I agree it is stupid to sue McD's I HATE HATE HATE the comparison to smoking lawsuits. Puuuuuuhleeze. You CAN eat at McD's occasionally and not ruin your health. There is no single food at McD's that has ZERO positive and 100% negative like cigarettes.
...but I digress
ditto Momma on the govt not regulating itself. In CA "ketchup" constitutes a serving of vegetables in the headstart lunch program. WIC is awful. How about providing lactation support and REAL food for the moms, but instead they push formula. My highschool sold ice cream sundaes for $0.25. It was freaking subsidized. It was cheaper to get an icecream and a chocolate milk (my lunch every single day) than a real lunch.
I'm not defending McD's, but I think parents and individuals have to take control. I DO object to soda in the schools, and fast food on highschool campuses.
Oh and as for the other studies "defending" McD's I read one of the guys website pretty carefully. He either falsified some data or was WOEFULLY unhealthy to start with. His "improved" cholesterol were reported in ways to obscure the actual numbers. If you do the math he had to have the highest cholesterol in the planet to start with. And the man spent something like 5 hours in the gym every day lifting weights. I could eat 5000 cals a day and lose weight if I lived in a gym. (Besides - he got NO intestinal distress from a 100% McD's diet, that means he was already eating that stuff pretty often...any radical change in diet will affect you). And he reported that his blood pressure "improved" when it went from a "too low" 110/70 (?) to a "perfect" 120/40.
When you think about it, he went from a healthy adult male who gorged himself.
Amen! I didn't see the point in THAT little display. He figured if he was going to eat McDs he may as well do it the same way a 300 pound man would. So he starts out ordering the supersize and FORCING himself to eat every bite????? What did that prove? That he could throw up as easily as anyone else? What a maroon!
Quote:
Originally Posted by ennay
Amen- if you make money in this country you are automatically an evil corporation...regardless if people are begging for you to keep doing it
We're having this same discussion on another forum I'm on with regards to Wal*Mart.
I think that being required to let people know what the fat and calories are they are consuming, and having them available in the restaurant is necessary. I bought a calorie king book and any time we don't feel like cooking or really crave something bad for us - we look it up and make an informed and wiser choice than the one our stomachs would make for us,
There have been several places I asked if they had something available and the answer is almost always no.
Suing a restaurant for your getting fat is ridiculous. Suing them for not disclosing information however... is more of a gray area for me.
I felt the same after watching Supersize me as I did watching Walmart: the high cost of a low price. Less inclined to go there... but still sometimes I'm in a hurry or broke and I have to go there anyway.
In the end people have to make their own choices good or bad.
There have been several places I asked if they had something available and the answer is almost always no.
Suing a restaurant for your getting fat is ridiculous. Suing them for not disclosing information however... is more of a gray area for me.
With the internet today, one can nearly always find the nutritional info for just about anyplace...whether that place carries it or not. But I'd think if people were deadset against eating food without knowing the info, that it would be easier to simply pick a different place to eat than to sue them. If enough people went elsewhere to eat, they'd go out of business. But that's just it...most people don't care. Well...UNTIL they start feeling depressed about their weight, their health, whatever. Then, they don't want to blame themselves, they're already depressed enough. So they start blaming the place they kept frequenting because they weren't ready to do anything about it before and just go somewhere else.
Personally, I know that a salad is infinately better than a burger. I also know that a lettuce salad is lower cal than one with cheese, bacon, etc. etc. So whether I know the exact cals in a food, I make my choices based on where I can get certain foods that I know to be lower cal. If I don't have many cals left in a day and going to eat, I'll get a side salad at Wendy's and top it with a small chili. If I have plenty of cals left, I can get a baked potato with broccoli and a chili. But I never ever ever have enough cals left for McDs or Burger King. Alas, I live vicariously through my husband the junk food junkie. When he has something good, I take a bite.
Oh I definitely think each person is responsible for making their own choices, which is why I did go out and get a book so I can make an informed decision. I know a lot of people who think they are doing good to go get a big salad from Carl's Jr every day... only to put that packet of dressing on it and it becomes just as much fat as a burger. I don't know if they realize it, but if they could look it up... maybe they'd buy their own dressing or make their own salads for pennies instead. People like convenience more than anything else.
Not all places have a website that you can go to, granted a lot of them do, not ALL of them do. Plus then you get the argument that people who do not have the internet or cannot afford it should be penalized, etc. I'm not saying it's RIGHT, I'm just saying.. making them disclose that information makes a lot more sense to me than suing them because their foods caused people to get fat. It would no longer be their fault, if that information was handy right there in the restaurant.
This is probably one of my all time fave movies. I LOVED it when it first came out and I watch it every time it's on TV. It's a reminder of what I can so easily do to myself.
As for the losing battle....my nieces, aged 8 & 10 live with me, as do their parents, but I do the grocery shopping. I decide what we eat during the week. We have only 1 "take out" day and it's Saturday and I let the kids decide what they want, and it's usually McDonalds. I don't mind that because I know during the week they're eating healthy, nutritious food. I do that because I don't want them to end up where I am today. I don't want them falling into that fast food/junk food trap.
But it goes beyond just what they eat. They're encouraged to exercise too. Before the leg issues I have now, we used to exercise together daily and they're bugging and bugging about doing it again, so I ordered a DVD to accommodate my current condition and we'll be back exercising again.
The sad truth is, not a lot of parents/caregivers have the luxury I do. I have the time to spend with them. Their parents are with me too as is my dad, so it's almost like they have 4 parents to fall back on.
It's not a losing battle, but it's a tough one to fight.
I haven't eaten McDonalds since watching it. Regardless of the social arguments, I just don't want to put crap in my body that can cause as much damage in one month as it did to that guy. I don't understand the US attitude of not wanting the "government" to control things - to me, that's what they are for, and if it results in a healthier society, what was lost?
What is lost is capitalism...the right and ability of someone to make a buck, to build a big business. People want their product. That's how they have grown as large as they have. People like it, and keep buying it. I don't think government can regulate a healthy society. They have drugs as illegal...yet people still do them. Next they'll make alcohol illegal. Moonshine was once, and still people illegally made it. People are going to do what they like to do, regardless of how much government tries to control them.
