Ronald McDonald and the Food Liberation Army

No, this picture is not a fake. It is, however, a horrible spoof of an Al-Qaeda video - a spoof perpetrated by a Finnish group calling themselves the "Food Liberation Army". They have kidnapped a Ronald McDonald statue and are holding it 'hostage' unless the McDonald's corporation answers certain questions about its manufacturing process.

Questions that specifically include:

1. Why are you not open about the manufacturing processes, raw materials and additives used in your products? what are you afraid of?

2. How many tons of un-recycled waste do you produce each year? Why do you not publish that figure?

They state that if the questions are not answered, Ronald will be 'executed' on Friday the 11th of February at 6:30pm. I believe that's in England's time zone.

These kids need a goddamned Happy Meal, if you ask me. Because they apparently do like the food. Which just makes this thing 3 extra levels of ridiculous.

I found out about this news event from Fark.com, referencing me to this website which was in turn sharing the information from a UK news website. So forgive me for the fact that this is not all that new of news.

The video released by the FLA group goes on to state that "though they are fans of McDonalds burgers and fries, they believe that the food they love is being destroyed."

You. Idiots.

First of all, you're calling yourself the "Food Liberation Army" - yet you haven't liberated any goddamned food, other than into your gullets. How the fuck do you even "liberate" food in the first place? You can't set something free that's already dead, especially after it's been processed into food. All you've done so far is steal a statue and place a hood over its head in a mocking video. It's not food, and you haven't freed it. You want to KILL it. The "sweet release of death" does not count as liberation, especially since it's a fucking statue and not alive or dead at all. In fact, it has clones of itself in every damned restaurant in the franchise!

Is your next plan to rob a McDonald's of all its Chicken McNuggets, and then set them free in a field, where they can live out the rest of their days in peace? where they don't have to suffer under oppressive human rule, awaiting death by consumption, until they are... consumed by wildlife or a passerby hobo?

And how do your random questions being answered make any difference in the grand scheme of things? Un-recycled waste amounts and more detail of the ingredients used in the manufacturing process of McDonald's food? They're a publicly-traded billion-dollar company. This shit is already available information. Try asking the Food and Drug Administration, or the Health Bureau or whatever governmental body in England would have investigated and would know the manufacturing processes after approving them as upholding the health code? Hell, McDonald's spokesperson even said that they are willing to engage in constructive conversations with our customers, stakeholders and the media - which means that if you weren't acting like idiots, you'd get your answers even faster.

This is, all in all, an unnerving trend where groups of idiots think that by giving themselves a ridiculous name and spoofing acts of terrorism, that they are entitled to whatever they want and have the moral high ground.

You are wrong, Food Liberation Army. Your moniker is ridiculous. You have committed an act of theft. You have made insipid demands for information that could easily be attained through various legal channels. You have lampooned the acts of terrorists and deserve to be punished for both making light of actual horrible acts as well as encouraging others to do the same.

I know it comes as no surprise that I would side with McDonald's here, but after such an incredibly-dumb act has been perpetrated by such a group of incredibly-dumb criminals - wouldn't you agree?

What do you think? Should McDonald's negotiate with these "terrorists"? Leave a comment!

And then Digg this article!

Read more!

Top 5 New Food Tricks

I love food.

Not only do I love food, but I love unique combinations of food and new ways to prepare food. I'm the kind of guy who was intrigued enough by the thought of bacon-infused vodka to pick up the ingredients and trying the process out. (I'm too scared to taste the results, though, but the trip itself was quite amazing.) If there's a new way to enjoy some of my favorite foods, I want to know about it and be on the cutting edge of the technology.

I even managed to score tickets to the ALL CANDY EXPO the past two years and got to find out about all the new products and flavors before they hit the market.

So I've done a little rummaging around the 'net and here are the Top 5 new food tricks that have really got me interested and I either loved or would love to try:

Honorable Mention: 50 New Things + Deep-Fried + A Stick = State Fair Deliciousness

I'm always hearing about the new food that is now available (mostly at state fairs) that is being deep-fried and often put on a stick for easy eating. In recent times, this has included Oreos, Twinkees, Snickers bars, Coca-Cola (an intriguing one) and cheesecake. I believe there's even a deep-fried ice cream that someone made available.

We've certainly come a long way from the corndog, haven't we?

5. Donuts + Bacon Cheeseburger = Krispy Kreme Cheeseburger

I have to admit, this isn't exactly a new trend. In fact, I believe I read about it back in 2006 when a minor league baseball team's stadium just outside St. Louis (the Gateway Grizzlies) decided to slice up some Krispy Kreme donuts and slap a burger, bacon and cheese in-between and the Krispy Kreme Cheeseburger was officially born. And yes, that link has photos and video of the 1,000-calorie delight.

