Hamburglars
Is Fast Food addictive? If it is, I suppose there’s an argument to be made that the burger mills bear some measure of responsibility for making you fat, but what’s the difference between fast food and short order cooking? Should Jacques Pepin pull his cloche down over his face like a balaclava and run for cover? (Probably not, as it’s the deep pockets that get targeted in these situations, and Michelin stars aren’t enough of a portfolio to get you in trouble just yet.) Food is essential. We can’t get by on vitamin pills and space sticks. Butter and eggs are just ingredients, of course, and from the range of products, soy has pretty much supplanted most meat and dairy food items quite successfully. Well, maybe not so much dairy, but it’s getting there. But the lawsuits are moving ahead, attempting to assign blame the way the anti-smoking suits did. The difference I see is that the cigarette companies spent years denying and hiding the truth about their products: not that smoking would kill you – the packets have the warnings, and everyone who smoked read them and believed them – but that tobacco had no addictive quality. So smokers read the warnings and didn’t care too much, because they had to have a cigarette. I quit a couple of years ago now, thanks to M., who provided an inarguable incentive and also Allen Carr’s “Easy Way” (which uses a very forthright method of deprogramming you into a mindset from which it is, indeed, easy to quit), and I’m a little amazed at how simple it was to just ignore the addiction even while acknowledging it. It’s a pretty minor jones, but it’s no less real. Do hamburgers have a similar addictive component, or french fries? Is it all that sugar? Good luck to the plaintiffs; it’s going to be a long time before they see a dime. On the other hand, PETA is suing KFC, and this seems a more honest approach and more likely to prevail. Now, just mentioning PETA is enough to set some people off, but they are consistent and determined, and there’s more than a little in favor of their argument. Animals are cruelly treated as they are processed into food, and there’s no excuse for it. Peter Singer (another red flag for many people indeed, and someone who is inevitably trotted out in these discussions –see, I’m doing it, too) argues we can have it both ways, promoting as he does the “quality of life” method of raising animals for food, and both McDonalds and Burger King have been moving lately toward something like this approach, although the scale of production they require makes it more than just difficult for them to pursue their business model and follow Singer’s proposed methodology. KFC’s promises, whether fulfilled or not, as the lawsuit may yet prove, are also a step in this direction. I’ll be very interested in how this turns out: credit where credit’s due, we seem to come closer all the time toward PETA’s vision of the world every day, so while this will probably be tossed out or settled, I expect the litigation will have an effect, unlike the obesity suits.