(NewsTarget Satire) With mandatory vaccines suddenly being forced onto parents by doctors and so-called "health authorities" in places like Maryland, New Jersey and Texas, you might think that doctors being full of bunk is a new phenomenon. But no, it's nothing new. Doctors have been full of bunk for more than a hundred years! What follows is a short timeline of the nonsense, junk science, negligence and harmful advice peddled by medical doctors over the last 150 years or so: (see the end of this article for serious follow-up comments describing the intent behind this satire piece)
1850's
Ignaz Semmelweis, an Austrian-Hungarian obstetrician working in a clinic that delivers babies, is labeled "insane" by his fellow doctors for having the audacity to suggest that doctors should wash their hands between delivering babies. He's fired from his job, ostracized by the medical community and later dies in an insane asylum and is only vindicated long after his death when it is realized that, indeed, infections are spread from one patient to another by physicians who are too lazy, stubborn or egoistic to simply wash their hands. (A lack of hand washing continues to be the primary reason why MRSA and other superbugs are spread in hospitals today...)
1920's
Don't breastfeed your babies! Use infant formula instead. It's more "high-tech." Cow's milk is obviously healthier for your babies than mother's milk, right? That's what the doc says... Result: Tens of millions of mothers stopped breastfeeding their babies, resulting in widespread nutritional deficiencies that impacted those children for life. The pushing of infant formula onto mothers continues today in hospitals across the country which are paid by infant formula manufacturers to give free samples of infant formula to new mothers, hoping they will stop breastfeeding and start buying formula. (Saving grace: A few courageous pediatricians now speak out forcefully about the importance of breastfeeding...)
1930's
Smoking while pregnant? No problem. Doctors recommend Camels more than any other cigarette! Result: Massive chemical toxicity of the bodies of newborns. Increased cancer risk, reduced brain development and a lifetime of immune system disorders. (Cigarette ads routinely appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association for well over a decade.)
1940's
Need a new pair of shoes for your kid? Go size 'em up with the fluoroscope X-ray machine at your local shoe store! Never mind the radiation exposure of 20 - 75 rems per minute! See wikipedia article here. Result: Massive increase in cancer among parents and children who visited the shoe stores. Doctors remained silent on this significant health risk for decades while millions were harmed -- even after strong evidence pointed to the fact that X-ray radiation caused cancer.
1950's
Hey pregnant women, take thalidomide for your cancer! Don't worry about your unborn children. This chemical is perfectly safe! Result: 10,000 children born with physical deformities. Doctors continued to use infants and pregnant women in pharmaceutical experiments for the next fifty years. See Vaccines and Medical Experiments on Children, Minorities, Woman and Inmates (1845 - 2007).
1960's
Feed your children processed foods! White bread is good for them, don't you know? And monosodium glutamate is perfectly healthy for children, which is why food companies add it to baby food! So is saccharin, hydrogenated oils and sodium nitrite in processed meat. Result: Massive malnutrition, liver damage, and the beginnings of the diabetes and obesity epidemics that would sweep the nation over the next generation.
1970's
Place mercury into the mouths of your little children by having their cavities filled with "silver" fillings (made with 40% mercury, a potent neurotoxin). Result: Widespread mercury toxicity in children, resulting in a sharp increase in neurological conditions, including behavioral disorders, infertility and autism. Ignorant, obstinate dentists continue to use mercury fillings today, and the American Dental Association remains in full support of this extremely dangerous heavy metal that results in the mass poisoning of children.
Your kid have a cold? It's probably because their tonsils need to be removed! Tonsils have no biological function anyway, doctors claimed. Result: Over the last several decades, surgeons have removed tens of millions of tonsils, maiming children with a medically useless procedure that has now been proven virtually worthless. But it sure did raise funds to pay for the luxury German sedans driven by those surgeons!
1980's
Microwave all the food you feed children. It's quick, convenient and perfectly healthy! Result: A massive increase in the consumption of processed, artificially modified and dead foods. The introduction of the microwave correlates nearly perfectly with the explosion of obesity and diabetes in western nations. Most doctors still have nothing negative to say about the use of the microwave.
