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Abolish Free Choice
Burger Off! Charles Wants Big Mac BanTuesday February 27, 11:44 AM
Prince Charles has suggested banning McDonald's is the key to improving children's eating habits. He targeted the fast food chain as he attended the launch of a public health awareness campaign aimed at fighting diabetes. A McDonald's spokeswoman said Charles's remark was "disappointing". Full story here.I don't blame McDonalds for finding Charles' statement disappointing. It is.While child obesity is a very real problem, levelling all the blame on a single company seems impossibly naive. Especially when you consider that McDonalds have reconfigured their company profile to combat that. Besides, there are more companies selling high sugar, high fat products than just Chateau McDo.Ice cream, chips, cookies, cake, crisps, chocolate, candy, fried chicken, kebabs... You can buy them from supermarkets, burger vans, corner shops and kebab houses... The world's obesity problem cannot be laid at McDonald's door. That's like blaming all smoking related lung cancer on the Marlboro Man, ignoring the input of Silk Cut, Winston and all the other hundreds of tobacco companies.Besides, while McDonalds products are full of sugar, fat and empty calories, the problem is not the products themselves - it's the people who eat them and HOW they eat them.Morgan Spurlock attacked McDonalds before Prince Charles thought it was fashionable, with his brilliant documentary Supersize Me, in which he lived off nothing but McDonalds food for a month and recorded the weight gain and health issues that resulted... But what Spurlock's documentary failed to mention is that NOBODY should eat nothing but McDonald's products for a month - or even a week.Like a hot dog in the park, or a burger at the races, a McDonalds is a treat. The high calories and sugar from one treat should be balanced out by a decent diet for the rest of the week. In fact, it's even simpler than that. Healthy eating is pure mathematics. To combat obesity, people simply need to consume fewer calories than they exhert.If people can do that, they can eat at McDonalds every day - like trim 12 stone American Dan Gorske, who eats two Big Macs a day.Prince Charles suggestion that they ban McDonalds is horribly simplistic. There are families who eat at McDonalds far too much, but amongst poverty stricken people, there's a reason for that. To prepare a healthy meal for one person from the supermarket takes several pounds. Fries and a burger from McDonalds are 99p.One of the major reasons for obesity - and the reason it effects poorer people - is because healthy food is expensive. These days, healthy eating is a fad and you can buy all sorts of healthy products - but like organic food, there is a premium attached.People used to be trimmer and healthier because a regular, healthy meal could be prepared cheaply - more cheaply than going to McDonalds. These days, that situation is reversed.This indicates that there's a bigger problem than can be cured simply by banning one particular restaurant chain.But banning things is Britain's answer to everything. It's naive and it doesn't work. Human beings are individuals and are responsible for making their own decisions. If you ban McDonalds, how long will it be before you're banning ice cream, chocolate and cake? In fact, banning the Big Mac would start us towards a future in which all 'meals' are government approved and probably come pre-packed, with no variety.That's not a democracy. That's a police state, straight out of Orwell's worst nightmares.I enjoy my wine and I enjoy my food. But if we live in England, how much longer will I be allowed to enjoy them for? There are already talks about banning commercials for alcohol. Will pubs be next? Or alcohol entirely?People ask me why I want to move to the United States. Maybe it's because they still appreciate individual choice out there and have learnt their lesson from the 18th Amendment.
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Markets work. You know why? England's answer to Mc Donalds was the 'Wimpey' burger chain. I'd say, quality wise, it was below White Castles after they had been out in the sun for a week.
So besides the health risks HRH is going after, I also think he is still mad that an American Co. landed on his island and blotted out the UK's contribution to fast food cuisine - The Wimpey.