But donut burgers have spread, and as recently as last year they are still being created, even turning up at a Google cafeteria. That Slashfood article even has a gallery of pictures of the Krispy Kreme Burger from around the world. Disgustingly enough, picture #3 is a "Veggie Krispy Kreme Burger" - for the "health-conscious" donut-burger lover?

What I'm noticing in the pictures is that there's a clear line on the donut-burger battlefield:

Glazed side up or glazed side down?

I'm on the fence, frankly. It just makes more sense to do it glazed side down if you're trying to get some nice grill marks on the dough side, and it makes for a less-messy burger as you don't have to get glazed sugar all over your fingers. But on the other hand, that layer of sugar is separating donut from meat - by doing it glazed side up, the juices from your bacon and meat patty can meld with the sweet donut dough and while it's a messier endeavor, I suspect there's oodles more flavor if you venture down that path.

Where do you stand?

4. Bacon + Chocolate = Mo's Bacon Bar

I've never been a huge fan of the salty+sweet combination attack. Kettle corn's flavor actually confuses my taste buds sometimes. Chocolate-covered pretzels, I devour them by licking off all the chocolate and then having my way with the salty piece all on its own. Yea, that's even how I tackle the Peanut M&M. But when it comes to bacon, I had to give it a try and I did actually purchase and consume the Mo's Bacon Bar made by Vosges Chocolate a few months ago. I'll let Vosges try to explain itself first:

Breathe…engage your five senses, close your eyes and inhale deeply. Be in the present moment, notice the color of the chocolate, the glossy shine. Rub your thumb over the chocolate bar to release the aromas of smoked applewood bacon flirting with deep milk chocolate. Snap off just a tiny piece and place it in your mouth, let the lust of salt and sweet coat your tongue.

So I tried it (the bar, not the touchy-feely instructions that told me to close my eyes but also to notice the color of the chocolate) and despite a semi-loathing of salty-sweet treats, I enjoyed it. I was a little disappointed to find that the bar was something like 85% chocolate and maybe 15% bacon at best - and that they used tiny bacon bits, which seemed to be getting confused in my mouth with the added Alder wood smoked salt that was supposed to compliment the applewood smoked bacon. I found it to almost overpower the bacon, of which I could find very little taste without only tasting salt. (It could have been the salty bacon, could have been the pure salt.)

I was hoping for something more like this chocolate-covered strip of bacon on a stick, which I'm certain would taste more of bacon while still not overpowering its chocolate coating in the flavor department.

(Luckily, there's several recipes online, which do actually consist of more than "dip bacon in chocolate, ya big dummy!")

3. Booze + Potatoes = Beer Chips and Intoxi-Tators

This is a discovery I got to make at the 2008 All Candy Expo here in Chicago with my girlfriend, as we found ourselves at a booth marked "Beer Chips" with several bowls of potato-y treats for us to sample. Sure, there was the original Beer Chip, made with beer (and maybe what seems to be a malt powder to give it that extra beer taste, though BEER is listed in the ingredients). It's not going to get you drunk or anything, though. But it also comes in additional flavors, like Chip Shots (margarita with salt flavor) and Hot Potatoes (spicy bloody mary flavor) and all three were delicious. I spread the word to my friends and they were very much shocked when a few months later the amber-colored bags were available in our local grocery stores.

And then a year went by, and 2009 All Candy Expo was here. We went searching frantically to find the Beer Chip booth to thank them for an awesome product, but instead we found a different alcohol/potato pairing booth: Intoxi-Tators. They were also sporting a beer-flavored chip as well as the margarita and bloody mary flavors. (Aren't there any other salty alcoholic beverages that would mesh well with potato chips?) Anyway, they also had a fourth offering in the form of Designated Driver, in case you wanted the thrill of the Intoxi-Tator brand without the thrill of chips tasting of alcoholic drink flavorants.

It seems that the Intoxi-Tators website lists some future flavors in development: Mimosa, Pomegranate Mojito and Ale.

2. Bacon + Chicken Sandwich + Chicken Sandwich - Buns = KFC's Double Down

So this one's really on the cutting edge of food technology. Well, food technology that's actually endorsed by the food providers themselves. (While we've all been tempted to make our own Big MacChicken with chicken patties for buns on a Big Mac, McDonald's isn't endorsing it on their menu or advertising it or likely condoning it in any way.) KFC, on the other hand, has selected test markets to try out possibly the first chain-approved burger that uses meat patties instead of buns.

