McDonald's UK CEO Blames Video Games for Childhood Obesity

BoingBoing is reporting that Steve Eaterbrook, McDonald's UK CEO, says that video games are leading the charge in obesity. He does have the decency to at least admit fatty foods are a part of the problem, but points the finger at interactive games for keeping kids indoors and not out burning off energy. "According to The Times, McDonalds UK is 'on the brink of its best year for two decades'. The firm has enjoyed six per cent like-for-like sales growth in the last year. More than 88 million visits were made to McDonald's restaurants last month, up 10 million on the previous year." Don't forget, we have known for ages that video games make us fat and mean.

Comments

The Layer Cake of Disappointment

[eldavojohn]

We have a problem with obesity--increasingly with children.

Disappointment Level One: Someone, somewhere decided that it is one single factor contributing to this, not a combination. Blame is absolute and illogically must be placed on one thing.

Disappointment Level Two: The media reinforces Lvl 1 idea and is on a witch hunt.

Disappointment Level Three: Each alleged witch further exacerbates by shifting blame to another witch, none of them ever admitting to being part of the problem. Once a new target is acquired, they escape the public eye.

Disappointment Level Four: Lvls 1-3 act as a free pass to parents. There are so many witches to point at, surely nothing they have done resulted in this. Again, no responsibility is taken.

And all the while, we're setting ourselves up for a diabetes explosion. Although many have claimed it's been on the horizon for a long time, the numbers are starting to creep. Enjoy eating through all four layers of that cake!

Re:The Layer Cake of Disappointment

[Simon Brooke]

When I was six, I used to walk a mile to school - and a mile back - every day. In the summer all through my chidhood, I'd make myself a sandwich before anyone else was up, and be out in the woods until evening - or else, later on, drop down river in my boat on the outgoing tide and come back in on the next. When I was twelve, I used to cycle twenty miles up into the hills with a friend - and, at the end of the day, twenty miles back. Kids these days aren't allowed to do that sort of thing. They're driven everywhere. They get no time to be out by themselves. The sea - the roads - the woods - are all suddenly 'too dangerous' for kids.

It isn't video games - at least, not mostly. It's over-protection. Of course, the over-protected, housebound kids then have to be entertained, so they get given video games. Diet doesn't help, this much is true. But the real problem is over-protection.

Re:The Layer Cake of Disappointment

[cluckshot]

I own chickens. It might seem unrelated but in owning chickens I wanted to learn how best to feed them. (I learned much about their nutrition and the epidemic of obesity in the industrialized world by this.) So I went to the local feed suppliers and tried to determine the best diet for feeding the birds. The answer to the question of how best to feed the birds was always another question that made no sense. "How much Antibiotics do you want?" was the answer! After getting this illogical response about 6 times, and eliminating disease as a reason for this, I finally got it out of the feed suppliers what is going on. Chickens gain 1.3 times as much weight per pound of food consumed when fed antibiotics as when they are not fed them. Typically Chickens convert about 3kg of feed into 1kg of chicken meat but when fed antibiotics it only takes 2.3kg of feed to produce 1kg of chicken meat.

Shortly there after I learned that this was a fairly typical gain associated with feeding animals. I learned that chickens being such high efficiency converters of food into meat and eggs also didn't alter the feed that much in its content. The Future Farmers of America (FFA) typically has an experiment that shows this very well. It involves feeding a laying hen purple dyed food. The egg yolks from that hen become purple!

I learned a lot more about the breeding of birds in the years that passed and about their raising. A typical farm raised bird is sold with about a 4% margin to the farm. This leaves the farm about 25% "under water" financially if the do not feed antibiotics. This is also typical in most meat production. Unless the meat is specifically raised without antibiotics it has them in it. These antibiotics pass through to the one eating the meat and they affect that person exactly as the feed animal. How this works is pretty simple and leads right into our epidemic of fat people. Antibiotics screw of the Glucose metabolism causing Hyperglycemia. Bluntly they cause a temporary diabetic episode. This triggers insulin release and begins damage towards type II diabetes. This causes almost instant weight gain in the individual. But this is hardly all of it regards our feed animals.

McDonald's Corporation, KFC and several other major US food delivery companies have done tremendous research now covering something close to 70 years to optimize user demand and to breed foods that stimulate demand. Chickens for example are highly genetically altered through breeding and other processes so that they produce meat of this profile. Similarly most meat animals have been modified this way. In addition our vegetable crops have been altered this way as well. This modification has come to dominate the production of most food crops in the USA. Potatoes and many other crops have become altered to achieve the goals of McDonald's et al. The essential demand increase is to produce a food that demands more food by screwing up blood sugar. As a result a person gets a very high blood sugar followed by a very low one. This is very nearly a profile for diabetes and weight gain. If you are a farmer, it is very nearly impossible to get farm loans and such to raise crops outside this genetic and marketing chain. As a result it is beyond doubt that McDonald's and other similar institutions have caused our epidemic of obesity. Their success in genetic and farming control is about 20 years old now and it corresponds directly to the time when this obesity started developing dramatically. It is so deep and so profound in the food chain in North America, that it is quite possible to point out that even a vegan who never ate at McDonald's could be proved to have problems directly traced to McDonalds et al.

The point here isn't to divorce any personal responsibility from the system. Rather to point out that it is a far lessor factor than we might like to think. Frankly it has fallen to a trivial level of consideration. The real issue here is when will be realize that our foods have been screwed up to the point wher

Re:By that logic....

[AbsoluteXyro]

Violent diarrhea maybe...

In other news...

[volpone]

The tobacco industry claimed that great sex causes lung cancer.

In related news

[Sciros]

1) Philip Morris say video games are promoting smoking among children.

2) KKK Grand Wizard says video games are making children racist.

3) Exxon-Mobil says video games make children averse to renewable energy.

4) McDonald's CEO is a peen.

Re:By that logic....

[Anonymous Coward]

Violent diarrhea maybe... But in my experience, it doesn't stop at violent diarrhea, there are several more types caused by fast food:

• Explosive
• Projectile
• Neverending
• Reverse
• Liquid
• Instant
• Presidential
• Quad Core

Korea and Japan

[the eric conspiracy]

Ooops. Forgot the fact that the two most videogame obsessed countries don't have obesity problems.

Doh!

Re:By that logic....

[elrous0]

It does when it's 1 minute past breakfast and I'm trying to get an egg McMuffin.

Tell Ronald to stay the frack away from my kids

[jeko]

I'll make you a deal.

Tell Ronald to pull his creepy pedophile advertising from all the children's shows. Tell him to quit bribing my school board for access to the classroom for his "special presentations." Tell him to keep his Richard-Simmons fat ass away from whispering in my children's ears 24/7 "McDonald's is cool and magical and if your Mommy and Daddy will take you there Grimace has a special present for you."

Pull his multi-billion dollar marketing machine away from my children's playground. Stop cramming preternatural amounts of fat, sugar and salt into their food so that my children's hindbrains don't scream "My God, we found the mother lode, we'll never need to eat again!" at the first whiff. Tell Ronald to quit fucking around with the peace in my home, and I'll lay off trying to shove him in jail with all the other fat, middle-aged men who wanna wear makeup and play with little kids.

Yes, I keep my kids away from that crap, but I'm sick of Ronald spending billions of dollars worming his way into my kids' dreams telling them that Mommy and Daddy are keeping them from something special.

Parental Responsibility?! How would you react if I followed your kid around all day telling them "I'll take you to McMagicFairyLand if your Mommy and Daddy will let me..."