idgonemad.net/I Agree with Prince Chuck
Rant in Agreement with Prince Charles' assertion that the banning of unhealthy fast food is integral to basic maintenance of the public health. Alternatively, requiring businesses to better their offerings to better conform to the needs of the public health to stay in business. No one should be allowed to sell crap, be it lead paint in Chinese toys or saturated fats in 90% of a McDonald's menu. This isn't just Big Brotherly Love, this is a much larger problem involving everything from diet and public well-being to business ethics and dysgenesis.
_rant+ I Agree with Prince Chuck
Prince Charles is absolutely right to say McDonald's should be banned; most people in America are not cognizant enough about nutrition and diet to be able to use McDonald's responsibly, and McDonald's exploits that. Many of these people are parents and they pay to put this trash into their children because their innocent children want it, and the cycle repeats until children become adults and teach their children to love The Whopper. See, if for no other reason, protecting incorrigible children from corporate fast food campaigns is reason enough, in my eyes, to ban such fast food practices, and believe me, corporate America knows that children are the way to parents' wallets as a coersive element, and that is dirty damned business.
The simplest way to hedge the problem without invading the lives of private citizens with things like Parental Fitness Licenses (which will probably be considered one day, anyway, considering the epidemic proportions of unfit parents and hereditary diseases), or Family Social Inspectors making unannounced visits, is to cut off the capitalist swine that are encouraging the phenomenen to exploit for profit to the detriment of others. There is nothing respectable about a fast food conglomerate monster like McDonald's and its bottom lines, and its children's foundations do nothing to even dent the problems they bring to society. A public that supports the American Dreaminess of capitalism should not be stabbed in the back with their monetary vote, and this is what is happening here; people, by default, trust that the governing body is regulating the fitness of substances for consumption, and if it is legally salable then all is well. This is, very sadly, a misplaced trust, and it has fallen on the population to pick up the slack in this relationship between trust in fitness of salability and what is actually fit for consumption; this dissonance here is in that the modern consumer does not ask the appropriate questions, their critical thinking skills have gone under-developed through crank-'em-out schools and their SOLs, and, since no one told them to watch what they eat, they don't. The slack is not being picked up because people are ignorant, there is too little initiative to remedy that ignorance, and too many corporate entities are able to profit from that ignorance, relatively unchecked.
Back when I was in middle school, the magic number for a daily caloric intake was something like 1,800-2,000 calories for a boy, adjusted for activity. If I take this basic number and measure it against a 2,500 calorie order from Applebee's or a 1,200 calorie burger from Hardee's, there is a very clear break from basic diet management to selling tasty food-crack for big money. The end result is the bulk of the population sliding more and more to unhealthy eating habits, rising obesity rates, rising numbers of diabetes sufferers, diet-related heart disease, and Over 4 Billion Served. If businesses will not unilaterally adjust their menus, ingredients, and cooking processes of their own accord to produce a more reasonable product, then Prince Charles is absolutely right - they should not be allowed anyone's business.
idgonemad.net
I agree with Prince Chuck. Sure, you have the choice to eat what you want, and if you have the brains to back up your choice, then all is well and good. The problem is, choice requires thought - but people are not genuinely thinking about these sorts of things, whether because they were not properly taught the importance of eating well or because society has endoctrined them to it. True freedom also requires responsibility. These two things, thought and responsibility, are not required of people in the traditional ideal of freedom, and they're especially not required of parents, who are often careless and irresponsible enough to foster childhood obesity through the power of sheer ignorance, parental ineptitude, or the coersion of even less thoughtful and responsible parties like their tempermental children or commercial media parading Happy Meals and bacon-laden char-grilled gut-engorging burgers and "cheese paper" on the television. For the most part, Americans in particular have the "freedom" to be ignorant, fat fucking Freedom Fry-chomping jackasses, and their only "responsibilities" are in keeping their noses clean and their taxes paid, but when that ignorance encroaches on the health of others, particularly their young/naive/innocent/stupid/ignorant children, then there is a responsibility for those-in-the-know to raise the issue and, at the very least, speak out against the phenomenen. Worst case scenario, those-in-the-know should take action. We're in that worst case scenario; under proper use, there would never be a McDonald's on every other city block, with competing Hardees, Burger Kings, Wendy's and what-nots scattered throughout.
Copyright information is found here.