The KFC Double Down - two KFC fried chicken patties as buns sandwiching in some bacon, two slices of cheese and "Colonel's sauce".

It's gaining notoriety on the interwebs as footage from the commercials and poster advertisements and in-store advertisements are being posted to internet forums and being discussed and debated by both food connoisseurs and the general troll population. Is this going to be a new trend? Will it take off and expand outside the test market areas? Will heart-attack lawsuits be pending?

Only time will tell, but my mouth is salivating and my brain is cursing the fact that I am not located in one of these test market areas.

Am I crazy for thinking this is worth a road trip?

1. Beef Jerky + Energy Drink = Perky Jerky

The story starts out so innocently: two buddies on a ski trip who drunkenly left both a bag of beef jerky and an energy drink open inside their backpack. Lo and behold, the next morning the jerky has retained its flavor, become more tender from the energy drink, and has absorbed some of the energy-laden chemicals providing a boost of energy during their ski trip.

And thus, Perky Jerky was born - a combination of meat and caffeine that can probably only be topped by some coffee-rubbed Kobe beef or something.

Sadly, I have not yet been able to get my hands on some of this seemingly-splendid snack food - but will likely be making a purchase order in the very near future (unless some Perky Jerky sales exec stumbles across this blog and would like to contact me for an address where a sample for product review can be sent).

Doesn't this seem like an excellent pairing? Some claim that some of the scientific elements of meat (beef in particular) can cause one to become logey or drowsy - so combining beef jerky with caffeinated guarana seems like the perfect counterpoint to produce a snack that satisfies your taste buds and keeps you on your toes!

What do you think? Do you have better food combinations that you've discovered recently that top some of these food-based math formulas? Do you think we've gone too far and are officially through the looking glass when it comes to foods? Is there something new you'd like to see deep-fried and put on a stick? Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts!

And then Digg this article!

Read more!

Fast-Food Moratorium in South L.A. (Part 2)

For those of you just joining, I highly recommend a visit to Part 1 of this article just to catch up: Fast-Food Moratorium in South L.A. (Part 1)

In this piece, I want to break down the law's language in traditional George Carlin format, pointing out that this law pretty much would ban ALL new restaurants and not just fast-food restaurants - except for a few choice words and I'll explain how any fast-food franchise can easily duck under the law because of them.

Just as a reminder, here what the law considers to be fast-food restaurants:

"any establishment which dispenses food for consumption on or off the premises, and which has the following characteristics: a limited menu, items prepared in advance or prepared or heated quickly, no table orders and food served in disposable wrapping or containers."

Well, let's start at the beginning...

"which dispenses food for consumption on or off the premises": Those are the only two places you CAN consume food! AT the place and NOT AT the place! I mean ANY food location nowadays, no matter how fancy and sit-down or greasy and take-it-and-leave, gives you the option to place an order for take-out. They understand you might not have the time to eat it THERE. Or you may just prefer to eat it NOT THERE, like at HOME. Also, you might as well just say "which dispenses food" - since food is generally dispensed for consumption. That's the general idea of food - that you consume it. I suppose this means a business that dispenses food for you to WEAR would be allowed to move in? So far, this ban applies to ALL FOOD BUSINESSES (except the food-as-clothing industry).

"and which has the following characteristics: a limited menu": ALL MENUS ARE LIMITED! You're not allowed to walk into a Burger King or a P.F. Chang's or a Fogo De Chao and order up a yak salad with ostrich chutney garnish. All menus are finite, limited by the abilities of the chef, the availability of ingredients, and the personal desire of the restaurant. They don't want to include endangered animals for you to eat - that's their prerogative. The McDonald's fry cook isn't skilled enough to POACH your eggs that go on your McMuffin - tough luck, pal. It's illegal to obtain and cook human flesh for consumption - don't expect to see the phone book as an addendum to your table's menu. So far, this ban still applies to ALL FOOD BUSINESSES (except for hypothetical hypno-restaurants that can put patrons in hypnotic trances and convince them they've eaten anything on an unlimited menu while serving them Kraft Mac & Cheese).

"items prepared in advance": Well of course they're prepared in advance - when did you plan on preparing it? In the guy's stomach? All restaurants have to prepare food before they serve it to you. If you wanted to add the stipulation "prepared in advance of ordering", there's still prep work. Any good restaurant has to save time by pre-assembling items, or even marinating meats in anticipation that someone will order it that night, or using bread that has already been baked or pre-mixed dough even. I'm incredibly skeptical that there exists a single restaurant that can make every item on its menu FROM SCRATCH and not until the order is placed and it can still be served fast enough that the customer doesn't leave, possibly mumbling, "if I wanted incredibly slow food made from scratch, I'd be at home with my wife instead of at a fancy restaurant with my mistress..." Fact of the matter is, this ban still applies to ALL FOOD BUSINESSES (unless all they do is raw, uncooked, unprocessed food, and at that point you might as well be foraging in the woods for sustenance and saving yourself $20 per person).

