When I was a child most Saturday morning cartoons were talking dogs or tricky woodpeckers. The humans that actually appeared in cartoons were overly simplified caricature drawings, Fred Flinstone, George Jetson, and the like. Later on there were G.I. Joes and Ninja turtles but for the most part cartoon depictions of the human body were still.....welll....cartoony.

Not so today.

Today there is Batman. There is Superman. There is Spider Man. There is a live action and a cartoon version of the power rangers. And all these animated superheroes have one thing in common. They are incredibly buff. Not just in good shape. The muscles on these drawings pop like someone stencilled in the outlines of a weight lifting magazine. The cartoonishness pushes the muscles even further, making them bigger and stronger than is really humanly possible, and of course the heroes have the supernatural superhero strength to go with it.

I worry that this may send negative messages to my son. In the same way that little girls are bombarded with false images of what is beautiful at a young age, I worry that my son is watching Superman and Batman and receiving mixed signals on what it means to be a hero. The original spiderman. The one from the comics, he was a nerd. It wasn't his brawn at all. He could leap around, but he was a scientist, an average joe, even a bit of a geek. The cartoon spider man my son watches out muscles his villains. I just hope my son doesn't grow up thinking the best way to solve problems is to out muscle them.

That said, here's some refreshing primal nutrition knowledge that can be found at the vitamin shoppe.