I think you need to read the OP again. The story he gave was:
He had heard stories before, but didn’t believe them.
He went to McDonald’s ate a large amount and was still hungry afterwards.
As a result of his experience, he began to think the stories were true after all.
In a later post he said “I certainly didn’t consciously believe that McDonald’s drugged their food or I’d never go there.” You claim that this shows he misrepresented his OP. I cannot see any contradiction there.
Really another site? Isn’t swapping conspiracy theories acceptable in GD or IMHO, for instance? And isn’t asking for facts supporting or debunking them acceptable in GQ? I always thought it was.
Original Post (in the message board thread) or Original Poster (the person who started the thread)
No idea, but as you (and none of your fellow diners) had this experience exactly once at McDonalds, it makes more sense to think of the incident itself as anomalous than evidence of some grand scheme.
If you (and you alone) had been struck by lightning as you left the restaurant, you wouldn’t start attributing that to some conspiracy, would you?
And I just officially stopped caring enough about your situation to share my McDonald’s binge story and what resulted from it. You might call me an idiot.
What you may have heard is that McDonald’s is the most studied food on the planet. Because it is the largest company and the most iconic, the most people have looked at its food for all the possible harm it could be doing.
Which is no more or less than any other fast food.
Here’s the first thing you will learn if you stick around the Dope. Something you’ve “heard” is always wrong. Always.
Here’s the second thing. It is about you. When exceptional things happen, it’s because you’re an exception. Maybe just for that day and place and time, but it’s not the world, it’s you.
Want proof? Go back to McDonald’s. Order food. Eat it. Nothing out of the ordinary will happen.
I have to say as a long time reader and sometimes poster that the original responses to the OP were harsh, unnecessarily snarky and intentionally obtuse.
I took the OP’s comments of being a believer with a pinch of salt. I dont know if hyperbole is quite the right term in this case, but it is an exaggeration for the purpose of emphasis. Maybe that was not the OP’s intent, but the respectable behavior in a discussion is to give a person the benefit of the doubt.
My impression was not that the OP was seriously asking if they had been drugged, but simply what was going on. My first thought before reading any responses was that fast food is generally tailored to activate our cravings for salt, fat, carbs, glutimate, not to satsify hunger. Instead the first crop of responses just attacked.
Questioning a poster’s parenting abilities was completely out of line.
If your intention is to fight ignorance, learn to be a little gracious.
If rather you people want to cultivate an elitist clique that attacks outsiders for being part of the perceived ignorant masses continue on this path.
Moderators, the OP’s responses were inappropriate to this board, but so were the posts that triggered those responses.
I’m getting really tired of the arrogance around here.
Nope, wrong- my perfectly sane, normal answer was post number 4.
Did the OP even look it up to consider whether this could be true? Apparently not- he dismissed it out of hand.
I thought it was extremely gauche for a new poster to come on to this board, ask a question combined with a loony conspiracy theory in GQ, and then call established posters that are trying to give him real information idiots. He’s not going to last long around here if he keeps doing that.
I asked how old your kids are. Too young to order on their own (within reason)? It’s a pretty simple menu. Why take them somewhere where you have no idea if they will even like the food? Go home and have a look in the fridge, it saves money.
The meaning of his OP which you have quoted is clear to me:
**BEFORE **he went he thought the rumour was paranoid and far-fetched. He did NOT believe them or think them true.
**AFTER **he went he became a believer, based on his own experience.
His later statement was "I certainly didn’t consciously believe that McDonald’s drugged their food or I’d never go there," does not differ from his original statement.
There is no contradiction at all there. Both times he says that he didn’t believe the story before his visit.
However, I think at this point, based on the OP’s post #59, it is evident that he initially overstated the extent that his experience made him “a believer.”
[Moderating]
I think this thread is going a bit off-track between criticizing the OP and/or criticizing other posters for their responses to him. The OP has been chastised for possibly exaggerating his original OP for effect, and has now presented some alternatives for discussion in post #59. Let’s move on and focus on discussing the possible explanations for his experience rather than continued criticism of the way the OP was originally expressed or of his initial responses.
There is no evidence that McDonalds’ food is tainted or drugged in a way that would cause people to feel hungry even after stuffing themselves.
If there was evidence, that evidence would have to produce a chemical that can act on a specific part of the brain that can turn hunger sensations on/off.
What we have right now are suspicions that McDonalds taints its food with drugs. We have suspicions based on anecdotal evidence, no controlled studies, and nothing out of the ordinary.
Many people have had days/night/whatever, wherein their hunger was absolutley insatiable. I’ve been there, and I am only 185 lbs at 5’ 10" tall. For whatever reason (hormones, sugar levels, food ‘rush’) I ate so much food that I scared myself. I imagined my stomach about to explode, based on shear quantity I ate, but I never felt full or satisfied… or it lasted too short of a time. Nothing satisfied my hunger. I thought salty would help, then sweet, then fatty, then cold, then warm – but nothing worked.
While some people have chronic overeating binges (disorders), it is NOT unusual to catch one’s self doing it maybe once or twice in a lifetime. Binging is something that happens to thousands of people every day. Some do it in their kitchen late at night, and some find themselves seated at MickeyDee’s, or picking up Chinese Food and then going across the street to add some Arby’s to the food pile, chased by sweets.
Many people will never go through this; some will go through it once or twice… and some will go through it so often they need help.
When all the elements are right, and you are primed for a binge, it will happen.
if i walked into a mcdonalds and saw a guy eating nuggets, fries, burgers, and fish sandwiches while his kids were sipping on chocolate milk with nary a happy meal in sight, i would contemplate calling child services.
seriously though, you eat fast food fairly regularly, but your kids turn their nose at hamburgers and chicken nuggets? what’s going on here? What did they end up eating?
baprisbrey@aol.com, welcome to SDMB. Looks like you’re learning the ropes! (and that’s a compliment – many don’t, and just exit in a huff).
Since you used the term “confirmation bias,” it looks like you are not ignorant as to how we humans can so easily fool ourselves. I suggest a further study into that concept.
As far as your McDonald’s experience…you made one visit, you had one result. You also were subjected to many other forces and influences on that day, perhaps some unknown ones. If you think about it, there were easily hundreds of factors…what you ate earlier/later, what bugs you might have picked up from the air and other people, including your kids, your physical/mental state, influenced by…but this could go on forever. Your task, if you choose to accept it, is to separate what influences are a factor and which are not. That’s impossibly difficult to do, which is why science requires a strict protocol in doing experiments.
Science attempts to remove all influences except one. If the outcome varies, that one must be the cause. And that’s not valid unless you can be ab-so-lute-ly sure that there is only one.
So your visit to McDonalds, while interesting, is useless (sorry!) in determining what is going on. And jumping to conclusions that are not supported by reason isn’t very logical, is i?
I guess my question now is, What IS a drug? Is it drugging their food to intentionally change the chemicals that they contain in order to make you want to eat more? I might call that drugging. How do we decide what a drug is? Is sugar a drug? Are fats that have been modified drugs? Isn’t my Diet Pepsi drugged intentionally with caffeine in a way that is designed to make me want to drink it more?