"prepared or heated quickly": I don't think there's much to say about this. If you're not preparing or heating your food at a decent pace, you shouldn't qualify as a business. It's called "the danger zone" and it's a temperature range at which bacteria can grow and multiply and infect your food. The longer food goes from storage to preparation to your mouth, the more likely you are to get sick and sue for food poisoning. ALL FOOD BUSINESSES know that and do those things in a timely fashion. Also, "quickly" is too subjective of a term - any cooking that takes shorter time to cook than "leaving it in the sun, possibly on a metal pan" can be deemed to have been cooked "quickly" by the Amish. This ban still applies to ALL FOOD BUSINESSES (except Brother Jebediah's Sun-Cooked Meat Emporium)

Now, we finally come to "no table orders and food served in disposable wrapping or containers", which technically seem to separate the actual restaurants from the "fast-food joints" that the law is trying to stop from opening new locations. But don't worry, McDonald's and Burger Kings, they're both easy to step around.

"no table orders": Okay, so you have to be able to take orders at a table in order to qualify as a true "restaurant"? Note that the law doesn't even say anyone has to be SITTING at a table. The table area is just the place where all orders have to be taken in order to qualify. Rather, at least ONE order has to be taken from a table to simply NOT fall into the category of "no table orders". So how do you side-step this one?

Put a table over the counters. It doesn't matter if there's one long table placed over the entire counter, or a cheap IKEA table draped right on top of each counter segment with the cash register placed on top and your McJob cashier/waitstaff standing at the "table". You can even place a small table in front of the drive-thru speaker and one in front of the pay window and pick-up window. "Thank you, please drive to the next TABLE." Voila - you're taking table orders and you can move right in with a new location!

"food served in disposable wrapping or containers": Okay, I have to start off with the obvious jab that everything used to serve food is disposable (in the definition that everything is "able to be disposed of"). A restaurant can give you your burger on a plate, but a plate is just as disposable as a paper lining you'd find wrapped around a McDonald's cheeseburger. For the sake of argument, I will admit that one definition of "disposable" means "INTENDED to be disposed of". I guess McDonald's could just print pictures on all wrappers and containers and call them "collectible" and you can complete the set - that would insinuate that they should NOT be disposed of, but rather collected for some reason. You'd think that the real clencher here is that McDonald's food is wrapped or put into containers (while a restaurant will not wrap food it's serving to you), which means it's just fast-food that this clause affects. To be fair, any legit restaurant will let you place a to-go order and all of that food will be in disposable wrapping or containers! It doesn't say that food is ONLY served in disposable wrapping/containers, right? Which means that any restaurant willing to place a to-go order or let you take food home in a doggy-bag is going to be banned. Once more, this clause of the ban would apply to ALL FOOD BUSINESSES (except those snooty enough to deny you eating their food anywhere other than their restaurant).

So really, all it comes down to is whether or not you'll ever take a food order from a table. All other pieces of this "law" boil down to no food businesses at all being allowed to set up shop in South L.A. (other than those wacky/insane exceptions). Any fast-food place would be able to open up shop as long as they stick a table somewhere and let someone order from it, as I've suggested above. Frankly, the law suggests that you must hit ALL of those marks to qualify not being able to open a new location - which means that once you miss the mark on ANY (like taking orders from a table), you've got free reign in South L.A.!

Take that, Los Angeles City Council! Your law is useless and a waste of taxpayer money for all the debate and insanity that must have transpired before you foolishly signed this moratorium into effect.

Don't you agree? Have I missed anything? Can you understand how each piece of this law is vague and moronic? Was my homage to George Carlin acceptable?

Please Digg this article and join me in mocking the L.A. City Council!

Read more!

Fast-Food Moratorium in South L.A. (Part 1)

If you were to ask me to provide an honest answer regarding the question of our youth (and our populous in general) getting obese - I'd completely agree. The data doesn't lie, and neither do my eyeballs. People are getting fatter - and more people are getting fat. I would never, though, say it was an "epidemic", since that's supposed to be a word meaning a rapidly-spreading disease. Despite some crappy article I read once about how if you have several obese friends then you're more likely to become obese, weight problems are not a disease (social or otherwise). You can't "catch obesity" - not even from toilet seats.

But it's our right to be fat.

