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One day I was having a conversation with my friend Atul, regarding the law suits against Mc Donald’s. Apparently, Atul doesn’t share my feelings when it comes to this issue. My take on the situation is that, more and more, people are looking to pass the blame, rather than take responsibility for their actions. True, eating at McDonald’s and Burger King made you fat. But no one made you decide to have all your meals at the fast food joints. No one put a gun to your head and made you polish off those fries. And it’s hardly a secret that hamburgers and French fries are high on the fat-grams and consequently the calories. People should learn to take responsibility for their eating habits. Just because you have no self-control when it comes to food, it does not give you the right to try to pass the buck on to some corporation, just because you think they can pay up.
Atul’s stand comes from “addiction”. Being an ex-smoker, he has undergone a form of addiction to nicotine, and having had to struggle to finally give up; he knows what it’s like to fight an addiction. His theory is that like one can be addicted to nicotine in tobacco that makes it so hard to give up smoking, there are some people that become “addicted” to the fat in foods that make it that much harder to give up the fried stuff. For a 400 lb man who is addicted to fats, McDonalds and the other fast food places provide such easy outlets are their pitfalls. Corporations like McDonalds should take responsibility for the food they dish out (no pun intended) to the public. The current situation is equated to the situation in the sixties and seventies, when people didn’t realize the cons of smoking, nor did they realize the addictive nature of the additives in cigarettes. Atul’s opinion is- just like the bottom fell from under the tobacco manufacturers when the effects of smoking became widely known, and the manufacturers’ ploy of adding addictive ingredients to cigarettes, a similar deluge of lawsuits is waiting to happen against fast-food places.
I’m not convinced. I don’t believe that one can become as addicted to fats as one can be addicted to cigarettes. Sure, fatty foods are enticing, and fatty foods taste so good, and we all have cravings. But being able to resist fats is more a matter of will power than a matter of trying to over-power a physical dependency. I do agree that in advertising Happy Meals for kids and enticing them with cheap little toys, the fast food restaurants are exhibiting a gross irresponsibility. When you’re aware that the food you offer is not of the highest nutritional quality, advertising it to impressionable young minds, as what food should be is immoral in my opinion, almost as much as adding addictives to cigarettes. Advertising of alcohol and tobacco has been curbed to protect the youth, and I believe, advertising fatty, non-nutritional foods should suffer the same fate. But suing a company because their USPs are fatty foods is just taking the weasel way out of taking responsibility for your weight problems.
Weight-gain is purely in the individual’s hands, when not a genetic disorder. How much you eat depends on how aware you are of nutrition and what you choose to eat. Because you choose to eat at a place that serves potatoes fried in fat, does not mean that the restaurant is responsible for your poor health. Get a grip people; take responsibility for your actions.
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Comments
Perhaps not an addiction to fats... Martin Kuplens-Ewart | Nov 22nd, 2003
You make an interesting comment about advertising to kids, but consider, perhaps, that it's not just kids that are affected by marketing, and that perhaps it is not just the obvious forms of that activity which cause our behaviour?
The use of colour, for example, may very well play a role - http://www.bbc.co.uk/homes/design/colour/psychology.shtml explains:
"Red [...] colour of sunshine and energy [and] Yellow [...] colour of sunshine and energy"
In other words, the colours that McDonald's, using that example, has chosen, specifically:
- make us happy to be there
- make us want to eat more
Whether they have specifically selected them because of those effects, i don't know.
So that's the colour of the restaurant. Next you have the scents in the place (I wonder why they don't keep the fry machine in a seperate cooking room, like Burger King does... hmm ;)).
Finally, think about the effect that it has on class-ist behaviour and thinking. I read a piece some time ago about a girl in Russia whose parents skipped eating for a day or two so that they could treat her to a meal at McDonald's for her birthday. She ate a hamburger, fries, and drank a coke, they watched. Would be interesting to look at why that would happen...
Just some thoughts.
Perhaps Atul isn't entirely wrong... perhaps he's just taking the wrong approach to the issue?
Yes, yes, yes Ashley | Nov 23rd, 2003
While my mother and I once joked that McDonald's must put something in their fries that increases consumer's cravings, I never truly believed you could become addicted to such food. There are far too many people trying to get off easy and blame the restaurant instead of take responsibility for their eating habits. Similarily, smokers that sue tabacco companies are trying to take the focus off their own bad decisions. As you can probably tell, I'm not a smoker (otherwise I'd be more sympathetic), but I do understand that the addiction is physical and very real. However I have little respect for those who are well aware of the side affects and continue lighting up, destroying themselves and everyone else while they're at it.
Anyway, I'm straying. Point: Food is not an addiction. :)
true Leighton Anderson | Nov 26th, 2003
If you get sucked in you should not take it on the company .because it was and still is your choice if you want to go you not eat.
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