McDonald's Manifesto

A Note: This writing was inspired by a series of facebook status posts. I have copy-pasted some of these status updates.
Also, I regret using the word "dumb" as my word choice describing people. I would like to change the language around in the future. I use "dumb" in the sense that people either both cannot see past certain ...schemes I suppose....to get them to purchase a product. Not that they have low intelligence though that may be part of the reason. A dumb person is also one who knows bu chooses to purchase anyway. They know better. I am this type of person.

This is not complete. It was written over a period of a few days and has not been revised much. However, it has been sitting as an invisible file on my desktop for months. It needs to be out there. I am posting this just as my views. I am not up to debating. Agree or not, I don't care. All I care about is that people think about things.

McDonald's Manifesto: An essay based on my personal reasoning of why United States Americans are obese and eat horrible food.

derek j thinks that having a fat child should be counted as a form of abuse and/or neglect.

derek j
I should probably give the back story to this ---- yesterday I saw what was probably a 400 lb woman eating with her two ten-year-old children who both probably weighed as much as I do. Now, I understand that some people are just made a little larger but they were eating a meat-lover's pizza with extra cheese, butter and cheese covered bread sticks, and drinking soda. Call it abuse, neglect, or misplaced love but the result is still the same --- those two children are going to struggle with their weight for the rest of their lives, be ridiculed in both middle and high school, and are at an infinitely greater risk for heart disease, diabetes, clogged arteries, heart failure, etc., etc., etc.

My argument is that while people have choice, free will, etc, the choices that people make with food habits especially is guided by factors of capitalism - class placement, advertisement, and no pressing incentives to eat healthier. It is the mother’s decision what to feed her children, and I would hope that a parent would know the basics of proper nutrition. However, in this society it is far too easy to slip off the path of decent health. Why is this? I was an obese child before obese children were normal. My family for the most part ate homemade meals around the dinner table. However, I had free reign of the snack foods and we did go out to eat often enough and I could order whatever I wanted. My mother has admitted that she used food to cure her own guilt. When I was 4-5, she went back to work and felt bad that I had to go to day care. So, she would take me out to Dairy Queen or McDonald’s when she picked me up because she felt bad and wanted to make it up to me by means of food. This may seem odd to you, but I am thankful I went through all the bad things associated with being an obese child, especially the ridicule you mention. I feel it has made me a stronger person now, that I can stick up to my bullies I guess. I am well aware that I’m due for a heart attack, but I don’t know when that will happen or how bad it will be....ignorance is bliss.

I like to observe the present and find out how it came to this present state. I see the present as neither bad or good, it just is. I think that currently I have not been able to affect anything, I accept that things in their current state are out of my control. That’s my objectivity to the current state of affairs. I am of course a subjective person when sharing opinions of a scene. I’d like to think that I am educated and intelligent enough to analyze things to as perfect a degree of objectivity as I can, though there is no such thing as complete objectivity. I do not think there is anything good about the current obesity academic, it’s straight up messed up. I’d like to know why this is happening. Here are my thoughts...

I. Citizens’ Awareness

What I meant when I said you forget we live in the USA, is that the people in this country are overall dumb. I’d guess you hang out with mainly educated people, as you are an educated person yourself, and perhaps you don’t really realize what an average American is like. I don’t know your experiences in this country and interactions with different types of people, but I feel in my experience I have had enough interaction with people from different parts of this country to make some general conclusions about people in today’s society. For the most part...people are dumb, and people are sheep. There are reasons for this. Education is usually not something one can control until they are of adult age. People are dumb because they don’t have proper education, and there are so many reasons for this. inner City Kid A is part of a school system that is in debt and can’t even afford toilet paper for their students. Country Girl A got pregnant at 16 (because she never learned what a condom was, her school taught abstinence only), dropped out of high school and is not 21 with 2 more kids and a part time job at McDonald’s (more money would be made at the strip club...) Some people are just not that bright by nature’s design. That’s not necessarily a negative thing, it just is.

If you’ve seen the movie Idiocracy, it basically takes this idea to the extreme. You think Orwell or Huxley has a proper idea of the future, I think Mike Judge did a pretty good job portraying what is a more realistic possibility if things keep going the way they are with commercialism and intelligence. It’s all starting here, now.

It’s hard to believe that some people just simply don’t have the awareness that we have, but that is the sheep-like aspect of the human condition. They aren’t even aware that things can be a different way, or that there’s another aspect of a situation or that they can think for themselves. Advertisement flourishes in this fact. It’s all about psychology.

As for those who are educated, it seems a good number of them don’t think for themselves. They are so concerned with the pursuit of capitalism that they just go with it. Eat a salad, it’s healthier than a burger, that’s what the commercial says...yet you don’t think of all the fat in the dressing. You NEED a cell phone for everyone in your family, it’s a matter of security. You NEED a DVD player and TV screens in your new mini van because your kids will be bored without it. It’s 2009, why not. I’ve worked hard to get my degrees and promotions in my 9-5 job, why not! It’s like a privilege of being middle class.