It's our freedom of choice to choose sedentary lifestyles or picking up a bucket of KFC instead of lifting weights or even ordering too much healthy food which in turn isn't healthy. You can't blame the gyms for being too expensive (though they are expensive indeed). You can't blame the video game industry for getting you addicted to sitting and button-mashing (thanks to DDR and WiiFit "games"). You can't blame the food places for letting you order too much (I mourn the loss of the "Supersize"). You can't blame the fast food industry for "being there" (unless you're a moron).

So the Los Angeles City Council must therefore be a bunch of morons.

They voted unanimously to approve a law banning new fast-food restaurants from opening in South Los Angeles for at least a year.

Why in the name of all that is good and holy and deep-fried would they do such an idiotic thing?

Because 30% of the kids in South L.A. are obese, compared to the L.A. average of 25% of obesity in children.

That's it. A 5% difference - one extra kid out of twenty happens to be obese in South Los Angeles, so let's ban all new fast-food locations from opening. That sixth kid to tip the scales in every 20-child South L.A. classroom best get ready for an ass-kicking from the other five obese kids for crushing their dream of a new place to gorge on greasy delights! Oh, and by the way, THIS DOES NOTHING! At best, you're forcing people to waddle a little further to get their fix rather than letting a closer location get built. At worst, you're raping the sanctity of the free market. This little charade doesn't change the goddamned MARKET OPPORTUNITY!

Do you know why fast-food locations are doing well in that area and more want to open up? Because that's what the market demands. We just had a Dunkin Donuts / Baskin Robbins open in our building a month ago - even though one exists less than one block southeast from our building. And a few weeks ago, yet another one opened a block northeast of our building. Do you know WHY they're opening up three Dunkin Donuts locations within a block of each other?

BECAUSE THEY CAN. BECAUSE THEY STILL MAKE MONEY. BECAUSE PEOPLE WANT MORE LOCATIONS TO GET CHEAP DONUTS AND COFFEE.

I would never expect our city to decide "the downtown area is overcaffeinated and obese and caffeine is a drug and donuts are fattening, so let's ban new donut/coffee locations so that other businesses can move in." Okay, Chicago is the Nanny City, so I might expect it - but it's still a ridiculous idea. If the people wanted a new sit-down food location with healthy choices, then one of those businesses would move in and would prosper. FORCING one of those to open up INSTEAD of what the market wants will result in poor sales and the inevitable closing and moving out of that business. In my neighborhood, we mostly have greasy spoons and take-out Chinese and Mexican places. And some Italian-esque fancy/expensive bistro tried opening up. And nobody came. So they've closed. Twice. Maybe if another burger joint moved in there, business would be booming for them. It's called the FREE MARKET.

Councilwoman Jan Perry, who has pushed for a moratorium for six years, said the initiative would give the city time to craft measures to lure sit-down restaurants serving healthier food to a part of the city that desperately wants more of them.

"I believe this is a victory for the people of South and southeast Los Angeles, for them to have greater food options," she said.

You moron! If that part of the city "desperately" wanted more sit-down healthy restaurants, then one would be opening in one of the available spaces. You can't just BAN certain types of businesses from renting that space just because you're "holding out" for one you like. If a business moves in and you don't like it and don't want it, you don't go. And if enough people do that, it goes out of business and closes and some other business can try it out. And if NOT enough people refuse to go - that means that people DO want that service/product and YOU'RE the idiot for thinking that YOUR opinion represents your entire area's opinion.

That's how it's supposed to work - and you shouldn't be allowed to pass an idiotic law to tell people what they supposedly want but obviously don't.

The law defines fast-food restaurants as "any establishment which dispenses food for consumption on or off the premises, and which has the following characteristics: a limited menu, items prepared in advance or prepared or heated quickly, no table orders and food served in disposable wrapping or containers."

My full rant on this law's language will be found in Part 2... In traditional George Carlin format...

Please Digg this article and join the debate regarding this bill!

Read more!

New Show Idea!

I'm always trying to come with horrible new TV shows, in hopes of one day landing one with a TV exec and getting paid a decent amount of money (not "retirement" money, but "living comfortably while keeping my job" money) and getting to appear in the credits or something. You know, a legacy. And more bad TV!

In the past, most of my efforts have gone to a FOX-style TV show called "V.D. Island" which would have honestly fit in perfectly with the FOX steaming pile of reality crap television. It's basically "The Mole" meets "Tempation Island", in which you basically have 10 males and 10 females all with clean bills of health except for one who secretly has a venerial disease. I'm thinking it would be best to do this show with an STD that can be fought with antibiotics, but it's up to the producers. It's basically a show where contestants have to have sex with someone at least once a week and try not to get the disease. The real fun comes in when people realize they've GOT the disease and since nobody's booted off the island, they get to trick other people into having sex with them just to screw them out of the prize. Would it come down to rape? Who knows! It's FOX programming at it's finest, no?

