the season of gift giving, Hasbro introduces a brand-new dinner table game called Play With Your Food. It's enough to make Miss Manners pass out cold, but kids and some parents give it rave reviews. It is played at the dinner table while eating a nutritious meal. Each player sits across from their partner. One player is in charge of the scoreboard and a deck of action cards are placed in the center of the table. Each player has a colorful plastic spoon catapult and a thick plastic three inch diameter straw. At the beginning of their turn, one player picks a card, reads it aloud and follows the instruction. For three points, catapult a bite of any vegetable into your partner's mouth. If you miss, eat five legumes.
(LAUGHTER)
POUNDSTONE: For five points, load your projectile straw with a bite-size piece of meat, blow it across the table into your partner's mouth. If you miss, have three bites of unsalted root vegetable. For ten points, using any piece of silverware, figure out how to pick up more than two peas without using your fingers. Twenty points are awarded when a player successfully catapults mashed potatoes into their partner's mouth. And the game comes with a spatula for scooping the missed bites off the wall.
Every party has a pooper, of course, so the Parents' Choice Awards gave it a timeout, which is their lowest ranking. Many of the testers cited safety concerns. My safety concern as a mother, says Patsy O'Malley, a tester from Chelmsford, Massachusetts, is that if my kids throw mashed potatoes on my kitchen wall, I'd kill them.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: All right then, here are your choices. One of these was or is a scheme to get kids to eat better. From Amy Dickenson, a plot by McDonald's to sell bubblegum flavored broccoli. From PJ O'Rourke, Whole Foods renaming their vegetables to make them more appealing to kids and slightly disturbing to adults. And from Paula Poundstone, the Play With Your Food Game, which encourages kids to do the things that they would normally do, mainly misbehave terribly at dinner. Which of these is the real plot to somehow get our kids to eat better?
KANEGIS: Well it's tough. I wouldn't put anything past McDonald's, so I'm going to go with Amy.
SAGAL: I think your choice then if I understand is Amy's story about McDonald's and their bubblegum flavored broccoli. Well, we spoke to somebody familiar with the real story.
TOREY JONES ARMUL: McDonald's had created broccoli that tastes like bubblegum, but the kids were ultimately very confused by the taste.
(LAUGHTER)
DICKINSON: Imagine.
SAGAL: That was Torey Jones Armul from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics talking about bubblegum flavored broccoli that was not ultimately sold by McDonald's. Thank you so much because you came on and won. Congratulations, you got it right.
KANEGIS: Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
O'ROURKE: Good work, Mark.
SAGAL: You got a point for Amy, you won our prize - Carl Kasell will record the greeting on your home answering machine. Well done.
KANEGIS: Thank you so much everybody.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CALL ANY VEGETABLE")
FRANK ZAPPA: (Singing) Call any vegetable, (call any vegetable) call it by name. (Call any vegetable) Call any vegetable, and the chances are good, oh the vegetable will respond to you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
View this story on npr.org
Follow us for more stories like this
CapRadio provides a trusted source of news because of you. As a nonprofit organization, donations from people like you sustain the journalism that allows us to discover stories that are important to our audience. If you believe in what we do and support our mission, please donate today.
Donate Today