McDonalds: The New Tobacco

Everybody needs a villain these days (as if Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden don’t fit the bill), and the latest villain on the American scene is McDonald’s. While McDonald’s has had a longtime villain on staff, the Hamburglar, the entire company has been portrayed often as the bad guy on the block.

There’s the new movie, Supersize Me, which documents one fellow’s exploits as he ate McDonald’s food for every meal over the course of a month. The shocking results were that he got very sick and very fat.

The latest attack on McDonald’s comes in the form a study which suggests that eating incredibly large amounts of fast-food (read McDonald’s) for breakfast is bad for you:

The study included nine healthy, normal-weight adults who were fed a breakfast of one Egg McMuffin, a Sausage McMuffin and two servings of hash browns from McDonald’s. The meal weighed in at 910 calories, 81 grams of carbohydrates, 51 grams of fat and 32 grams of protein.

While the hearty breakfast may be on the supersize side, lead study author Dr. Ahmad Aljada of the State University of New York at Buffalo said it reflects what many Americans order up at fast-food restaurants.

“We wanted to look at a typical American meal,” he told Reuters Health. “We’re not targeting McDonald’s.”

“Typical American meal?” “Not targeting McDonald’s?” First of all, nobody who would eat that much food for McDonald’s breakfast is concerned about their health. I might could be persuaded to eat two breakfast sandwiches on a hungry day, but two orders of hash browns as well? Again, the moral of this “study” is that if you eat outrageously large amounts of McDonald’s, you will die a most gruesome death.

The frenzy with which such anti-McDonald’s reports are generated has been seen before in America’s vilification of the Tobacco industry. The industry, not the individual, is fully responsible for all sorts of evils caused by the plotting and conspiring of “big tobacco.” Never mind that people have known for decades that smoking is harmful to one’s health.

The tobacco industry can now take a breather (or smoke break, if they prefer). McDonald’s has replaced them as public enemy number one. It won’t be long until every Big Mac has its own surgeon general’s warning.

3 thoughts on “McDonalds: The New Tobacco”

  1. Wow, I can eat all that for only 51 grams of fat?

    I don’t understand how that can be a ‘typical’ fast-food breakfast. There’s no way I could even finish all of that at breakfast.

  2. “The latest attack on McDonald’s comes in the form a study which suggests that eating incredibly large amounts of fast-food (read McDonald’s) for breakfast is bad for you.”

    ===========================================

    Special delivery from the “DUH!” truck…

    What is it that compels the average American to abdicate every shred of responsibility and then try and blame someone else for his or her circumstances? I don’t smoke cigarettes, and I find the smell rather unpleasant, but the fervor with which the trial lawyers have gone after “big tobacco” (a phrase I hate, incidentally) is sickening. You know cigarettes will probably kill you if you keep up the habit, so if you get lung cancer you can’t really place the blame anywhere but in your own lap.

    Sorry, Jared. This is a bit of a hot button for me. I’m normally a very pleasant person – the kind of guy every girl wants to bring home to Mother. 🙂

  3. you guys are so dumb, obviously they ate that much to speed up the results to show you. If you eat that much in a longer period of time it will still add up. thats the problem with you people, you think just cause you dont do that much in that short of time, it wont affect you. what they are proving is how mcdonalds really is. not why its their fault ur a fatass. the facts the say about mcdonalds is true, they aren’t saying its their fault all of you are fat.. morons

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