The real FOX-style twist would be when on the final episode, as the host is announcing the winner who does not have the VD that everyone else has...

...the host stabs the winner in the arm with a syringe and screams "YOU'VE GOT VD!" and hope on a helicopter as all of the signs flip-change to read an extra "ESCAPE FROM" over the "V.D. ISLAND"! Now it's a NEW reality show where 20 people with V.D. have six weeks to escape from V.D. Island! Plus, as an incentive, for every week they DON'T escape, they airdrop in a ravenous lion - who also has V.D.! The show would only obviously last two seasons (or whenever they get cancelled due to death-related lawsuits), but I think that's enough to get the ratings and merchandising enough to turn a profit.

I'm off the toppic - I have a NEW show idea. It's certainly not good enough for FOX (and by that, I mean "not profitable or horrendous enough") but it would do well on a network like maybe Food Network, given the nature of it.

I'm still working on a title.

Here's the premise:

A crew goes to a fast-food place, somewhere that has those deceptive-looking pictures of menu items (I've found them mostly at Chinese places, but most fast food locations would work just as well) and you basically tell the cashier that you will pay $100 if they can produce in ten minutes the equivelant food item that is represented in the picture. The footage would show the crew scrambling to adjust things or maybe make something fresh for a change just to try and piece together all of the elements of the picture in order to satisfy the judge. The end result would be a photo match showing the picture and the item, and if it comes close enough they get the money to be split among the crew, otherwise they get paid the regular value of the item.

Since the ten minutes of time they need to make the item is obviously not long enough for one full half-hour episode (I doubt that even with minimal editing, there isn't even going to be ten full minutes of footage that's airworthy), Food Network might have the classier programming to maybe take a few minutes to do some background on the location, or air the letter or video send in requesting that their team tackle this location. I can't wait to see angry patrons showing video of the picture on the menu and the pathetic excuses for food that are served, demanding this kind of satisfaction to be televised. Maybe as a bonus, they have that patron who sent the request actually show up at the location to eat the end results and maybe give a food rating or just a statement of gratitude.

Maybe as a show-off, they could have a moderately-famous chef as the host and after the ten-minute judging, the chef would get behind the counter and use their ingredients to try and out-do them in making the visual masterpiece? The possibilities are quite extensive. I think it would make for great bad-TV, something you flip to and wonder what it is long enough to stay tuned, like a car accident that piques your interest.

What do you think? Would you watch this kind of show? Should I create a real pitch for it? Do you have restaurants screwing you over with inaccurate visual representations of their food? Should I just stick to "V.D. Island"-type shows?

(Fact: My dad used to order burgers from Carl's Jr. with the phrase "extra messy" because he wanted them to accurately represent the sloppy claims made in the TV advertisements. For those of you not familiar with one of Carl's Jr. or their slogans, "If it doesn't get all over the place - it doesn't belong in your face.") Read more!

Smoking and Other Bans

Hopefully by now you've gotten the message that I'm against the smoking ban. If you don't regularly read my blog, let this be your introduction to my hatred for this ban. I'm not as against it as the ban on the sale of foie gras, which is the most ridiculous ban I think I've heard of in the past few years, but I'm still very much against it. Maybe this will help illustrate why.

I'm not a smoker. This isn't about me wanting the ban to go away so I can smoke in places that aren't subzero in temperature. This is about civil liberties being taken away under the false pretenses of "benefitting the many over the benefits of the few" or some nonsense like that. You know, bleeding-heart liberal slogans designed to tug at heart-strings (possibly how the term 'bleeding-heart' came to be?) and basically saying under its breath "we pander to stupid people because stupid people vote in higher numbers and we want it to be for us." Here's a quote from the article I read this morning:

For health advocates, the ban represents a simple idea: The rights of an individual should not come before the health of all.

This is the biggest pile of nonsense I've heard in a while - thank goodness they put it so succinctly, because that makes it all the easier for me to mock it and illustrate a point. Several points, actually. Because it's horrible thinking like THAT which is going to be the end of us all. Forgive me if some of my arguments border on the "conspiracy theory" line, but I'm just following that "simple idea" as my mind takes me. Let's see what the future holds if this precedence holds and indeed dooms us all.

