McDonalds and the Death of Civilization

[DavidW]

Yeah what happened in the movie was silly.  I'm not defending it as a hard hitting documentary, just pointing that it had an effect even if only from buzz.

[Todd]

Alot of the events you're pointing at happened right after the movie.  You say correlation only, I say causation.  That movie that you said nobody saw was completely rented out of the local Hollywood video back then for several weeks.  It seems as if everyone was talking about it, and it brought so much attention to Morgan Spurlock that he landed his own tv show.  To say that it had no influence is disingenuous.

To say it had no influence is disingenuous?  Well, I'd have to say that claiming that it had quite the impact you state is rather exaggerated.  Contrary to what you say, everyone was not talking about it.  Everyone was not renting it.  And how could they?  Video stores didn't stock very many copies.  It was a small movie with a small audience, at the theaters and on video.

McDonald's started to phase out supersize meals shortly before the movie came out (check the dates), and while you may want to attribute that to the movie being released and/or pre-release buzz, the reality of lawsuits and bad press had been around for several years.  Spurlock was late to the party and capitalized on the situation.  That he got a TV show means precisely nothing.  Maybe his movie was the straw that broke the camel's back, but I wouldn't even credit it with that.  Tiny documentaries have nowhere near the influence their fans want them to.

the food is mostly pre-prepared and the people working at the store don't have that much contact with it.

They have some.  I worked at McDonald's as a teeny-bopper, and while almost all of the food is at least partly prepped, there's always contact of some sort.  A particularly clumsy or mean-spirited worker could add a little extra something to the menu.  For instance, during a lunch rush, I remember watching a manager accidentally drop a burger patty on the floor, pick it up, wipe it off, re-cook it for a few seconds, and plop it on a burger to go out the drive-thru.  Now that's good eating.  Hey, even knowing this kind of stuff goes on, I still eat there every once in a while.

It is conceivable that someone could get sick that way, but not from the meat they use and cook.  They cook all meat to the point that no bacteria humans come into contact with could live.  I've yet to hear about or read about illness attributed to the meat they serve.  E coli infected vegetables, yes, but not their meat.

I'm not an expert on their supply chain – hell, I don't know anything about it – but I'd be interested to know if McDonald's uses only locally (ie, nationally) produced meat in each country, or if they rely on a global supply chain that means sometimes the consumer is getting meat from some evil and/or sloppy foreign land.  I would not be surprised if it's the latter, though it may not be.

[ibanezmonster]

Well, they do put caffeine in the hamburger buns.

Is that why I feel tired after eating a hamburger? Caffeine makes me sleepy (then again, so does everything)...

[karlhenning]

. . . (then again, so does everything)...

Not Xenakis!

[DavidW]

Caffeine makes me sleepy depressed (then again, so does everything)...

There fixed that for you.

[The Diner]

Cancel that armadillo burger.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/health/28leprosy.html

[ibanezmonster]

Not Xenakis!

There fixed that for you.

Good point, both of you. That's why I listen to Meshuggah in my car before work, and I think Xenakis would have the same effect. Both music has the same sense of overwhelming, destructive power, which is the only thing that can charge me up instantly (other than the usual sleeping for 10 hours and staring at the computer for 4 hours in the morning).

[karlhenning]

Cancel that armadillo burger.

Would you like leprosy with that?

[The Diner]

That's why I listen to Meshuggah ...

I've tried and I've tried and I've tried to like extreme metal but the vocals ruin the music for me.

I give up.

And this has nothing to do with Mickey D's.

[drogulus]

      Once in a while you hear about people getting sick from food. There's a recall and then everything is fine. I haven't heard about anything like "these burgers make you sick and they refuse to fix it!". Wouldn't that be a big story, with lots of dead bodies or at least people stacked up in emergency rooms? I would think so.

     

Yeah what happened in the movie was silly.  I'm not defending it as a hard hitting documentary, just pointing that it had an effect even if only from buzz.

     Maybe it's a metaphor, for.....something or other. Let's not be fundamentalists about it.

[Scarpia]

I'm actually very disgusted with the state of food production in the US and in the world.  To much unsustainable practice, too many chemicals, to many anti-biotics, too much processed, junk food.  I read somewhere today that for the first time, public health officials expect young people in the US today to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents, largely due to obesity-related health problems.  Micky-D is a small part of the problem. 

[Daverz]

I posted this link about ammonia-processed "pink slime" earlier, but maybe people missed it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html

Bon appetit.

[Scarpia]

I posted this link about ammonia-processed "pink slime" earlier, but maybe people missed it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html

Bon appetit.

Yes, that is exactly what I am talking about.  Your typical American will pay large amounts of money to have a uselessly enormous vehicle which guzzles gas, to have a uselessly enormous, poorly insulated styrofoam house that costs a fortune to heat and cool, and eat hamburgers that are unfit to made into dog food. 

[Sid]

I don't recall reading of any cases of people getting sick eating at MacDonalds, the food is mostly pre-prepared and the people working at the store don't have that much contact with it.  I can't say MacDonalds food is very good, but it always amuses me that people portray them as though they are worse than Nazis.

