Sign of the times: Cookie Monster, of the globally beloved U.S. children's television show "Sesame Street," is going to have to start watching what he eats. According to the American show's producers, the shaggy blue carbohydrate-cruncher will no longer be allowed to gobble chocolate chip cookies by the cartload, as he has been doing for more than 35 years.
Now he can have an occasional cookie. In line with this startling lifestyle change, he will also have to give up his signature song, "C Is for Cookie (that's good enough for me)," for the more judicious, if much less joyous, "A Cookie Is a Sometimes Food."
Since the U.S.-based Sesame Workshop has veto rights over scripts for the new, mostly Japanese-language version of the show currently being aired on TV Tokyo, it must be assumed that concern about Cookie's eating habits will also surface in locally produced episodes.