Fast food isn’t to blame
COMMENTARY
Katherine Ortega

In a brilliant example of people finding a way to blame their behavior and problems on anyone but themselves, lawyers have revised the obesity lawsuit against McDonald’s.

According to a report from CNN.com, this lawsuit claims that McDonald’s uses “deceptive practices in the advertising, processing, and sale of foods, including Chicken McNuggets, Filet-O-Fish , Chicken Sandwich, French fries, and hamburgers.”

I see no deception. I have never seen a McDonald’s advertisement in which they pretend for a second that their food is healthy, or even that their Chicken McNuggets are made with chicken. Everyone knows that the “Mc” in “McNuggets” means “not chicken,” and everyone knows that the “O” in Filet-O-Fish means “not fish.” If there had actually been anything close to resembling either fish or chicken in these foods, the battering, frying, and smothering in sauces would remove any possible health benefits that could be gained. And anyone who has ever been exposed to television, newspapers, magazines, or other people in the last decade knows that McDonald’s is not health food, and that things that are dipped in batter and then deep-fried in oil are generally bad for you.

The plaintiffs in this lawsuit argue that McDonald’s should be held accountable for the obesity of a 19-year-old-woman who weighs 270 pounds and a 14-year-old girl who weighs 170 pounds. The father of one of the plaintiffs claims that he always believed that McDonald’s was healthy for his children.

The plaintiffs in this case are surprisingly not from a cave in Antarctica, but from New York. There is absolutely no reason to believe that they sincerely thought that a Super Size serving of French fries was just as healthy as a bag of carrots. The truth is that unhealthy food is much easier to obtain than healthy food, and it tastes better too. That is why people eat it. We can delude ourselves all we want, but deep down we know that although an apple is a healthy choice for dessert, it does not taste as good as apples sautéed in butter and caramel and then smothered with ice cream.

Who doesn’t want to blame all their problems on a nameless faceless corporation and get tons of money in return? I would love to go get a dozen Krispy Kremes, eat all of them, and then sue the company for a million dollars for making such tasty donuts. But I don’t do that, because I choose not to give into the temptation of Krispy Kremes.

It seems that people often forget that they have a thing called a “brain” and that they can use this “brain” to make choices. Even children have this “brain.”

Although it is probably a goal of some advertisers, we are not yet to the point where after viewing a commercial, movie or television program we walk around in a zombie-like state chanting “must eat Big Mac.”

People eat McDonald’s because it is cheap, fast, and reasonably tasty, not because they are forced to by commercials.

Katherine Ortega Courtney is a psychology graduate student from Santa Fe, N.M. She can be reached at (k.e.ortega@tcu.edu).