There were a few cases outlined in the book that I read & was talking about above (Fast Food Nation by investigative journalist Eric Schlosser) of people dying from e-coli caused by beef patties that were infected at the time of slaughter (i.e. in the abbatoirs). I don't think that it was a burger bought in McDonald's, it was another similar fast food chain. But basically it doesn't matter what chain you eat in, most of their meat is sourced from the same abbatoirs (the USA doesn't really have a free market capitalist system, it's more a system of big monopolies dominating the market - & sadly we seem to be going the same way here in Australia). Mind you (as I wrote above), this book was written 10 or more years back, so some reforms to the system of slaughter and processing of meat may have happened in the USA since then. What the writer basically argued is that hygiene was very lax in USA abbatoirs, because they processed huge amounts of beef cattle per hour compard to Europe (where they process less, but the quality of the final product is much better and safer). A lot of the workers in USA abbatoirs, according to the book, are virtually illiterate and many of them are illegal immigrants from Mexico and other places south of the border. The work that the trade unions did earlier in the century to ensure not only the safety of employees but also a high quality end product was eroded by changes to law (by successive governments who were influenced by the big monopolies). Basically, companies like McDonald's are not very good to workers, they are against any reforms which would potentially effect their bottom line, and things like environmental sustainablity are at the bottom of their list of priorities (but there has been much PR & spin doctoring since to cajole the consumer into believing otherwise). It's an intersting book, and may well have been updated since the original edition from the late '90's which I read a few years back...

[Scarpia]

There were a few cases outlined in the book that I read & was talking about above (Fast Food Nation by investigative journalist Eric Schlosser) of people dying from e-coli caused by beef patties that were infected at the time of slaughter (i.e. in the abbatoirs). I don't think that it was a burger bought in McDonald's, it was another similar fast food chain. But basically it doesn't matter what chain you eat in, most of their meat is sourced from the same abbatoirs (the USA doesn't really have a free market capitalist system, it's more a system of big monopolies dominating the market - & sadly we seem to be going the same way here in Australia). Mind you (as I wrote above), this book was written 10 or more years back, so some reforms to the system of slaughter and processing of meat may have happened in the USA since then. What the writer basically argued is that hygiene was very lax in USA abbatoirs, because they processed huge amounts of beef cattle per hour compard to Europe (where they process less, but the quality of the final product is much better and safer). A lot of the workers in USA abbatoirs, according to the book, are virtually illiterate and many of them are illegal immigrants from Mexico and other places south of the border. The work that the trade unions did earlier in the century to ensure not only the safety of employees but also a high quality end product was eroded by changes to law (by successive governments who were influenced by the big monopolies). Basically, companies like McDonald's are not very good to workers, they are against any reforms which would potentially effect their bottom line, and things like environmental sustainablity are at the bottom of their list of priorities (but there has been much PR & spin doctoring since to cajole the consumer into believing otherwise). It's an intersting book, and may well have been updated since the original edition from the late '90's which I read a few years back...

E.coli in hamburger meat is not a problem, our guts are full of E.coli, and if the meat is cooked it will have been effectively sterilized anyway.  No piece of meat that comes out of a meat packing plant is ever going to be free of E.coli.  The problem is that there are a few rare, exotic strains of E.coli that produce toxins and if one of these gets into the beef you can be in trouble if the thing isn't thoroughly cooked or because even if the E.coli. is killed by the cooking the toxin might still be there.  This is a rare event and I can see that it would be difficult to entirely prevent it from happening.  The last case where some people got sick from hamburger a hug amount of meat was ordered recalled by the USDA and the company that supplied it went out of business as a result, so there are other incentives for avoiding this.  The problem is almost entirely limited to cheap hamburger meat, and can be avoided by buying hamburger meat that is ground in the store from a recognizable cut of beef, rather than from that garbage that is ground at the plant from scraps.


My problem with US meat production is excessive use of hormones, anti-biotics, and inappropriate feed (i.e., grain fed cattle). 

[Lethevich]

My problem with US meat production is excessive use of hormones

That is definitely the creepiest thing. US politics are obsessed with preventing children maturing too soon, and yet pumps their food full of growth hormones and substances which makes them look 1-2 years older than an equivelent European

[ibanezmonster]

That is definitely the creepiest thing. US politics are obsessed with preventing children maturing too soon, and yet pumps their food full of growth hormones and substances which makes them look 1-2 years older than an equivelent European

Certainly not 1-2 years older than an equivalent Dutch person, though?...

[Lethevich]

Hehe, height isn't everything

[DavidW]

That is definitely the creepiest thing. US politics are obsessed with preventing children maturing too soon, and yet pumps their food full of growth hormones and substances which makes them look 1-2 years older than an equivelent European

My vote goes for the ammonia treatment as the creepiest thing along with cheap corn feed for all animals whether it's appropriate or not (kind of go hand in hand).  I guess I'm weird, but I just don't really care about the use of hormones.

[Sid]

As a former biochemist friend of mine often says when these kinds of things come up in conversation - "We're living in a chemical soup"...