Ban on junk food. Well, the hot-button issue is the "obesity epidemic", which means that if obesity is threatening to somehow spread like a disease, then they can enact laws that take away your rights as an individual to eat how you want for the sake of the health of all. They already started with trans fats, didn't they? How long before they press onward? That basically opened the door, along with this precedence, to allow them to declare a ban on anything deemed by a panel of idiots (like the FCC of food) to be "unhealthy". All the good fast food places shut down, Hershey's goes bankrupt, as well as the Mars corporation. And probably Frito-Lay as well, since their "healthy" chips are disgusting and I doubt anyone buys them, even if there were no alternative good-tasting chips.

Ban on fat people. You think I'm joking, right? Well they already have a study showing some kind of correlation between having overweight friends and becoming overweight yourself. Which means that idiots will assume causation, and then obesity will be not only a regular disease but also a social disease to them, and then fat people are banned. We won't be allowed to socialize indoors in public places or within 15 feet of building entrances, lest someone have to talk to us and catch a bad case of obesity or something.

Ban on meat. Think the Atkins diet would help you become skinny enough to be allowed back inside buildings? Well you'd be quite out of luck, because once we have no fat people allowed in buildings to talk sense into the retarded PETA skinny-people brigades, they'll have their run of the show. They'll use their studies showing that cows and other ruminants cause XX billion tons of pollutants and global warming - yadda yadda yadda - all meat is banned for sale because the rights of an individual to eat meat should not come before the health of people who live in the environment being destroyed. (Even if we all know that without the meat industry, the cows will just continue to produce pollution because they're not being slaughtered to become tasty steaks that people can eat in order to save the world.)

Ban on food. All it's going to take is a few idiots who happen to get a peanut-based allergic reaction from being on a train with someone who just had a PB&J or crumbs in a break room resulting in an epinephrin-injection to resume breathing and then we're all up a creek without a paddle. Lawsuits ensue and then we've got mandates about foods. We won't be able to EAT indoors in public places or within 15 feet of building entrances, lest the allergy-prone have to be trapped with a food they're allergic to. Or just food that smells in a way they don't like. Think I'm insane? Follow the logic, and you'll likely get there, even if you're not insane. The rights of an individual to eat what and where they want should not come before the health of the feeble who just don't want to take precautions and place that responsibility on everyone but themselves.

You know, there used to be a thing called "survival of the fittest" where the strong go on to live and breed and the idiotic dumbasses ate too many marbles as kids and died. It's time to stop banning games with marbles that idiot children can eat and start focusing on teaching children to not eat marbles or they don't get to grow up and have kids of their own. I'm sick and tired of watching stupid behavior and wanting to remove the gonads of everyone in that family unit as a way of saying "your bloodline stops here, and the world will praise me for doing it." But I digress - back to the bans.

Ban on profanity. I'm not talking about record labels and TV/radio airwaves. I'm talking about cursing in general, just in everyday conversation. Sooner or later we'll get a study linking a child hearing a curse word and some kind of new psychological mental illness or even the ever-widening umbrella of A.D.D. or something. And the mental health of all, segue to the individual rights to freedom of speech, ergo a ban on profanity everywhere but inside your home and beyond the 15-foot building entrance lines now drawn out like bubbles because of all the bans in effect.

Ban on defending ourselves. Now I'm certainly in the "conspiracy theory" zone, but if all the above has palyed out to the point where we're all starved, weak, repressed agorophobes - we'll have lost our "superpower" status completely. Even Canada could just decide to walk right in and take over. It's more likely to be all of those Middle-Eastern regions that we've had the pleasure of declaring war on in the past. And seriously, once they start their suicide-bombing runs here in the U.S.A., we'd still be banned from even fighting back. Someone would argue that fighting back would cause more Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder by fighting in a war to defend our country than the amount of PTSD generated by witnessing an ongoing stream of bombs going off and killing loved ones and other civilians. They'd argue it, and there would be no intelligent people like myself left to argue back due to a severe lack of steak. Our country would be doomed.

And that's how the smoking ban apparently kills us all. Remember that on January 1st, when the smoking ban takes effect. And horde your steak. For the good of the world, people.

EAT A STEAK - SAVE THE WORLD!

(An online version of the article I read in today's RedEye)







Read more!

McDonald's Causes Better Eating Habits Than Subway!

And no, I'm not talking about the wussification of McDonald's with the inclusion of salads and parfaits and whatnot. I'm talking about good ol' fashioned Big Macs versus Subway and their Italian sub sandwiches. And you wouldn't believe it, but the Big Macs led to better eating habits than the Subway options. The researcher uses terms like "health halo" for Subway and "health shadow" for McDonald's, but what it all comes down to is that you don't have a freaking clue what's healthy for you and what's not, so you base your guess on asinine advertisements and screw yourself over in the end.

Super Size Me, Jared!