Does your child have an ear infection? Hammer them with antibiotics. Don't worry about the fact that antibiotics are useless against ear infections, or that they wipe out your child's friendly intestinal flora and cause nutritional deficiencies. It's doctor-recommended, so it must be good, right? Result: Billions of doses of useless antibiotics helped breed a new generation of superbug viruses that have now escaped the hospitals and are infecting the public at large. Antibiotics are useless to stop them, and doctors still have not figured out that you can kill superbugs with colloidal silver or garlic. (A fact that ancient human civilizations knew thousands of years ago...)
1990's
Coat your children with sunscreen. The sun is dangerous and has no health benefits whatsoever, didn't you know? And besides, all those chemicals in sunscreen are perfectly safe. Result: Children are now living with severe vitamin D deficiencies (even rickets!) that greatly increase rates of breast cancer, prostate cancer, osteoporosis, depression, obesity and diabetes. Doctors still don't recognize the important role of vitamin D in children's health, and they prescribe drugs to treat the symptoms of disease rather than recommending vitamin D (which would correct the underlying problems and eliminate the need for pharmaceuticals).
Does your baby have a cough? Feed 'em sugared-up, chemically-contaminated cough syrup made by pharmaceutical companies. Don't worry that it's never been tested on infants or approved by the FDA. It works, right? It's doctor-recommended! Result: Over a billion doses of useless, "quack" cough medicine swallowed by infants. The cough syrup hoax was finally blown wide open in 2007 when a few courageous pediatric physicians finally admitted the products have absolutely no medicinal effects and might, in fact, be dangerous for infants and children. The FDA continues to allow their sale, however, since they're still quite profitable to Big Pharma (even though they don't work).
Is little Johnny a bit too jazzed up for your comfort level? Don't worry, psychiatrists have a solution: Street drugs for children! Illegal amphetamines are now legal thanks to the Big Pharma / FDA partnership, and your friendly psych doctor is ready to prescribe Ritalin and antidepressant drugs to your "hyperactive" kids. Result: Widespread school shootings in America. Tens of millions of children suffer stunted physical and mental development -- a dangerous side effects that doesn't emerge until 2007. See http://www.newstarget.com/021944.html
2000's
Too posh to push? Don't worry, your obstetrician will schedule a C-section childbirth appointment and deliver the baby on YOUR schedule instead of Mother Nature's. It's more convenient for him, too, because then he can still make his golf game. Don't worry about the baby: There's no benefit to vaginal childbirth anyway, right? What better way to welcome your child to the world than with a scalpel! Result: Millions of women subject their children to non-natural child birthing that results in an increased risk of lung disease afflictions as well as psychological birthing trauma lasting a lifetime.
Worried about your child getting an infectious disease? Inject your children with multiple vaccines. It will protect them from infectious disease and may, in fact, protect them from oral sex! (At least that's what Merck claims.) Besides, there's nothing wrong with a little mercury, right? Result: Unknown. It's a great medical experiment now being conducted on the children of America. It's backed by idiot doctors and gun-toting law enforcement personnel who are ready to arrest parents who resist the vaccination mandates.
Need some food for your baby? Buy Similac (or any other baby formula powder). It's made with 42.6% corn syrup solids and 10.1% sugar, making it over 50% refined sugars! Marketed with a cuddly teddy bear on the front label and sporting the claim, "Balanced nutrition for older babies," Similac and other infant formula products are little more than sugar water for babies. Doctors and pediatricians remain silent. There is no outcry. No national scandal. No action by the FDA to protect babies. Some doctors even recommend this stuff! (And stupid parents keep buying it!)
2007
A survey of 1,600 practicing physicians published in the Annals of Internal Medicine reveals that reveals that nearly half of all doctors failed to report an incompetent colleague who posed a risk to the health or safety of a patient. The same survey also revealed that a majority of doctors would send their patients to get expensive imaging work done at an imaging facility in which they held a financial interest, but only 24 percent of doctors said they would reveal that conflict of interest to patients.
