I saw this on my twitter feed from Andreas Eenfeldt who calls himself diet doctor. I usually read what he tweets as he is a fellow low-carber. He’d posted the photo above.

I love that this grocery is looking for solutions rather than moaning about the problem: kids eat too much junk.

I posted it on my Facebook page and one comment that came back was, “When that banana peeling drops on the floor, and someone steps on it…watch out! Messy floor, messy buggy, messy child’s clothing. Not a good idea, in my opinion.”

Well, that’s perfectly legitimate. And truthfully I hadn’t thought of it. But once again we’re looking at the potential problem. How much better to think – okay, if the kid is left with a banana peel, then we’ll put lots of trash cans around the store. Or some such idea.

We have such a penchant, and I don’t know how much is cultural and how much nature or nurture, to look at the problem and stop right there.

My father is now in a nursing home and has dementia. So I recently watched a documentary called “Alive Inside.” It’s the story of a social worker who brought personalized music to dementia patients living in nursing homes.

He had an idea – music awakens the brain and he wanted to see if it could also do so with people suffering with dementia.

He began finding out what music was meaningful to a number of patients in the home. He ripped those tunes onto an iPod for each patient. They got “their personal music” and headphones. People who’d barely spoken in years began to chatter. One woman who’d been in a wheelchair for two years got up and danced.

Seeing the beauty of what happened, and having a doctor agree that reaching the human soul through something like music can do more than drugs, he began to call nursing homes around the country to invite them to start such a project.

What did he initially get? “Well, we’d need an iPod for every patient. We can’t afford it.” And, “We’re not sure this will work.” He got resistance. He got small thinking. He got the company line. Luckily, he continued promoting the idea and in time many nursing homes began such a program. Of course, not enough, but it’s rolling.

If we dare, let’s think “yes” before we think “no” and then figure out how to make it possible. Yes, let’s go outside the norm to where amazing things happen by virtue of passion, dedication, commitment and being willing to buck the status quo.