As I begin this paper I am watching my spouse and son share a moment of bonding over food and sports conversation. Sitting next to me is my own portion of this hectic weeknight indulgence, McDonald’s french fries, which makes the work I am about to discuss that much more poignant because it is woven into the fabric of my own life. In his 2001 essay “The Trouble with Fries” Malcolm Gladwell makes a simple statement, “Fast food is killing us. Can it be fixed?” These words are meant to provoke a deep, visceral reaction from the reader so that they will keep reading but he isn’t wrong in his overall assessment. In the intervening 16 years since this essay was first written the fast food industry has undergone many changes but the basic question
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Human being are predictable to say the least. We learn from a young age what we like and what we don’t. This is why when we a hurt, sick, or scared we crave those tastes of our childhood. For many this may be an ethnic specialty our grandmother made, for some it might be the Happy Meal out over worked mother picked up on the way home from the doctors office. We are conditioned from childhood to find comfort in the familiar. It is both a means of human survial and a means of indocturination that companies have picked up on for use in marketing campaigns. In the 2008 documentary “Consuming Kids” delves into the lengths companies go to to secure “life long consumers” by using psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and behavioral scientists to help shape and cement a childs brand preference. (Adriana Barbaro) With most families requiring both parents to work to maintain the household children are left to their own devices with electronic “babysitters” more often than ever before. This leads to a situation where children as young as two years old are being marketed to by mass media that see them as consumers. Children from 6 months old to 12 years have the direct buying power of approximatly $40 Billion per year and the dirrected buying power of $700 Billion per year, that is to say that marketers know that if they can get children to …show more content…
Does a company have the responsibility to provide only “reasonable” serving sizes? Who decides what a reasonable serving size is? Who takes responsibility when reccomendations are ignored? These are all questions that exist in the legal relm when discussing culpability for fast food giants in obesity litigation. Critics of McDonald’s contend that they manipulate consumers into choosing higher calorie options by labeling them “value meals” or glamorizing them by “supersizing”. (Werner, Feinstein and Hardigree) On the other side of the argument any mandate from the government comes at the exspense of both free market and personal liberty. So who gets to make the call? The brainwashed consumer? The greedy corporation? The totalitarian government? Or does a uneasy truce between the market and the government reglation have to exist where the consumer is allowed to kill themselves as they so choose. (Diller) The old adage, “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink” seem to ring true here. The American people have to want to consume less cheaply produced, addative laced crap before they will stop consuming it. Not in banning these items from them or shaming them for consuming these products. We are moving towards healthier options as a whole but our
Human being are predictable to say the least. We learn from a young age what we like and what we don’t. This is why when we a hurt, sick, or scared we crave those tastes of our childhood. For many this may be an ethnic specialty our grandmother made, for some it might be the Happy Meal out over worked mother picked up on the way home from the doctors office. We are conditioned from childhood to find comfort in the familiar. It is both a means of human survial and a means of indocturination that companies have picked up on for use in marketing campaigns. In the 2008 documentary “Consuming Kids” delves into the lengths companies go to to secure “life long consumers” by using psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and behavioral scientists to help shape and cement a childs brand preference. (Adriana Barbaro) With most families requiring both parents to work to maintain the household children are left to their own devices with electronic “babysitters” more often than ever before. This leads to a situation where children as young as two years old are being marketed to by mass media that see them as consumers. Children from 6 months old to 12 years have the direct buying power of approximatly $40 Billion per year and the dirrected buying power of $700 Billion per year, that is to say that marketers know that if they can get children to …show more content…
Does a company have the responsibility to provide only “reasonable” serving sizes? Who decides what a reasonable serving size is? Who takes responsibility when reccomendations are ignored? These are all questions that exist in the legal relm when discussing culpability for fast food giants in obesity litigation. Critics of McDonald’s contend that they manipulate consumers into choosing higher calorie options by labeling them “value meals” or glamorizing them by “supersizing”. (Werner, Feinstein and Hardigree) On the other side of the argument any mandate from the government comes at the exspense of both free market and personal liberty. So who gets to make the call? The brainwashed consumer? The greedy corporation? The totalitarian government? Or does a uneasy truce between the market and the government reglation have to exist where the consumer is allowed to kill themselves as they so choose. (Diller) The old adage, “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink” seem to ring true here. The American people have to want to consume less cheaply produced, addative laced crap before they will stop consuming it. Not in banning these items from them or shaming them for consuming these products. We are moving towards healthier options as a whole but our