Result: Yet more incompetent, dishonest doctors continue to scam customers and harm patients. The scourge of modern medicine continues as corrupt, ignorant and downright incompetent doctors continue to harm millions of expectant mothers, infants, babies and children with their deadly Big Pharma chemicals and disastrous health advice. The reputation of doctors plummets in the minds of the American public, and most patients now turn to the Internet to find answers that their doctors either don't know or refuse to tell them. The mass exodus of patients away from conventional medicine is now well underway...
Why doctors are still idiots
When it comes to medical idiocy, these examples are just the tip of the iceberg. The same hopelessly outdated medical system that has given us cigarette-promoting doctors, breastfeeding-censoring doctors and superbug-breeding doctors is now claiming your children need yet more chemicals in their bodies in the form of vaccinations!
And, by the way, these doctors are the only people in the world who are right. They'll tell you so themselves! They are the sole source of all knowledge on anything related to health and medicine, and they've now garnered enough political power that they've managed to criminalize parents who disagree with their medical dogma.
You know what the difference is between God and doctors?
God doesn't think he's a doctor.
These days, instead of doctors simply being full of nonsense, they are suddenly a very real danger to your personal freedom. Before, they were just peddling health nonsense. Now they hold the keys to your freedom and the custody of your children. Refuse to go along with new mandatory vaccination programs in New Jersey, for example, and you can be arrested, imprisoned, charged with a crime and have your children kidnapped by Child Protective Services. How dare you disagree with the High Priests of medical dogma!
Personally, I don't necessarily mind doctors being full of crap. It's amusing to watch, and hilarious to document. But I do mind doctors being full of crap while invoking law enforcement authorities to pull out a Glock, slap a 10-round magazine in the grip, point the barrel to the head of a mother of three children and demand, "Take OUR medicine, or you'll be arrested." Which is, of course, essentially what's happening in New Jersey and Maryland right now. It's called Gunpoint Medicine, and if you don't believe me, move to New Jersey, and refuse to have your children vaccinated. It won't be long before armed men show up at your front door with Child Protective Services standing behind them, ready to grab your kid, toss him into an unmarked van, and have you arrested for "resisting vaccination." This is not fiction. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. It takes truly evil people to dream up this kind of medical terrorism -- the very people who work for Big Pharma and the FDA.
Or maybe I'm wrong about all this. Maybe doctors and health authorities have been full of crap for a hundred years, and now all of a sudden in 2007, they're instantly right! Maybe they've been visited by supernatural, omniscient beings who gave them perfect knowledge (along with a new Merck vaccine) and all they're doing is running around the country saving little children's lives for the good of humanity.
Perhaps 2007 is the new Golden Age of children's health, to be initiated with a mass injection of kiddies with a dozen new toxic mercury injections to "protect" these kids from things that will probably never happen to them. Maybe now, in 2007, organized medicine has reversed all its years of bullsnot and finally found the light! And that light, we're told, comes in the form of a pill... or a vaccine... or chemotherapy... or whatever they tell you to take next.
Yes, indeed! We've been saved by Big Pharma and a brigade of doctors! Hail the FDA! Praise the pharmaceutical giants! Give thanks for mandatory injections! Listen to the doctors and we'll all be saved!
Quick Note: This satire piece does not mean to imply that ALL doctors are complete idiots when it comes to health. There are exceptions. Many of the outstanding people I know in natural health started as conventional medical doctors (M.D.s). The difference between complete idiot doctors and intelligent doctors is that idiots are not willing to abandon their existing dogmatic beliefs when faced with new, contradictory evidence. Intelligent people, on the other hand, adapt and evolve their ideas when faced with new information or evidence.
Conventional medicine, for the most part, does not want to learn anything new that might challenge its existing status quo dominance over the lives of parents and children. "Innovation is the enemy of the status quo," and genuine health enhancement (and disease prevention) is the enemy of the entrenched medical industrial complex. Most doctors are complete idiots because they follow a dogmatic, religious-like belief in blatantly outdated junk medical science, even when real world observations and evidence demands the embracing of ideas that overthrow previously protected beliefs and career egos.