II. Laziness and Psychological Control through Advertisement

As for the subject of laziness, and this is where my statement of you don’t know what it’s like to be a parent comes in, is the fact that an adult might not have the time to make meals because they are working to simply provide for their family. Parent goes to work, sends their kid to a day care, and they might even have to work 2 jobs to gain the money needed in this capitalist society. When the basics are in mind, fast food is better than no food at all. There’s no time to consider the best nutrition or to examine every food label. This surely is not the case in all families, however perhaps that mom you saw was working 2 jobs and that was the only time she had with her kids all day. You have no idea what the situation is by just merely observation that is taken out of context. This is the objectivity/subjectivity issue I was talking about.

You mentioned instead of eating out, making pasta. That’s nice, but for a family on a tight budget that means enriched wheat flour pasta, and caned sauce with high fructose corn syrup. Maybe some factory produced beef for meat. That’s not really any better than fast food quality-wise (though it may be cheaper). Other foods people buy simply because they are cheaper and has nothing to do with laziness: Sunny D instead of OJ (I have actually heard someone say they bought sunny d because it was cheaper than the real OJ), those processed cheese squares instead of real cheese, 99 cent high fructose bread, 99 cent head of iceberg lettuce instead of the dark green leaves. Cheap food is cheap, and a lot of people can’t afford quality food even if they make food themselves. These choices DO transcend class lines. When some food is better than none and you can’t afford real ham but have to get Spam instead, you have to do what you have to do with the money you earn. A minimum wage salary does not really lend to a healthy lifestyle. Why do organic foods cost so much more? Why are foods with more pure ingredients so much more expensive? You really can’t make a choice between bad and good when you don’t have the money to begin with to spend on the best foods.

Another possibility of this scenario is that the mom can’t stand up to her kids and gives in to their wants. This is very, very common. Your argument, and what I mentioned, is that it is the parent’s ultimate decision what to feed their kids however parents are weak at times. This is where the tie in with advertisement comes in...We are all products of ultimate capitalism, none of us has lived a life without commercials, without TV, without huge national chains. This is part of being an American. We have all been a part of it from the age of impressionable youth.

Check this out....The first McDonald’s commercial - the target is children. Those children are now adults

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krXP_TUZqsk

Here is a link that says similar things, focusing on McDonaldland (kid’s advertising campaign)
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/electronic-publications/stay-free/archives/24/mcdonalds-commercials.html

(watch the Evil Grimace video...so trippy...kids then adults now)

What I’m saying is that when fast food was becoming part of everyday life, the parents of the present were children then. It was a part of their life as kids so it’s also a part of their children’s lives. Why should parents deny their kids? Why should we deny ourselves the fruits of Capitalism? Commercials tell us this... Kids, bother your parents until they give in. Parents, it’s a treat to give your kids fast food. EVERYONE DESERVES IT!

I spend a lot of time watching TV. I have a TV family, my sister and brother let their kids watch a lot of TV while my mom and I watch TV almost all evening long. personally this is more a matter of circumstance for me. A mix of social anxiety and the fact that everyone is in Kzoo at the moment means I don’t socialize. I have the TV on even if I am doing other activities like internetting or painting. I like the comfort of being “connected” with the world...this is just a wierd quirk of me being a wierd person, I don’t expect you to understand. because I am a scientific person I can see commercials as ploys and not entertainment, and I enjoy dissecting commercials and seeing all the tricks they use.

Commercials and the pursuit of advertisement has always been a part of American society. Not quite sure when in world history it developed, I suppose once we became wealthy enough to buy junk instead of providing it for ourselves. Advertising is a science. In this year of 2009 we have the most sophisticated methods which have developed over decades/centuries of getting the public to buy your product. I am thinking of earlier in the last century when people would go town to town selling “snake oil” and magic cures with phony statements and wonderful stage presence. Thanks to capitalism and the free market, advertisement is the driving force behind making commercialism a science.

Advertisement is all about psychology. Corporations know what works to get people to spend money. They have had decades of broadcast advertisement, from company pitches during live variety shows in the 50’s to Fred and Barney enjoying a Winston cigarette in Bedrock to what we have today. Some very smart people create very clever ways to manipulate the psychologies of the American public.



Commercial scenario 1....this is a recent McDonald’s commercial that features a (white middle class) mother and her son who looks to be about 4. The commercial starts with the kid not wanting to do a chore, take out the trash i believe, and the mom is looking at him saying “what do you say?” Then the kid is next to a potted plant that has been knocked over and the mom goes “what do you say?” the kid then blames it on his baby brother. There is one more scenario where the kid does or doesn’t do something, and the mom goes “what do you say?” Then the commercial goes to the mom and the kid driving around in a mini van. A Mcdonald’s sign is seen through the window of the van, and the kid goes “what do you say?”. The mom looks at him in the mirror, gives a little smile, and then you see the two at a table eating McDonald’s.

