Supersize This

So I just finished watching Supersize Me! and I have mixed feelings about the movie. On one hand, it was really interesting and eye-opening to see just what kind of effect a high-fat diet can have on the human body and how disgusting fast food is. On the other hand, it completely lacked fairness and balance.

The movie makes fast food companies out to be greedy, manipulative engines. Let's just get one thing straight: we live in a capitalistic country. The goal of most businesses is to make money. It would be great if, in the process of making money, they are also doing societal good, but that would only work if people (read: consumers) (read: you) supported these efforts. In order to make money, cosumer goods companies must make their brand top-of-mind. This means money spent on advertising, product placement, consumer research. So, yes, we expect companies like Target, Nike, Dell, Whole Foods, and even McDonald's to spend lots of money in order to make lots of money.

The movie accuses McDonald's of hooking children onto their product, reeling them in at an early age so that, later in their life, warm fuzzy memories of McDonald's playgrounds will lure them back for a Big Mac. Watching the movie, you'd think these execs sat around an office coming up with ways to get those kids at a young age; to hook them for life. Isn't this a bit of revisionist history? This is like interpreting a novel after it's been written when, truly, we have no idea what the author's original intent was. Maybe McDonald's did consumer research and found that, at the time, their main consumer (read: busy mom) needed a quick bite to eat and 5 minutes away from her noisy brats. The McDonald's PlayPlace is born...to appease adult consumers. But now we interpret that as McDonald's devising PlayPlace to implant happy memories into children's minds. Most likely, no.

Where's the personal responsiblity? Everyday, we are bombarded by ads and messages. No one is holding a gun to our head, forcing us to purchase their product or idea. That decision is up to us. It is up to us to teach our children good eating and exercise habits. By now, every person on the planet, all 6.3 billion of us, should have a vague sense of how bad some foods are for us. So don't eat them. And if you do, run an extra mile.

Supersize Me! did make this point...at the very end. The great thing about this country is that we have free choice, free will. Let's exercise that freedom and make the right choices for ourselves and our kids. Stop pointing the finger at the fast food restaurants and pushing the blame and responsiblity off on others. Because if we keep doing that, we'll never stem this epidemic that's slowly killing us.