Because You Never Asked

MICKEY D's, BURGER SHLURGER, WENDY's DAT, ET AL.

     (This essay was written in the mid 90’s. With the ooze of obesity becoming more of a mainstream issue, it’s relevance, as I put it up on my website in 2009, has shown it to be ahead of its time.)

     While doing the “pandit” thing (see essay “Pornography”), I recently saw a commercial for McDonald’s which, rather than bore or annoy me, actually offended me. It went like this: it’s meal time and a baby is seated in his high chair. Placed before him are 2 kinds of baby food purees, seemingly vegetable in content. Judging from the colors, one could be spinach and the other carrot. The baby is ruefully disdaining his pediatric cuisine, all his attention focused on his manly, handsome young dad, who is sitting next to him. Daddy is lustily wading into one of those “whopping”, multi-level, hippo mouth extravaganzas that are the flagship of the McDonald’s menu. Hungry baby only has eyes for the unruly burger, his unappetizing vegetable gruel left not only totally ignored, but rudely pushed away and splattered vomit-like over the high chair. Dad eventually makes eye contact with his covetous son and smiles a conspiratorial smile, as if to say, “yeah, I know, I’d rather be eating this too”.

     There is something about this commercial that equates with child pornography or selling drugs to kids. Persuasion, in the form of billions of dollars in advertising, sponsorship, and public relations, is the most important ingredient in “fast food”. A tremendous amount of this persuasion is directed at children. This is not just evidenced in their commercials, but in many other ways as well. Whenever there is a local event aimed specifically at children --- an arts and crafts fair, a circus, a kid’s athletic competition, a Halloween party in the park, etc. --- you can bet that last cheeseburger sitting forlornly under the infra-red light that one of the fast food moguls will be a primary sponsor. This youthful indoctrination is a cornerstone of the fast food industry.

     There are a number of ways this style of dining might be called into question. The dietary debate over cholesterol, heart disease and poor physical form, are front line medical issues. There are environmental concerns in the form of rain forest destruction, top soil erosion, water consumption, etc., all factors in bringing the beefy raw material of this industry to the table (or the automobile). Solid waste disposal is still a problem, although the industry has begun to address this dilemma. Many might find the dehumanizing neon drive thru ambiance not to their liking, but a kid raised in this culinary decor might not develop such sensitivities.

     There is nothing irrelevant in anything that has just been said, but for me, the nub of it all is QUALITY!

     I’m old enough to remember when this style of dining did not exist. At the very least, you sat on a stool, spoke to a waitress and had your hamburger cooked after such communication. As my life slid into middle age and my body began to show up in places I’d never considered before, hamburgers and the like began giving way to what could be described --- given the marketing strategies of not just fast food but the mega-agro business itself --- as “unreal food for unreal people”. But I still remember my more carnivorous days.

     “My” hamburger had little kinship to the things they are selling by the trillions these days. “My” hamburger had style and personality. “My” hamburger hissed and sizzled. It gave forth with juice. It could be cooked to differing preferences. It had a different color inside than out. “My” hamburger was never ever wrapped in aluminum foil. Even without ketchup, mustard, relish, pickles, lettuce, onions, tomato, bacon, cheese and who knows what else, it had something today’s assembly line burgers seem to ignore ---

     I wonder if today’s kids have any idea how a piece of beef should taste?

     Compare “my” burger to the lifeless slab of colorless flesh camouflaged under an avalanche of brightly colored, watered-down condiments dished out at the “drive thru” --- actually, nothing is “dished out” at the drive thru --- handed out at the drive thru; is this what we fought the Cold War for? How paradoxical is it that the nation leading the world into the 21^st century has managed to collectively lower its eating standards to such unappetizing depths? Perhaps even more relevant are the frightening persuasion powers that have turned such caloric intake into something desirable for millions of people.

     Obviously, cost is a factor here. These burgers are cheap. But it is a fraudulent kind of economy brought on by a massive cultural lobotomy into beef consumption. The fact that a slab of beef can be bought cheaper than a stalk of broccoli or a small basket of strawberries, considering the behemoth effort necessary to get beef to the table (feed, growing the feed, water, refrigeration, etc.), is one of the great economic perversions of all time. But just as there are some things one might buy at any price, there are other things that could not be given away. I’d have to be in “condition holocaust” before I’d ever down one of Wendy’s dad’s concoctions, or a “Big Mac” or “Whopper“, and not because of any dietary philosophy, but more for the uninspiring quality of the meal. My mother didn’t feed me stuff like that. She fed me food (not just caloric intake).

     The inspiration for this essay was the following true story: I was in an automobile with a person who was “starved”. Given his condition, he decided to swing through the nearest drive-thru (there’s always one near), where he ordered 2 cheeseburgers. With great gusto, he waded into the first one, got half way through, suspiciously examined it and decided it had been “nuked”. My own perusal of the wrinkled, exhausted bun, corroborated this prognosis. My companion decided he was not hungry anymore, thus showing the versatility of fast food, which can cure hunger in a number of ways. He was going to throw it away when I noticed “Pooh”, a black chow-chow mutt who habitually roams my neighborhood, dreamily sunning himself on the sidewalk. We stopped and made an offering.

     “Pooh” whoofed it right down. He liked it.

     Relevant Material: “The game consists in producing and consuming in such a way that in our modern civilization, not only is it considered honest but intelligent to spend 1% in producing superfluous objects and 99% in persuading us that we need them”. From the speech given by the great Spanish writer, Miguel Delibes, upon his induction into the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language. This speech has been published in a volume entitled “Un Mundo que Agoniza” (A World in Agony), and should be required reading in any school anywhere in the world.

     Post Script: As I write this in January of 2009, with the sport of American football immersed in the Viagra-like stimulation of its season’s culmination, I’ve noticed that McDonald’s has just about bought both the professional and “amateur” branches of this industry. Its presence in both media advertising and logo infestation at the sites, could almost be called omnipotent. Their commercials on TV are boasting of a promotion on 2 specific days of the week where you can buy their usual hamburger for 55 cents! This is about half as much as what a Hershey bar costs. Can you imagine the bloodbath that must be necessary to provide such volumes of beef.

     These facts also demonstrate the devastating power one with access to Big Media can wield. No amount of dietary science or governmental guidelines can match such promotional muscle. (For more, see essay “Social Engineering”).          

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Email: JerryG@postcman.info