McD's Contribution to a Heathier You

[rob]

people kept telling this bitch to put down the mastodon-jerky 24,000 years ago but no!!!!

 

those are some big milk jugs.

[ivan]

Hence, the problem.

yes - the problem that people are people - wait, why's that a problem?

[ivan]

"Dionysius of Heracleia was notorious for his appetite, and eventually grew so weighty that he could scarcely budge: he suffered from apnea or narcolepsy besides, prompting his doctors to prick his flesh with needles whenever he fell asleep on his throne. A contemporary poet has him declare that he aspired to end his days "on my back, lying on my many rolls of fat, scarcely uttering a word, taking labored breaths, and eating my fill," for of all the ways a man might die, an excess of luxury was the only truly happy death. Nevertheless, he lived to what was then the ripe old age of 55, earning a reputation for fairness and generosity that competed with his size as an object of astonishment."

 

 

[ivan]

ok yes, it is a crisis of obsesity - but really it's a just a subset of the crisis of affluence - the same engine that drives us to get porky is also driving us to kill all the brown people and the goddamn polar bears

[rob]

Hence, the problem.

yes - the problem that people are people - wait, why's that a problem?

 

The problem is that fat people don't seem to get it. I saw a fat woman in the store once, asking her fat friend if Captain Crunch was "healthy." She bought several boxes.

 

We use laws to protect the dumb. That's why we don't let them abuse antibiotics, or eat botulism. Maybe we need a label that says, "No. While delicious, Captain Crunch is not healthy." Or something. I'd be all for a fat tax.

 

 

[j_b]

You must be joking when you claim that alternative to junkfood is available in all neighborhoods.

 

Of course it's available. I don't think "availability" is really the problem. I don't think fat people are fat because they just can't FIND good food. I was really poor once, and I still ate healthy food. Because I'm not dumb.

 

I think junk food prob tastes better, is cheaper, and easier to prepare. But that doesn't mean healthy food isn't "available."

 

Hence, the problem.

 

No, the alternative isn't available for everyone, which is reflected in more obesity among the poor.

[rob]

You must be joking when you claim that alternative to junkfood is available in all neighborhoods.

 

Of course it's available. I don't think "availability" is really the problem. I don't think fat people are fat because they just can't FIND good food. I was really poor once, and I still ate healthy food. Because I'm not dumb.

 

I think junk food prob tastes better, is cheaper, and easier to prepare. But that doesn't mean healthy food isn't "available."

 

Hence, the problem.

 

No, the alternative isn't available for everyone, which is reflected in more obesity among the poor.

 

But, the poor are more stupider. That's why they're poor.

[j_b]

quit hating on jack!

 

I have serious doubt that Jack in any period would eat much of the commercial crap that is today called food.

[ivan]

No, the alternative isn't available for everyone, which is reflected in more obesity among the poor.

maybe poor black folk just have different values than you? fat albert was a goddamn hero of the people and leader of the gang!

 

[j_b]

No, the alternative isn't available for everyone, which is reflected in more obesity among the poor.

 

But, the poor are more stupider. That's why they're poor.

 

Right, and the other demographics are the prisoners of the boob tube who don't give a fuck if there is an alternative because they think that stuff just tastes great! LOLZ

[rob]

god damn I'm going to buy a bucket of fried chicken tonight. YUM!

[ivan]

quit hating on jack!

 

I have serious doubt that Jack in any period would eat much of the commercial crap that is today called food.

senator, you clearly did not know jack falstaff!

 

fucksakes - mongols drank fermented horsemilk at room temps, mixed w/ fresh horse blood - i'm pretty certain they wouldn't scared off by a ho-ho and i'm damn sure they'd murder you for a can of spam!

[j_b]

No, the alternative isn't available for everyone, which is reflected in more obesity among the poor.

maybe poor black folk just have different values than you?

 

It's not solely a poor black problem.

[ivan]

I'd be all for a fat tax.

 

not sure 'bout that, but for chrissakes they coudl stand to have to buy extra plane tickets

[rob]

I don't see what's wrong with a fat tax. We charge heavy cars and trucks a premium, because of the erosion they cause on the roads.

 

Same concept.

[j_b]

I have serious doubt that Jack in any period would eat much of the commercial crap that is today called food.

senator, you clearly did not know jack falstaff!

 

fucksakes - mongols drank fermented horsemilk at room temps, mixed w/ fresh horse blood - i'm pretty certain they wouldn't scared off by a ho-ho and i'm damn sure they'd murder you for a can of spam!

 

People who enjoyed the good flesh wouldn't touch all that junk with a 10' pole with any regularity. I certainly don't if ever. Most of that garbage doesn't taste good. It's all salt, fat or sugar.

