Why George Jetson and Fred Flintstone Were in the Wrong Bodies

If you are of a certain age you know exactly who George Jetson and Fred Flintstone are so you can skip down three paragraphs. For the rest of you here is what you missed in your childhood.

George Jetson was the cartoon dad of the space age future.  He was relatively thin, he did not have to lift a finger because his whole world was automated to the point that his dog, Astro, could walk himself on a treadmill and he ate overly processed space age food.  George worked a desk job at a computer in an office and commuted via flying car.

Fred Flintstone was the cartoon dad of the caveman past.  He was big and fat and did a lot of manual labor.  Fred ate brontosaurus ribs and other giant chunks of mammoth meat; he commuted to work via foot-powered car and had a long climb into his dinosaur rock mover at the quarry he worked in.

If George Jetson and Fred Flintstone were actual people George would be fat and Fred would be thin.  Here are the reasons:

1. Overly processed foods will make you fatter than food that comes closer to its natural state.  Water is much better for you than artificially flavored, over sugared Tang.  A piece of actual unadulterated meat, even if it was T-Rex is healthier than the space food sticks of the sixties ever were.
2. A foot-powered vehicle provides exercise that a flying car could never match.
3. A desk job encourages backside spread where manual labor burns more calories.

As far as I am concerned Hanna-Barbera, the creators of both George and Fred, have done a great disservice to my entire generation.  They portrayed Fred’s lifestyle as one that would make you fat and George’s as one that would make you thin when all evidence is to the contrary.  Of course all their wives were thin, but then again all women on TV must be thin, even in cartoons.

If I ever have to choose between a space-aged life and a cave man life I think I’ll take the later, I just think it is healthier to be a Fred than it is to be a George.