I was reading an issue of Adbusters at the school bookstore last week. If you’re not familiar with the magazine, its sort of a ‘fight the corporate power’ type magazine which digs up all this corrupt stuff about companies, though its hard for me to take it seriously because the magazine is so abstract and rant-oriented. Kinda seems like they’re preaching to the converted because the magazine looks like it attracts people of a rather anarchistic persuasion.
So anyway, they had an article (if you could even call it that, the magazine is pretty disjointed) on restaurants. They had a photo of 3 meals, a McDonald’s meal, a Denny’s meal, and a meal from a similar Diner chain which I’m not familiar. The funny thing is that the food was presented in the opposite of what a restaurant ad would show you- in fact it looks like they ordered a meal at Denny’s to go, stuck it in the fridge for 12 hours, took it out then mussed everything up to look as gross and unappetizing as possible (didn’t faze me. Maybe a vegan woul gag from the sight but you’re talking to someone who drools over this stuff). They had little captions over each food/ingredient saying where they came from. Of course all the things had unpleasant origins. The glass of milk from the Denny’s meal was brought 800 miles away from Bumfuck, New England, where it was squeezed out of a cow forced to produce 100 gallons a day, aided by hormones and greedy corporate jizz (okay, kidding about the jizz, but you get the idea).
I understand the point they are trying to make here- but the thing is that it just makes me crave this food even more. Somehow by demonizing it, I enjoy it more! In fact the article made me so hungry I went to McDonald’s that afternoon and got a Double Quarter Pounder extra value meal, and devoured it. I even licked the grease off the burger wrapper :D. I am, in fact, thankful for that $5 meal, because the Adbusters article demonstrated how much suffering and technology went into making my mass-produced meal. I don’t live off McDonald’s and Diner food, its an occasional thing. I generally eat a well-balanced dinner at home.
Its kind of ironic that the article seemed to persuade people to object to this kind of food, but for a lot of people its going to have the opposite effect- they’re going to appreciate it even more! I feel very fortunate that I can eat such foods at an affordable price; I know many people in the world will never know what beef tastes like, much less meat in general, and I am very grateful I will be able to partake of the scorched flesh of animals 