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I read this on a cereal box this morning…
“Keys to Healthy Living…Eating a balanced diet moderate in calories and getting exercise are keys to a healthy lifestyle. Research shows that people who frequently eat cereal have healthier body weights.”
True. I believe that.
The box also said this, “Key nutrients from the Nutrition Facts panel are featured so you can quickly see information important to you and your family. The Nutrition Highlights combined with the Nutrition Facts panel help you make informed choices.”
Wow. They must really care about my health. In fact, several cereal companies must be concerned with all of our health because another cereal company started a “SMART CHOICES PROGRAM – Guiding food choices.”
It seems like information about which foods to eat and not to eat is as prevalent as…well, food. Everyone wants everyone else to know how to eat healthy. Not just cereal producers, but all kinds of groups, entities and agencies want to be sure that we are putting the healthiest food we can into our bodies so we can be our very best. And in order to make sure we are informed about the healthiest choices, they advertise on food packages and boxes, on commercials, on billboards, in magazines…
They really want to get the word out.
The world seems to care a whole lot about what we put into our bodies – but I’m not sure they are as concerned about what we put into our minds.
I am talking about media - books, television, radio, music, Internet. I’m not sure they are as concerned that we are making the healthiest choices we can. I’ve never seen an add on the side of a CD that says “Keys to Healthy Listening. Listening to good, uplifting music with virtuous lyrics are keys to a healthy lifestyle. Research shows that people who frequently listen to wholesome music have healthier, happier spirits.”
Or what if there were Nutrition Facts for television shows. Similar to listing the saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol and sodium in food, what if each program listed the amount of poor language, inappropriate topics, arguing, immorality, etc it contained.
What if there was a SMART CHOICES PROGRAM – Guiding media choices for people?
Elder Ballard had this to say about media, “The fall of the year is when television airs its season premieres and introduces its new shows. A friend told me that there are 37 new TV series being inaugurated this fall. As he has read the reviews, he has found few if any of them that he would want his children to watch. Most of the sitcoms, dramas, and reality shows contain immorality, violence, and subtle ridicule of traditional values and traditional families. Each year the new shows seem to get worse, pushing the envelope of what the public will accept. What comes out of Hollywood, off the Internet, and in much of today’s music creates a web of decadence that can trap our children and endanger all of us.
Because of its sheer size, media today presents vast and sharply contrasting options. Opposite from its harmful and permissive side, media offers much that is positive and productive. Television offers history channels, discovery channels, education channels. One can still find movies and TV comedies and dramas that entertain and uplift and accurately depict the consequences of right and wrong. The Internet can be a fabulous tool of information and communication, and there is an unlimited supply of good music in the world. Thus our biggest challenge is to choose wisely what we listen to and what we watch.
But we live in the “perilous times.” Conspiring men and women, intent on gain rather than goodness, “stir up the people” to “all manner of … wickedness” (see Alma 11:20), preventing the noble uses to which the media could be employed.
The new morality preached from the media’s pulpit is nothing more than the old immorality. It attacks religion. It undermines the family. It turns virtue into vice and vice into virtue. It assaults the senses and batters the soul with messages and images that are neither virtuous, nor lovely, nor of good report, nor praiseworthy.
To be strong and happy, families need to be nourished by the truths depicted in the thirteenth article of faith—by a belief “in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men.” [A of F 1:13] Gratefully, there are many like-minded men and women of all cultures and faiths who also seek that which is “virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy.”
It is time to nourish our spirits. It is up to us. Just as no one can put a Twinkie in our mouth when we would rather eat an apple, no one can make us watch or listen to something we would never choose. The choice is ours.
Let’s put down the book that doesn’t nourish and pick up the one that fills our souls.
Let’s turn off the program that numbs our thoughts and turn on the one that elevates our minds.
Let’s listen to music that invites The Spirit to feed, teach and reach our spirit.
“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord:
“And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it” (Amos 8:11–12).
President Hinckley said, “There is hunger in the land, and a genuine thirst—a great hunger for the word of the Lord and an unsatisfied thirst for things of the Spirit. I am satisfied that the world is starved for spiritual food. Ours is the obligation and the opportunity to nourish the soul.”
Gordon B. Hinckley, “Feed the Spirit, Nourish the Soul,” Ensign, Oct 1998, 2
M. Russell Ballard, “Let Our Voices Be Heard,” Liahona, Nov 2003, 16–19
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