Time For Timer

December 30, 2020

Lyrics for “I Hanker for a Hunk of Cheese”
When my get-up-and-go has got up and went
I hanker for a hunk of cheese!
When I’m dancin’ a hoedown and my boots kinda slow down,
Or anytime I’m weak in the knees,
I hanker for a hunk of,
A slab or slice or chunk of,
A snack a day’s a winner
And it won’t spoil my dinner
I hanker for a hunk of cheese!

Time For Timer was voiced by Lennie Weinrib who also voiced H.R. Pufnstuf. Woody Allen named a character after him in the movie The Mighty Aphrodite. In the 90’s for various reasons he moved to Santiago, Chile with his wife Sonia who he married in 1983, the same year I graduated from High School. His life in Chile is a mystery until his death in 2006 from a stroke. Why did Lennie Weinrib just up and leave America? Did he ever come back for an awards ceremony? Did he learn Spanish? How did he like living in Chile?

There were songs that Timer Sang. The best one was “I Hanker for a Hunk of Cheese.” Other notable songs including “Sunshine on a Stick” about making popsicles with toothpicks, and one about trying different types of foods “Don’t Knock It Till You Try It. “Eat Some Kind of Breakfast Everyday” was about breakfast, and there were others about breakfast such as “Eat Breakfast don’t past it up.”

The Timer Public Service announces were shown on ABC. I am sure the Milk Advisory Board and the Meat Industry were behind Timer because he only suggested milk, meats, and peanut butter which could cause an allergic death.

Children’s Peanut Butter is harmful as it contained large amounts of salt, sugar, and hydrogenated fats to cut costs. There were two brands of Peanut Butter Skippy or Jiff, and another called Peter Pan that is now defunct. I just found out that Peter Pan may not be defunct, but all of these brands are very unhealthy. Real peanut butter should be made from fresh peanuts and it does not have a long shelf life before goes rancid. Children’s peanut butter can keep for over five years even in after the jar is opened. Children’s peanut butter like other unhealth foods that they decided to palm off on kids created the obesity epidemic. Adults would balk at the low quality and poor tasting foods that children would eat. So these bad poor quality food became children’s foods. They wanted kids to eat less sugar, but they did not want children to become vegetarians and stop eating meat. Create a meat eater in childhood creates a meat eater for life. It’s the same with smoking. Habits and tastes from childhood remain with a person for life.

I only found out later the Timer character is supposed to a timer in the human body. I found the PSAs to be fairly incomprehensible. I understood the main point that they were trying to get across which was “children need to eat more protein” but the concept of the Timer was just one of those things that I did not understand and there was no way to find out what it meant. Did children really need to eat more protein? I remember hearing over and over at the hippy school I attended beans and rice make a complete protein. Why were the logical choices for food such as Tofu completed omitted from the so called Nutritional Foods Programing/Brain Washing Agenda?

Back in the 70’s they pushed processed meats upon children who were presumably to unsophisticated to rebel. Hot dogs and baloney were the main meats children were served in the 70’s. Processed meats are “easy” for busy moms and “good” for low income families. Is it better to money on foods in childhood and later die of cancer or diabetes in middle age? I once had a discussion with a friend on why healthy foods cost more then unhealthy foods. It is not an either or choice between cheap and healthy. Beans and Rice (which were never suggested) are both health and economically. While processed foods and the low quality ingredients appear to give meal solutions to poverty stricken families, the price will be paid later on in poor heath, early death and diabetes testing supplies.

Why were healthy whole grains, fruits, and vegetables not part of the Timer Series? The PSA were counterpoints to the advertising on the same programs for junk food like chips, candy, cookies and sugar cereals. If nothing this early programming taught me not to believe things I hear and always check the facts before you accept statements like “eat this or that food” that is being promoted by a company. Healthy skepticism is the best lesson learned from the Timer Series.

There were other PSAs involving fruits and vegetables such as this one on How to Make a Carrot. I remember another one with the children telling children watching the show what to eat. They had younger children that with lisps that were supposed to be considered cute. After the younger child would say “pears and apples and bananas” and “You should not eat a lot of sweets,” and older child came and said “So you see, even little kids know that eating too much sweet stuff is bad for your teeth.” Timer created by Big Milk and Big Meats could be balanced out by the fruits and vegetables PSAs, depending on how much television kids watched.