This topic was getting started here:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=82409
I thought it needed a thread of it’s own in GD as this topic quickly gets into questions of gloabalization, labor laws, health issues, and even advertising laws (www.adbusters.com).
So is McDonalds destroying our ecosystem? Our health? Our teenagers work ethic? Our free thought? Or is it just a happy place with happy clowns for happy hungry people?
I’m on the fence.
DaLovin’ Dj
I think evilhanz answered your OP in your other thread quite intelligently. Did you read it or are you looking for some kind of conspiracy theory answer?
Without a doubt he did. But I have heard equally intelligent arguments in the other direction. A little debate amongst the great minds that frequent this place may help me work through my feelings on the issue. Least that’s the hope . . .
DaLovin’ Dj
It’s http://www.adbusters.org – Sorry.
DaLovin’ Dj
Hereis an interesting story on McDonalds. Of course, as with just about everything, take this with a Mcgrain of salt.
perhaps they just want to make money like er… oil companies, tobacco firms, booze firms etc. etc.
As someone who loves to cook, it is rather easy to view McD’s as one of the signs of the apocalypse. Between the decimation of home prepared meals and the tremendous uptick in child obesity, it is hard not to target the major fast food chains as purveyors of death.
Attention needs to be centered on parents who through their own ignorance or just plain laziness are unwilling to invest the time to ensure that their children eat a healthy diet. The huge amount of fat in a typical fast food meal has many unseen repercussions.
One of the most insidious side effects is the way a child’s palate rapidly becomes accustomed to the more pleasurable sensations of oleagenous foodstuffs. The mouth feel of such comestibles is inherently more enjoyable and we are genetically programmed to find them more satisfying. Combine this with the modern prediliction that many children have for salt and fast food represents a death knell for well balanced diets.
While I wish that parents accepted more responsibility for their children’s diet, I also feel that fast food companies are allowed to represent their products as some sort of healthy alternative to a well prepared meal, which they distinctly are not.
Regulation of their advertising would be tantamount to restraint of trade and so would forcing them to serve more healthy components in their package meal deals. Not that the healthy part wouldn’t be routinely be discarded more often than not.
All I know is that when I have children they will never be allowed to eat such garbage on anything remotely close to a regular basis. People who refuse to take the time to make sure their children receive a healthy diet may just as well be killing them slowly. I know this sounds rather inflexible, and I have to wonder just how much my views will change when I am faced with the hectic schedule of working and raising kids at the same time. Nevertheless, parents are the guardians and custodians of their offspring and maintain principal responsibility for their health.
It will be then that I shall thank my good fortune to have learned how to cook well so that food preparation will not represent the otherwise daunting task it appears to be for so many modern people. I still maintain that it is irresponsible of the fast food organizations to portray themselves in a benevolent light when they are major contributors to generation after generation of unhealthy and overweight children and adults.
If there wasn’t such an epidemic of obesity among young children today I might feel different. As it stands, all of us will be faced with increased health care costs as the pigeons come home to roost from decades of corporate sponsored malnutrition. Those increased health care costs will be much akin to the extra burden that the tobacco companies saddled us with during their knowing campaign of intentionally deceiving consumers about the health risks and side effects of their product as well.
It is hard to know which is more to blame. Whereas tobacco consumption is optional and supposedly targeted towards adults (yeah, right), the food supply reaches all tiers of society and has much greater and far reaching effects on our population as a whole.
I have no problem with companies making money. But to swaddle yourself in a mantle of seemingly noble causes (i.e., Ronald McDonald House et al) while nonetheless helping an even larger segment of our population down the road to infirmity and poor health is a dubious attribute and one that bears closer examination than their own corporate interests might wish for.
Haven’t seen a link to The McLibel Trial. This was big news in the UK a few years ago and didn’t do McD’s any good at all.
Of course, we all know that the Big Mac has 32 grams of fat - almost half of your fat for the day, and the fries aren’t light in fat, although I understand they are using corn oil now, but…
why, oh, why do they have to pour a half gallon of salt on the fries???
The answer to all your McDonald’s problems - don’t eat there.
<hijack> Also, don’t buy anything from a telemarketer. If everyone cooperates in this, they will go away.</hijack>
Which is why I have not made a purchase from McDonald’s in nigh well fifteen years.
Your response fails to address the issue of how we, as a society, will pay for the future burden of ill health (and its concomitant impact on the cost of care) that their mass marketing steamroller continues to pave over with their smarmy advertising.
PS: Just request fries without any salt. They will have to drop a new basket and yours will be fresh, unlike the other stale, oil drenched and over salted spud fragments in the bin.
i just found a mcdonald’s fact site. looks like some weird crap on there, but some of it is probably true to an extent. Here’s a blurb:
26% of all McDonald’s employees in Ontario, Canada admit to putting some type of bodily fluid in McDonald’s food.
now that’s pretty nasty. would you like McCum with that?
And the source for this tidbit is “University survey”. Right. Give us something verifiable.
**
Well, obesity can also be due to a severe lack of exercise, which some people think is the result of Americans driving everywhere. So are car companies "helping an even larger segment of our population down the road to infirmity and poor health ", too? Are these companies just as responsible for the fatification of America? Should we wag our moral fingher at them too?
Have you driven a car in nigh well fifteen years?
Sure thing. After that I’ll request sex without orgasm. 
Since when is salt measured in gallons? Gallons are a measurement of liquid. I prefer litres anyway.
I’m with Zenster (excellent post, BTW), especially regarding their insidious campaigns targeting the young.
I don’t know how much the longest court case in British legal history generated in the US but some people might find the saga of the McLibel case quite interesting:
http://www.mcspotlight.org/case/ - Just about everything came out into the open during that case, including McDonalds policy of suppressing dissent.
The home page of that site provides a good general resource:
(Sorry about the missing word “publicity” in the above post)
Thought I’d provide a tasty morsel to whet any interested appetites (from another page detailing much of the story):
http://www.mcspotlight.org/case/trial/story.html
“Since London Greenpeace was an unincorporated association, if McDonald’s wanted to bring legal action to stop the campaign it would have to be against named individuals - which meant the company needed to find out people’s names and addresses. Seven spies in total infiltrated the group. They followed people home, took letters sent to the group, got fully involved in the activities (including giving out anti-McDonald’s leaflets) and invented spurious reasons to find out people’s addresses. One spy (Michelle Hooker) even had a 6-month love affair with one of the activists. Another, Allan Claire broke into the office of London Greenpeace and took a series of photographs.
At some London Greenpeace meetings there were as many spies as campaigners present and, as McDonald’s didn’t tell each agency about the other, the spies were busily spying on each other (the court later heard how Allan Claire, had noted the behaviour of Brian Bishop, another spy, as ‘suspicious’).”
Um, Alpha dearie, you can add your own desired amount of salt post facto. Anything too difficult to grasp about this concept?