[rob]

Salt + Fat + Sugar = FUCKING YUM

[j_b]

sounds gross to me.

[ivan]

sounds gross to me.

spam burgers actually are pretty damn tasty

 

bottom line, eat what you want and feel as smug as you want for your superior taste, just lay off telling everybody else what they should have on their plate? and fucking corporations, sure an easy target and mostly soulless, but jeebus, they are mostly just giving people what they want, even if through commericials they are being sure to remind people what that is

[j_b]

right, acculturation via mass dross is a conspiracy theory.

[j_b]

spam burgers actually are pretty damn tasty

 

just to be clear: fat, salt and/or sugar are most often necessary ingredients of cooking but they shouldn't overpower everything else like it is the case with the overwhelming majority of commercial fare.

[prole]

...and fucking corporations, sure an easy target and mostly soulless, but jeebus, they are mostly just giving people what they want, even if through commericials they are being sure to remind people what that is

 

Corporate marketing is about creating new wants and needs where none existed before. For someone who fancies history, the advent of consumer capitalism in the 20th century makes for some interesting reading...

[JayB]

[

For real? If you were the kind of guy that supported the "War on Drugs" then I'd be able to detect a thread of logic connecting the desire to have the state supervise what sane adults can ingest - whether it's hashish or hash-browns.

 

Drinking too much, having sex with too many people, travel to regions with endemic disease, participation in risky activities in the outdoors, eating rare meat, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc - basically every sphere of activity that functioning societies have both entrusted sane adults with, and *required* of them since the beginning of civilization carries with it certain risks and responsibilities.

 

Any society in which adults require an bureaucratic apparatus to supervise *eating* is a society that is already circling the drain. It's over.

 

Good time to invoke one of the better passages on the hazards of another kind of prohibition:

 

"In the United States, the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages are prohibited. Other countries do not go so far, but nearly everywhere some restrictions are imposed on the sale of opium, cocaine, and similar narcotics. It is universally deemed one of the tasks of legislation and government to protect the individual from himself. Even those who otherwise generally have misgivings about extending the area of governmental activity consider it quite proper that the freedom of the individual should be curtailed in this respect, and they think that only a benighted doctrinairism could oppose such prohibitions. Indeed, so general is the acceptance of this kind of interference by the authorities in the life of the individual that those who, are opposed to liberalism on principle are prone to base their argument on the ostensibly undisputed acknowledgment of the necessity of such prohibitions and to draw from it the conclusion that complete freedom is an evil and that some measure of restriction must be imposed upon the freedom of the individual by the governmental authorities in their capacity as guardians of his welfare. The question cannot be whether the authorities ought to impose restrictions upon the freedom of the individual, but only how far they ought to go in this respect.

 

No words need be wasted over the fact that all these narcotics are harmful. The question whether even a small quantity of alcohol is harmful or whether the harm results only from the abuse of alcoholic beverages is not at issue here. It is an established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are deadly enemies of life, of health, and of the capacity for work and enjoyment; and a utilitarian must therefore consider them as vices. But this is far from demonstrating that the authorities must interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions, nor is it by any means evident that such intervention on the part of the government is really capable of suppressing them or that, even if this end could be attained, it might not therewith open up a Pandora’s box of other dangers, no less mischievous than alcoholism and morphinism.

 

Whoever is convinced that indulgence or excessive indulgence in these poisons is pernicious is not hindered from living abstemiously or temperately. This question cannot be treated exclusively in reference to alcoholism, morphinism, cocainism, etc., which all reasonable men acknowledge to be evils. For if the majority of citizens is, in principle, conceded the right to impose its way of life upon a minority, it is impossible to stop at prohibitions against indulgence in alcohol, morphine, cocaine, and similar poisons. Why should not what is valid for these poisons be valid also for nicotine, caffeine, and the like? Why should not the state generally prescribe which foods may be indulged in and which must be avoided because they are injurious? In sports too, many people are prone to carry their indulgence further than their strength will allow. Why should not the state interfere here as well? Few men know how to be temperate in their sexual life, and it seems especially difficult for aging persons to understand that they should cease entirely to indulge in such pleasures or, at least, do so in moderation. Should not the state intervene here too? More harmful still than all these pleasures, many will say, is the reading of evil literature. Should a press pandering to the lowest instincts of man be allowed to corrupt the soul? Should not the exhibition of pornographic pictures, of obscene plays, in short, of all allurements to immorality, be prohibited? And is not the dissemination of false sociological doctrines just as injurious to men and nations? Should men be permitted to incite others to civil war and to wars against foreign countries? And should scurrilous lampoons and blasphemous diatribes be allowed to undermine respect for God and the Church?

