No Happy Meal For Chucky

Kudos to Prince Charlie for encouraging kids to eat right and avoid fast food; he made the remarks cited in this Times of London story in Dubai in the UAE, which has the second highest prevalence of diabetes in the world (didn’t know that).

Yes, I know McDonald’s sponsors sporting events and runs ads promoting a healthy lifestyle, but the fries will always be cooked in gobs of shortening (though perhaps reduced in trans fats), the burgers will always be seared thoroughly in grease before they are consumed, the drinks will always be full of sugar and/or caffeine, and the milkshakes will always be full of this white, gelatinous goo colored to simulate different flavors, and the less you know of it, the better.

You can run TV promos with all of the skateboarding kids and cartoon characters jumping around and singing that you want, but there are some universal constants, and when it comes to Mickey D’s, I just named some of them.

Also, this review of “Fast Food Nation” by Eric Schlosser points out something else for which McDonald’s has made an everlasting and indelible imprint on our lives ("behind the wall" - sorry; aaarrrgghhh!!!)…

In the early 1970s, the farm activist Jim Hightower warned of the McDonaldization of America. He viewed the emerging fast food industry as a threat to independent businesses, as a step toward a food economy dominated by giant corporations, and as a homogenizing influence on American life. In Eat Your Heart Out (1975), he argued that bigger is not better. Much of what Hightower feared has come to pass. The centralized purchasing decisions of the large restaurant chains and their demand for standardized products have given a handful of corporations an unprecedented degree of power over the nation’s food supply. Moreover, the tremendous success of the fast food industry has encouraged other industries to adopt similar business methods. The basic thinking behind fast food has become the operating system of today’s retail economy, wiping out small businesses, obliterating regional differences, and spreading identical stores throughout the country like a self-replicating code.

America’s main streets and malls now boast the same Pizza Huts and Taco Bells, Gaps and Banana Republics, Starbucks and Jiffy-Lubes, Foot Lockers, Snip N’ Clips, Sunglass Huts, and Hobbytown USAs. Almost every facet of American life has now been franchised or chained. From the maternity ward at a Columbia/HCA hospital to an embalming room owned by Service Corporation International - the world’s largest provider of death care services, based in Houston, Texas, which since 1968 has grown to include 3,823 funeral homes, 523 cemeteries, and 198 crematoriums, and which today handles the final remains of one out of every nine Americans - a person can now go from the cradle to the grave without spending a nickel at an independently owned business.

So be careful, Charlie. I know you have good lawyers, but McDonald’s has some barracudas of their own (another type of fish, if you will, besides the faux ones in their sandwiches).