Mcdonalds Fast Food Case Study

In 2002, two teenage girls sued McDonald’s, claiming that the fast food chain was to blame for their obesity. Both had been eating at the restaurant several times a week for years. Although, was it really McDonald’s fault? No one was forcing the teenagers to dine there. "You make choices in the food you want to purchase, and if you make the wrong choices relentlessly and perpetually, you're going to have health consequences," said John Doyle, co-founder of the Center for Consumer Freedom, a coalition of restaurant operators and individuals. "But that is not something that the restaurants are responsible for." Nevertheless, the fast food giants will always find new, innovative ways to ensnare us.

In April 1999, a secret, unprecedented meeting took place in Minneapolis. Every figurehead from every major fast food corporation was in attendance. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss obesity, which was a progressing issue. The government was just beginning to chew over the topic of sugar taxes. The CEO’s had seen what happened to the cigarette companies when lawsuit upon lawsuit made them partly responsible for the health crisis they had created by thrusting their products onto the masses. They were becoming distressed, and yet, nothing had been achieved. “People were buying products that contained the most salt, sugar and fat — and if one company created a tasty formula (albeit an unhealthy one), other companies had no choice but to respond with a similar offering of their own,” said Frederic Patenaude, a writer at renegadehealth.com.

One method of advertising is those giant billboards promoting a chain’s newest burger or taco. Even though you may have just eaten an entire horse, you might begin to crave the food being adve...

... middle of paper ...

...re so abundant in America, but the fat left over from the removing process was still there and it wasn’t considered waste. So what did they do with it? With the help of the government, and enough science to create cheese in less than a day instead of fermenting it for weeks, all that milk fat surplus was turned into cheese. And again, through the help of the government, that cheese was pushed onto the masses.

Obesity: subjectively, it’s something that disgusts people. It’s a cosmetic concern, but that’s not even the troubling part. Objectively, obesity is “a condition that is associated with having an excess of body fat, defined by genetic and environmental factors that are difficult to control when dieting. It increases the risk of developing related conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and sleep apnea, among other things…”