 

We see that as soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individual’s mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest detail. The personal freedom of the individual is abrogated. He becomes a slave of the community, bound to obey the dictates of the majority. It is hardly necessary to expatiate on the ways in which such powers could be abused by malevolent persons in authority. The wielding, of powers of this kind even by men imbued with the best of intentions must needs reduce the world to a graveyard of the spirit. All mankind’s progress has been achieved as a result of the initiative of a small minority that began to deviate from the ideas and customs of the majority until their example finally moved the others to accept the innovation themselves. To give the majority the right to dictate to the minority what it is to think, to read, and to do is to put a stop to progress once and for all.

 

Let no one object that the struggle against morphinism and the struggle against “evil” literature are two quite different things. The only difference between them is that some of the same people who favor the prohibition of the former will not agree to the prohibition of the latter. In the United States, the Methodists and Fundamentalists, right after the passage of the law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, took up the struggle for the suppression of the theory of evolution, and they have already succeeded in ousting Darwinism from the schools in a number of states. In Soviet Russia, every free expression of opinion is suppressed. Whether or not permission is granted for a book to be published depends on the discretion of a number of uneducated and uncultivated fanatics who have been placed in charge of the arm of the government empowered to concern itself with such matters.

 

The propensity of our contemporaries to demand authoritarian prohibition as soon as something does not please them, and their readiness to submit to such prohibitions even when what is prohibited is quite agreeable to them shows how deeply ingrained the spirit of servility still remains within them. It will require many long years of self-education until the subject can turn himself into the citizen. A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police."

 

 

 

 

 

tl;dnr.

 

However, regarding your comment on the war on drugs: I think drugs should be legal, and should also come with a warning label. Sounds pretty consistent to me.

 

I'm not talking about prohibition, so I don't know what relevance that long-ass ramble had.

 

You're talking about using the state as a coercive mechanism to (try to) supervise what people eat - based on the notion that people who have the right to choose who they vote for, who they marry, where they live, what career to pursue, etc, etc, are too dumb to be entrusted with choosing what to eat.

 

The passage above simply asks - if you're for granting the state the power to prevent people from drinking "for their own good," - why stop there?

 

If you're convinced that a significant fraction of the lesser beings that you share the country with are too stupid to be entrusted with choosing their own food - "for their own good" - why stop there?

 

If you really believe that - how can you argue that they shouldn't have their driving, voting, mating, etc subject to some kind of state supervision to insure that they make the right choices?

 

BTW - what's the normative framework you'd like to use as a basis for establishing the correct way to eat, live, etc? Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth, as in Redmond....?

[JayB]

"it is not for society or the gov acting on their behalf to tell me what to do w/ my body beyond no-shit basics like don't kill people - it is also not for those same folks to de facto force me by excessive taxes or regulations."

 

Amen.

 

The above should be carved into all four sides of a 200x200x500 obelisk and sited in front of every capitol building in the land.

 

Not a terribly long leap from this quote from Macaulay:

"The most probable conjecture is that he was actuated by an inordinate, an unscrupulous, a remorseless zeal for what seemed to him to be the interest of the state. This explanation may startle those who have not considered how large a proportion of the blackest crimes recorded in history is to be ascribed to ill regulated public spirit. We daily see men do for their party, for their sect, for their country, for their favourite schemes of political and social reform, what they would not do to enrich or to avenge themselves. At a temptation directly addressed to our private cupidity or to our private animosity, whatever virtue we have takes the alarm. But virtue itself may contribute to the fall of him who imagines that it is in his power, by violating some general rule of morality, to confer an important benefit on a church, on a commonwealth, on mankind. He silences the remonstrances of conscience, and hardens his heart against the most touching spectacles of misery, by repeating to himself that his interventions are pure, that his objects are noble, that he is doing a little evil for the sake of a great good. By degrees he comes altogether to forget the turpitude of the means in the excellence of the end, and at length perpetrates without one internal twinge acts which would shock a buccaneer."

 

To this:

 

"Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

 

Although mostly forgotten today, the "chemist's war of Prohibition" remains one of the strangest and most deadly decisions in American law-enforcement history. As one of its most outspoken opponents, Charles Norris, the chief medical examiner of New York City during the 1920s, liked to say, it was "our national experiment in extermination."

 

http://www.slate.com/id/2245188/

 

 

 

 

 

 

[prole]

Trying desperately to find "big brother" in the work of groups actually working towards greater food security, health and nutrition such as this one, but I'm having trouble. Maybe endlessly invoking big, bad government helps you "win" in the Friedmanite mobius strip you live in (and bore us with), but it's pretty irrelevant to anybody with boots on the ground.