Personal Choice and Responsibility: Don't Blame McDonalds if You Are Obese

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After Thanksgiving dinner in 2002, Morgan Spurlock sat on his couch to relax after his huge Thanksgiving feast. As he flipped through the channels, he came across news about two women who were suing McDonalds for making their children obese. This report made him question fast food and its nutritional value, and stimulated him to make a daring and risky choice. He wanted to prove a point and educate people about the dangers of fast food by changing his diet for a month to strictly McDonalds and to get it all on video. Spurlock, 33, was physically fit and healthy, weighing 185 pounds, being six foot 2 inches tall, and having an average cholesterol level of 168, at the start of his mission, but things became very shocking. His cholesterol shot to a stunning 230, he gained over 25 pounds, his liver became toxic, and he became dangerously sick. Later, he released the video of his experience, which he called “Super Size Me”, at the Sundance Film Festival and won the title of best director of a documentary. Is the fast food industry to blame for getting him so sick? His experiment shows that regulating your diet to eating just McDonalds could get you unhealthy and sick, but that’s where the problem lies. If one limits their food intake to just fast food, problems will arise. He also lacks other argumentative factors that are needed to justly accuse McDonalds. It is wrong to blame fast food corporations for making people overweight and unhealthy, because they are given the freedom to choose what they eat and are not being forced to eat at the fast food establishments. In August of 2000, “The Onion”, a satirical newspaper, published a joke with the heading “Hershey’s Ordered to Pay Obese Americans $135 billion.” Its article was ... ... middle of paper ... ...t a point across is for people to take real world actions. Going into court to blame a world wide industry for something you could prevent is foolish and has shown to be imprudent in its cases. But, if people help each other watch what they eat, they can become healthier. Or, if people stop eating at the fast food franchises, a much stronger message will go across. McDonalds is one of the strongest and best corporations in the world today and does great things for billions of people. It not only provides cheap and efficient meals to thousands of countries around the world, but it provides millions of jobs heavily relied on in the world’s workforce. Why should we attack it over small personal issues? Just as Morgan Spurlock learned through making his film, “Super Size Me” the world evolves around personal choice and responsibility, and without it, one will not survive.

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