The Last Airbender Series: The King of Omashu and its Nutritional Values

When it comes to food, the stereotypical child will agree with two things. You can never have too much candy, and you never want to have your vegetables. You'd expect a kid's show like Avatar: The Last Airbender to agree with these mantras, despite their vegetarian main character. So they created a symbol for vegetables in the show by introducing the cabbage merchant, an unfortunate seller of vegetables who somehow cannot escape the chaos caused by the avatar. He even has his own catchphrase: "My cabbages!" The constant abuse that the cabbage merchant gets can be construed as a metaphor for the incessant hate of vegetables that many children have. But what about the excessive amounts of candy? Well, in this episode, Avatar takes a stab at that problem too, and children may not enjoy its message.

After Aang and his friends are captured by the King of Omashu, who we later learn is Aang's old friend Bumi, Aang is forced to complete three tasks. As incentive to complete the tasks, he gives Sokka and Katara a ring, which holds a mineral that grows larger and larger. It essentially imprisons both Sokka and Katara. By the end of the episode, Katara and Sokka are nearly completely covered by the rock, but King Bumi frees them from their prison and reveals that the "rock" that had encompassed them was, in fact, rock candy. The obvious takeaway message from this is that King Bumi is crazy. But the second slightly similarly obvious message is that candy, in excess, is bad. It doesn't hurt to have candy in small portions, but if you have too much, you'll be imprisoned by your insatiable sweet tooth. The side effects of too much candy are actually demonstrated. Your movement will be restrained, you will become heavier, you may have difficulty breathing, and you could become blind. You want an anti-obesity message in a kid's show that is subtly put in there? You've got it right here.

It's interesting that they introduce the cabbage merchant in this episode, where one of the messages could possibly be that too much candy is hazardous to your health. It goes to show the nutritional values that the show may want to give to children. Maybe kids will realize that sometimes if you throw away your vegetables, you also ought to lessen the amount of sweets that you have. In a way, it also humanizes vegetables as it criminalizes sweets. You end up feeling bad for the cabbage merchant, while you start to hate the rock candy prison that has trapped Katara and Sokka. So in an interesting, albeit unconfirmed, manner, the writers of Avatar actually promote a vegetable-filled diet and lifestyle. Just not vegan, but more on that later.