This commercial targets children because children can relate to the life of the boy...doing a bunch of chores and getting in trouble and stuff when they’re just being kids. This commercial also targets moms. it’s like a look into “real life”. The mom thinks, yeah I should give my son a treat and McDonald’s is a good place for a treat. It’s like a pseudo slice of ideal life. Eat McDonald’s, it’s a family thing. You see the psychology here in this one commercial? It pulls the emotional and psychological strings of both moms and kids.

This is why people are weak against food, particularly fast food.

Another thing about this commercial is that the boy eats the “healthy” option of mcnuggs, apples and white milk while the mom has the “healthy” option of a salad. This is another example of how people are dumb. these things really aren’t healthy, but it’s better than a burger and fries in their mind....because the commercial says it is.

This is a pretty insidious commercial. It’s not about laziness or cost, but -love- of food. Again, the child is a target.
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:622VI75mCCoJ:www.sutherlandmanifesto.com/blog/2005_09_01_archive.html+chef+boyardee+commercial+girl+love&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Commercials target emotions. It’s like classical conditioning with food and feeling good. Laziness? No, they are at the grocery store. A good way to feed your kids? The mom actually says no to the crappy chef boyardee ravioli....but somehow and some way the can and girl will be united through the bonds of LOVE. I love Chef and Chef loves me. Love of corporation, love of bad food.

They have a psychological hold on us....on the country...that is how I see it.

Food is all about emotion nowadays. “But I love Chef” as the little girl said to the can of ravioli. “I’m lovin’ it” has been a slogan for McDonald’s for several years, quite a long time as far as McD’s slogans go. It’s not even about being hungry or feeding your family. It’s about -love-, food is forever now connected to emotions. Something I’d guess came up in the past decades. An emotional connection to bad food is a perfect combination for some type of addiction. “food will make you feel good emotionally, you deserve it” is what I see in a lot of McD’s commercials. It’s all psychological.

III. Health insurance and Good Diet:

I personally have absolutely no incentive to eat healthy. The psychological draw of unhealthy food is stronger than the instinct to live as long as possible. I am covered by insurance until May 4th of next year where I may or may not continue to have health insurance. I am starting to realize prevention is key, and that I should be more proactive in being some type of fit individual. Why I think being on this earth longer is good, I don’t know, but I suppose if I want to be here as long as others want me to be here then I should take steps to ensure I don’t destroy my body.

In this society our health insurance is seen more like if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it, and wait until it is broke before doing anything about it. I haven’t had a heat attack -yet-, so I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing, while I may be fully aware that my current habits could cause problems in the future. This view of doing something after the bad happens has been propagated by the current insurance industry (this is pure opinion). So why should I or anyone else eat healthier? This society is a lot about the quick fix, the near term, what I want and what I want now. Corporations entice us to this lifestyle by advertisement and being everywhere and absolutely accessible.

Maybe if I got something in return for being a healthy individual I will have more incentive. If I shed some pounds, could I have free doctor’s visits? If I completely turn around my diet, could I have 25% off my premium and prescription coverage? I hope that with health care reform comes these incentives. Like a magnet on the fridge says - “Life is Uncertain, Eat Dessert First”. It is uncertain that I will get a heart attack so I’m not going to worry about preventative care. I’m going to worry about getting a psychological fix from this food. I see a lot of Americans thinking this way. It’s no wonder,. they don’t have any incentive either.





So this is how I see things in America. From Obese Mom #67462 with overweight kids # 4583 and 3858 eating typical American fare. You saw laziness, I saw more in this complex issue of modern society. These kids will struggle for the rest of their lives, just like millions of other Americans, but who is the one abusing them? Is it their mother, or is it our society? Our capitalist society has made this a normal thing. Corporations ARE to blame for the creation of a lot of this as they have found ways to psychologically control in a sense the minds of citizens. What is self control when one is being coerced from all aspects of media to have this lifestyle? Yes we have choices, but in reality people are constricted in what they can choose based on how much money they have in their pocket. Plain and simple. The higher your class role, the more choices you have. All of society is to blame for the outcome of these children. We have become fat gluttons, and capitalist society provides us this lifestyle. I have seen more advertisement for at-home food, so that is a plus if anything. I hope this trend does not continue, it’s sick that we might go down in life expectancy because of this lifestyle. In the same token, it is what it is. Humans learn from making mistakes, such is the way of society. I do not accept it as a good thing, however I accept it as sn issue in the time I am alive. I like to understand my time, and this is how I think it is. These conditions created the scene you witnessed. It’s not simply a matter of being lazy...it’s really quite complex.




Enablation orgy

We are a nation of enablers. We enable each other by socially accepting these practices including incorporating food into social situations (celebrations, getting together). Corporations enable common citizens through decisive psychology.