“We're tired of being the fattest, most unfit generation ever. ‘Big industries’ spend $12 billion a year advertising junk to us. Why? We influence tens of billions in spending. Healthcare costs will exceed $4 trillion just when we’ll be raising our families, we’re freaking out. We’ve got digital communication and tech-expertise no other generation's ever had. Join us in sharing energy, creativity and social action that'll change the world. To junk food & big marketing, we say, ‘Get outta my face!’” - http://get-outta-my-face.blogspot.com/

At a time when childhood obesity and bad diets make headlines, ten teenagers in Bend, Oregon have launched a website that promises to put junk food advertisers on notice and get teens eating healthy and breaking sweat. In less than a year, these Oregon teens have incorporated as a nonprofit organization and learned everything they can about viral marketing. They have started a campaign to collect 10,000 short digital media projects that promote smart food and lifestyle choices, from young people across the country.

Ten teens will never have the marketing budgets of the big food companies, concedes Judy Shasek, the adult mentor who helped them start Get Outta My Face (GOMF). Still, she says, “They may be able to create a message with even more reach: a generation of ‘tired of being manipulated’ digitally savvy kids who want to take their health and vitality to higher ground. They are saying, ‘Get outta my face and get outta our way!’”

WKCD recently spoke with two members of GOMF’s core team, Maryn and David. Both are rising juniors at Bend High School.

David: “It’s so dramatic, what’s happened to the organization. It’s been growing and growing, exponentially. There are ten of us helping out this summer. We’ve all assigned ourselves individual jobs. Maryn and I are working on podcasts. We have someone on our team, Mike, who is a whiz at websites. Four of us are making videos. I’m also composing some original music for one of the videos.”

Maryn: “Each of us on the team really has our own focus and talent. For the podcasts, [David and I] have been going around collecting interviews, talking about our projects and asking people questions about their daily lives and what they think about healthy eating. Also, people are starting to come to us with tips or with stories, like how high-fructose corn syrup is taking over the world. Most people that we talk to about our ideas bring some of their own elements, opinions, and information to the topic. And then we build on that.”

David: “When it comes to finding articles and other interesting material to put up on the web, everybody on the team does the research. Our [five-year] goal is a documentary film, on the same scale as movies like ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’”

Maryn: “One of the really hard things we’re trying to tackle is what happens in schools around eating—the food choices kids get, the fact that they only have a few minutes to eat lunch. Pretty much everyone knows what they need to do to eat healthy, but they are not provided with the tools they need or the food they need. People are aware that soda is bad for them, but when there are three vending machines selling pop at school, it’s hard to avoid it.”

David: “Five years from now, we want to have our documentary film and other big publicity items and to have had an impact. But just as much, we want to let other youth know that they can do what we did, that they can make a difference.”