Until doctors can abandon their egos and admit they don't know everything, they will continue to be full of crap.
The purpose behind this satire piece is not to engage in silly name-calling exercises, but rather to play an important role in social commentary on the huge failures of modern medicine today. Satire and humor have important functions in any free society: They reveal what's wrong in a hilarious light, simultaneously entertaining us while encouraging us to challenge our own ideas and, perhaps, come up with new, better solutions for future generations. Political cartoons, stand-up comedians and satire pieces like this one all play a role in getting people to think more carefully about the issues at hand.
Consider this: If modern medicine really worked well, and if doctors were creating wonderful solutions that kept people healthy, then we wouldn't have much of anything to make fun of! The fact that silly humor and examples of idiotic behavior are so easy to find in conventional medicine today is indicative of the failure of medicine to be effective. Satire "attack" humor carries a sub-text message that says, "We can do better." We don't have to suffer under an idiotic system of medicine. We can create a better future based on genuine health freedom, the promotion of disease prevention programs, and the embracing of plant-based medicines that are safe, affordable and highly effective.
Until we get there, poking fun at the hilarious (but sometimes quite harmful and disastrous) failures of conventional medicine is an important way to keep reminding us all how crazy we are to follow this entrenched system of failed medicine. After all, if conventional medicine really worked well, wouldn't we all be healthy by now?
Finally, I must add that there is idiocy and humor in every industry. Even natural health has its own idiots, too. Every industry has some area that can be improved, and there are always idiots working alongside geniuses and compassionate leaders, no matter where you look (except, perhaps, in politics, where it seems to be almost entirely idiots...). It just seems that conventional medicine has more than its fair share of short-sighted individuals (which I am equating with the term "idiots"). It's not just the doctors, of course, but the doctors have played a significant role in promoting the dogmatic beliefs that have helped deliver this disastrous failure of a health care system that we all suffer under in America today. Cuba actually has better health care results than America, and that country has virtually none of the technology, pharmaceuticals and insurance programs that we have.
That says a lot right there. To some, it's downright hilarious. Personally, I can't help but laugh at the whole system of western medicine. And I plan to keep making fun of it for as long as it continues to produce more health care follies.
http://www.newstarget.com/022389.html
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Kraft and Heinz are potential buyers for Mead Johnson, industry bankers say
Kraft Foods and Heinz are likely to consider bidding for Bristol Myers’ Mead Johnson business, three industry bankers told mergermarket.
Bristol Myers revealed last week that it is reviewing alternatives for its ConvaTec and Mead Johnson businesses.
In general, food companies are keen on major infant feeding brands, said two of the three bankers.
Heinz’s European baby food business Plasmon has long been thought to be a divestiture candidate because the company has no complementary US business. The company has long been keen to acquire a US infant food business, said two of the three bankers.
Heinz competed with Nestle for Gerber foods, when it was divested by Novartis, according to a previous report by this news service. Even if it were to sell Plasmon, one of the bankers said, Heinz would still likely be interested in a North American baby food business like Mead Johnson.
Nestle, which acquired Gerber for USD 5.5bn in April, is unlikely to go after Mead Johnson, said one of the bankers.
Both Kraft and Heinz would be interested in the Mead Johnson unit because baby formula and infant feeding brands are much more stable than many other food categories and command a much higher level of brand loyalty than other products the two companies own.
Mead Johnson’s Enfamil and Abbott Laboratories’ Similac are the top two formula brands in the US.
A spokesperson from Kraft declined comment. Heinz did not call back.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b8a4dbc0-a72b-11dc-a25a-0000779fd2ac,dwp_uuid=e8477cc4-c820-11db-b0dc-000b5df10621.html
Bristol Myers revealed last week that it is reviewing alternatives for its ConvaTec and Mead Johnson businesses.
In general, food companies are keen on major infant feeding brands, said two of the three bankers.
