Sesame Street Addresses Hunger

When NY Times reporter Marcus Mabry took home some Sesame Street booklets, he was shocked with what he found in the section titled “Family Food Talk” in the  “Food for Thought: Eating Well on a Budget” guide: “You (parents) may notice big brothers and sisters making sacrifices without being asked. They may choose to skip meals or encourage their younger sibling to eat less food. Reassure them by saying: ‘Our whole family needs to eat and keep our bodies strong. You need to eat, too.” There were also responses to questions like “Should I eat less so you can have some food?” and “Will we have enough to eat?” The fact that Sesame Workshop, Sesame Street’s nonprofit educational arm, and their partners UnitedHealthcare and Merck Company Foundation, “had created this literature meant that there was a need for it, a need so great that it had reached the corporate offices of these institutions.”

Source: NYT, June 2, 2012, Sesame Street