Mood: agitated but humored.
Why:
Hi, my name is Catherine Adams. I am Corporate Vice President for Worldwide Quality, Food Safety and Nutrition for McDonald's. You are probably wondering, what does that really mean? I'm an expert in food quality and food safety for McDonald's restaurants worldwide.
The above claptrap is a direct quotation from Catherine Adams' bio on the McDonald's Corporate Responsibility Blog (accessed 2007-03-13). I'll spare you the boredom of her résumé that followed. (Summary: she blissfully worked for several animal destruction firms, both commercial and governmental.)
This is a trainwreck! I had to read more. A post on 2007-03-06 spoke of "KPIs" (key performance indicators) such as greenhouse gas emissions, but I assume that most "KPIs" are based on how much money, how much marketshare, how much profit.
How about another KPI: how many people ignore the still-disease-promoting-but-slightly-less-so-and-only-in-select-countries options and go straight for the quicker death instead.
After that, I've had enough. I've chosen to avoid the McDonald's train wreck today and as long as possible into the future. The last time I stopped at McDonald's was to get a salad, which was basically overpriced fruits and vegetables.
That was a lame experience. It made me sad that I used to be one of those people that I now saw from an anthropological point of view, mindlessly wandering in with a wad of cash (oh wait, now you can use a credit card and carve yourself out a helping of debt while you destroy your body) and then shoving, not just like, but as a true addict, all of the filth that predominates the menu.
It's not just McDonald's. It's other places that used to frequent, or used to only visit on occasion. Innocent people, feeding themselves rubbish and purchasing it to eat when they get home, or to satisfy their addictions on the way home, all the while finding some sort of pseudo-science in the complex and confusing web of nutrition facts that they've learned over the years to justify what they just did. And then feeding their kids that rubbish. And I used to be one of those innocent people; and I used to feed my son that rubbish. (Thankfully I changed my ways early on, and had been raised to at least eat semi-healthfully.)
The trend "feels" to me like it's shifting in favor of true health. I can only hope that this is the case on a global scale, and I can only do whatever I can to help people I know and love discover truths about nutrition themselves. They're truths that many Americans don't want to reckon at first, but that modern science is getting good at pinning down.
Happy eating!