Heinz’s European baby food business Plasmon has long been thought to be a divestiture candidate because the company has no complementary US business. The company has long been keen to acquire a US infant food business, said two of the three bankers.
Heinz competed with Nestle for Gerber foods, when it was divested by Novartis, according to a previous report by this news service. Even if it were to sell Plasmon, one of the bankers said, Heinz would still likely be interested in a North American baby food business like Mead Johnson.
Nestle, which acquired Gerber for USD 5.5bn in April, is unlikely to go after Mead Johnson, said one of the bankers.
Both Kraft and Heinz would be interested in the Mead Johnson unit because baby formula and infant feeding brands are much more stable than many other food categories and command a much higher level of brand loyalty than other products the two companies own.
Mead Johnson’s Enfamil and Abbott Laboratories’ Similac are the top two formula brands in the US.
A spokesperson from Kraft declined comment. Heinz did not call back.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b8a4dbc0-a72b-11dc-a25a-0000779fd2ac,dwp_uuid=e8477cc4-c820-11db-b0dc-000b5df10621.html
Eating Disorders During Pregnancy Can Create Havoc For You And Your Baby
Eating disorders during pregnancy are not so well known, but nearly 20 per cent of pregnant women suffer from them. The common eating disorders are binge eating and bulimia. Some anorexics also become pregnant.
Pregnancy Complications In Moms-To-Be
Eating disorders during pregnancy puts you in grave risk. Your baby depends on you for every nutritional need. Even if you don’t eat enough, she will take as much nutrients as required from your body. This will make you weaker and you may experience problem in walking, breathing, and carrying out other physical tasks. Get more information on pregnancy nutrition and stay away from these worries.
Your baby will suck the calcium from your body, leading to osteoporosis. Your bones and teeth may get weaker and brittle. In case you are already facing heart, liver, or kidney problems, they might get worse. Besides this, eating disorders during pregnancy increases the risk of delivery complications and miscarriage. Breech birth and placental abruption are also common risks.
Pregnancy is a stressful time for your mind and body. If you do not eat well, it’s going to affect your mental health too. You may experience severe depression and find it difficult to control your emotions. Some women even harbor thoughts of harming their baby!
Pregnancy Complications In Fetus
Preterm labor and low birth weight baby is the commonest result of undisciplined eating during pregnancy. It can even lead to death of your baby, due to stress and improper nutrition caused by an unhealthy pregnancy diet.
Bulimics as well as anorexics do not take sufficient nutrition and, thus, do not gain weight. As a result, they deliver underweight babies, who are underdeveloped as well as malnourished. Moms-to-be with food related disorders have higher chances of delivering babies with low Apgar scores and respiratory disorders. Babies from such moms have 35 per cent greater risk of coronary death. They are also 6 times more prone to diabetes in the later stages of life.
Moreover, this is not all. If you suffer from eating disorders during pregnancy period, you are more likely to have babies with a higher vulnerability to liver disorders, cerebral palsy, blindness, cleft palate, and other horrible physical deformities. They are more prone to mental illnesses, which include learning problems, mood disorders, and lower IQ as they grow up.
If you do not check your pregnancy diet, your baby can die inside you. Eating disorders during pregnancy can create a matter of life and death for you as well as your baby. So, watch out for the food in your plate!
Eating disorders during pregnancy are not discussed as freely as other disorders, but they do occur in common, if you are not careful about your pregnancy diet. Moreover, they can have horrendous effects on you and your baby inside and could cause severe pregnancy complications. For more information visit pregnancy.
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=46390
Pregnancy Complications In Moms-To-Be
Eating disorders during pregnancy puts you in grave risk. Your baby depends on you for every nutritional need. Even if you don’t eat enough, she will take as much nutrients as required from your body. This will make you weaker and you may experience problem in walking, breathing, and carrying out other physical tasks. Get more information on pregnancy nutrition and stay away from these worries.
