Give Up the Cookies, Santa!

Santa Claus would be a better role model if he lost the jiggly belly and ditched his sleigh for a bike, according to a public health expert who takes the jolly old elf to task for his unhealthy ways in the Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal.

Nathan J. Grills, a public health fellow at Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia, says images of a rotund Santa smoking a pipe promote smoking and obesity, while the tradition of leaving a brandy for him alongside the traditional cookies and milk encourages drinking and driving.

He’d be much better off, the author suggests, if he traded in the mince pies and brandy for the carrot and celery sticks he feeds his reindeer. “Santa only needs to affect health by 0.1 percent to damage millions of lives,” the scholar writes.

Even if he slims down, Santa could pose a direct threat to thousands of children if he hasn’t had his H1N1 shot. If he sneezes or coughs, kids who sit on his lap might spend their Christmases in bed with swine flu.

Lest readers underestimate Santa’s powers to persuade, Mr. Grills notes that Santa is the only fictional character that American children are more likely to recognize than that other icon of healthy living, Ronald McDonald. —Katherine Mangan

Hat tip: Science Blog