Your baby will suck the calcium from your body, leading to osteoporosis. Your bones and teeth may get weaker and brittle. In case you are already facing heart, liver, or kidney problems, they might get worse. Besides this, eating disorders during pregnancy increases the risk of delivery complications and miscarriage. Breech birth and placental abruption are also common risks.
Pregnancy is a stressful time for your mind and body. If you do not eat well, it’s going to affect your mental health too. You may experience severe depression and find it difficult to control your emotions. Some women even harbor thoughts of harming their baby!
Pregnancy Complications In Fetus
Preterm labor and low birth weight baby is the commonest result of undisciplined eating during pregnancy. It can even lead to death of your baby, due to stress and improper nutrition caused by an unhealthy pregnancy diet.
Bulimics as well as anorexics do not take sufficient nutrition and, thus, do not gain weight. As a result, they deliver underweight babies, who are underdeveloped as well as malnourished. Moms-to-be with food related disorders have higher chances of delivering babies with low Apgar scores and respiratory disorders. Babies from such moms have 35 per cent greater risk of coronary death. They are also 6 times more prone to diabetes in the later stages of life.
Moreover, this is not all. If you suffer from eating disorders during pregnancy period, you are more likely to have babies with a higher vulnerability to liver disorders, cerebral palsy, blindness, cleft palate, and other horrible physical deformities. They are more prone to mental illnesses, which include learning problems, mood disorders, and lower IQ as they grow up.
If you do not check your pregnancy diet, your baby can die inside you. Eating disorders during pregnancy can create a matter of life and death for you as well as your baby. So, watch out for the food in your plate!
Eating disorders during pregnancy are not discussed as freely as other disorders, but they do occur in common, if you are not careful about your pregnancy diet. Moreover, they can have horrendous effects on you and your baby inside and could cause severe pregnancy complications. For more information visit pregnancy.
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=46390
Trinity Day School helps food bank out a ton
What does a ton look like?
To some, it looks like a Volkswagen Beetle. To others, it looks like a baby elephant.
But to students at Trinity Day School, a ton is a math lesson that ended in a donation of more than 2,000 pounds of food to the HOPE program.
The school hauled more than one ton of nonperishable foods Wednesday from Trinity to the food bank at Enota Elementary School. The weighty donation to Homeless Outreach Program and Evaluation all started from a second-grade math lesson.
When Mindy Ellis started teaching her second-grade class about weights and measurements this fall, she wanted them to be able to see what they were learning.
"One ton equals 2,000 pounds ... how can a kid visualize how much that is?" Ellis said.
Trinity usually does a community service project every year, and Ellis thought the math lesson would serve well as the schoolwide service project.
"We tried to incorporate that idea with the food drive and see if we couldn’t gather a ton of food," Ellis said.
Once Trinity decided to take on the feat, Ellis said she was unsure of the 113-student school’s ability to meet the one ton goal.
"I saw articles about other groups trying to do it, and they only got a half a ton of food," Ellis said. "And I’m thinking ‘uh-oh.’"
But Trinity’s students, teachers and parents collected more than 2,000 pounds of nonperishable foods in less than a month.
Students from the school’s kindergarten to fifth-grade classes brought bottles of apple juice, bags of rice and crates full of cans of soup, vegetables and tuna for nearly a month.
"We knew that a ton of food would be extremely difficult for one or two classes to do, but we thought it was something we could do here at the school," said Terri Roush, assistant administrator for Trinity Day School. "All the kids have jumped on board and have just been crazy about bringing in stuff."
Students monitored their progress on a picture of a baby elephant that teachers had drawn and colored in as the students collected more food.
"With the elephant that we put together... they quickly saw their efforts ... and they could visualize how much of it we had gained," Ellis said.
On Monday, Trinity had garnered 1,100 pounds of food, Ellis said. But by Wednesday afternoon, the school had exceeded its goal.
"The kids have watched it grow and grow and grow, and our little elephant is all colored in now," Roush said.
Trinity initially contacted the North Georgia Community Foundation for the donation, but the foundation has not yet built its food bank.
Kay Blackstock, administrative assistant for the North Georgia Community Foundation, still wanted to help. Blackstock contacted the director of the HOPE program, who said she would love to have the food to help feed the 100 families currently enrolled in the program.
The HOPE program is a joint effort between the Gainesville city school system and the Hall County school system to assist the homeless in the community.
Blackstock said Wednesday’s donation was amazing, because it taught kids more than weights and measurements.
"They got keyed in with their families on the concept of hunger ... in your community, and giving and sharing and philanthropy," Blackstock said. "It’s a real cool concept to get kids involved early, because if they get that concept of philanthropy when they’re young like that, that’s something they’ll build into their lives forever more."
And it seems the kids have learned their lessons.
"It feels good to give food to people that don’t have food for Christmas," said 10-year-old Christian Hunt. "It’s sort of fun, too just to walk in the lobby and say ‘hey, there’s a ton of food.’"
Hunt said he and his mother donated 200 pounds to the cause.
http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/news/article/2106/
To some, it looks like a Volkswagen Beetle. To others, it looks like a baby elephant.
But to students at Trinity Day School, a ton is a math lesson that ended in a donation of more than 2,000 pounds of food to the HOPE program.
The school hauled more than one ton of nonperishable foods Wednesday from Trinity to the food bank at Enota Elementary School. The weighty donation to Homeless Outreach Program and Evaluation all started from a second-grade math lesson.
When Mindy Ellis started teaching her second-grade class about weights and measurements this fall, she wanted them to be able to see what they were learning.
"One ton equals 2,000 pounds ... how can a kid visualize how much that is?" Ellis said.
Trinity usually does a community service project every year, and Ellis thought the math lesson would serve well as the schoolwide service project.
"We tried to incorporate that idea with the food drive and see if we couldn’t gather a ton of food," Ellis said.
Once Trinity decided to take on the feat, Ellis said she was unsure of the 113-student school’s ability to meet the one ton goal.
"I saw articles about other groups trying to do it, and they only got a half a ton of food," Ellis said. "And I’m thinking ‘uh-oh.’"
But Trinity’s students, teachers and parents collected more than 2,000 pounds of nonperishable foods in less than a month.
Students from the school’s kindergarten to fifth-grade classes brought bottles of apple juice, bags of rice and crates full of cans of soup, vegetables and tuna for nearly a month.
"We knew that a ton of food would be extremely difficult for one or two classes to do, but we thought it was something we could do here at the school," said Terri Roush, assistant administrator for Trinity Day School. "All the kids have jumped on board and have just been crazy about bringing in stuff."
Students monitored their progress on a picture of a baby elephant that teachers had drawn and colored in as the students collected more food.
"With the elephant that we put together... they quickly saw their efforts ... and they could visualize how much of it we had gained," Ellis said.
On Monday, Trinity had garnered 1,100 pounds of food, Ellis said. But by Wednesday afternoon, the school had exceeded its goal.
"The kids have watched it grow and grow and grow, and our little elephant is all colored in now," Roush said.
Trinity initially contacted the North Georgia Community Foundation for the donation, but the foundation has not yet built its food bank.
Kay Blackstock, administrative assistant for the North Georgia Community Foundation, still wanted to help. Blackstock contacted the director of the HOPE program, who said she would love to have the food to help feed the 100 families currently enrolled in the program.
The HOPE program is a joint effort between the Gainesville city school system and the Hall County school system to assist the homeless in the community.
Blackstock said Wednesday’s donation was amazing, because it taught kids more than weights and measurements.
"They got keyed in with their families on the concept of hunger ... in your community, and giving and sharing and philanthropy," Blackstock said. "It’s a real cool concept to get kids involved early, because if they get that concept of philanthropy when they’re young like that, that’s something they’ll build into their lives forever more."
And it seems the kids have learned their lessons.
"It feels good to give food to people that don’t have food for Christmas," said 10-year-old Christian Hunt. "It’s sort of fun, too just to walk in the lobby and say ‘hey, there’s a ton of food.’"
Hunt said he and his mother donated 200 pounds to the cause.
http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/news/article/2106/
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