Jared and his whiny little commercials about how all McDonald's food is bad for you and Subway is nothing but sweet angel food that reduces your waistline simply by cramming it down your throat. We've all seen them. So here's what this researcher did: he gave 46 graduate students a coupon for a McDonald's Big Mac, which at the time had about 600 calories, or a Subway 12-inch Italian sub with meat, cheese and mayonnaise, which had about 900 calories. The students weren't told the number of calories in their sandwiches. Participants also were given a menu and asked to indicate what extras they would like to order, if anything.

Thanks to the "health halo" - these students thought that since they made the "right decision" by opting for Subway, and decided to reward themselves for it with what they probably assumed was a caloric difference - ordering cookies and sodas and whatnot. Those with the Subway coupon ended up ordering a meal with an average 1,011 calories. Those with the McDonald's coupon got meals with an average of 648 calories.

Following those lines of logic, in a second test, the calorie count of the coupons were set even at about 600 calories. Not surprisingly, people ate more snacks later in the day if they had eaten a Subway sandwich than a Big Mac. I personally would have liked to see a little interview data about which coupon option left the participant feeling more full or more satisfied. Perhaps the extra snacking isn't JUST due to the "health halo" of thinking you can spare the calories because you ate healthier - maybe it's just that they were hungry again in less time because it was less filling. I personally feel hungier again earlier in the day after eating Subway than I do after eating McDonald's.

More research was indeed done in these studies, though not my idea of fullness. These questions were about guessing how many calories had been consumed, trying to prove that the "health halo" indeed was a culprit. Could the average person accurately guess how many calories they'd consumed at McDonald's or Subway?

Brian Wansink and colleagues interviewed more than 500 people after they had eaten lunches at either Subway or McDonald's. The scientists also analyzed the calories in 320 meals that included a main dish, side order and beverage. Those meals ranged from turkey sandwiches and Italian subs with chips and soda to cheeseburgers or Big Macs with fries and beverages. People who consumed about 1,327 calories at a meal underestimated the calories by an average of 484 at McDonald's and 681 at Subway. That's a 36% margin of error at McDonald's, compared to a 51% margin of error at Subway.

"There's a double curse to the health halo because you grossly underestimate the calories, and you overeat afterward because you think you deserve it," Wansink says.

Okay, so McDonald's isn't actually "healthier" than Subway. I'll still give you that. I'm sure that fat content and sodium levels are probably way worse at McDonald's than they are in the Subway alternatives, even if you're chowing down the same amount of pure calories. But odds are that you're STILL going to screw that up if you're using your little Subway "health halo" to scarf down junk food later on because you think you deserve the treat for "eating healthy". In the end, your eating habits will IMPROVE if you eat bad food and ADMIT that you're eating bad food. Admitting to delving into a guilty pleasure means you'll feel GUILTY about it and will eat LESS afterwards or make it up some other way. On the other hand, eating health halo food can have MORE calories and leave you feeling like you deserve MORE food because of it.

Accept the science, and stop trusting Jared and his stupid commercials.

McDonald's leads to better eating habits than Subway. Chew on THAT, Jared!

And yes, he'd probably want some fries with that.

(Article with the research)







Read more!

McDonald's and Rap Music

You know, even though I'm a huge fan of McDonald's and have been an addict for nigh on thirteen years or so, I will always admit that it's bad food. You know it, I know it - the whole world knows that McDonald's is and will always be synonymous with "bad for you". This doesn't mean it's the WORST for you, and it certainly doesn't mean its TASTE is bad (not in the least!) - it just means that it's not healthy and it shouldn't be.

Whole Foods is synonymous with "healthy" and/or "pretentious" (at least in my book) - you wouldn't trust them coming out with a "Supreme Meat Lover's Cheeseburger Pizza", would you? That's because they know what they are and they stick by it. And McDonald's, you're "fatty burgers and fries" to the extreme - don't ever lose that. But enough of my pleas to fast food chains to stay true to their titles and lay off the healthy food menu items - this is about Twista.

It's okay if you haven't heard of this whole mess - I hadn't either, until I picked up my RedEye this morning. So for those of you who get the news from sources like me and my RedEye regurgitations, here's the scoop:

McDonald's is hosting a concert series. One of the concerts is going to be in Chicago and McDonald's picked Twista, a Chicago-native rapper, to be in the concert. They promoted the concert using Twista as one of the performers. And suddenly, there was a wave of billboards being put up chastizing rappers for their derogatory language, naming Twista as one of the long list of perpetrators. According to the rapper, McDonald's had even told him they were behind him during this potty-mouth-lyrics situation.

And then all of a sudden, as Twista so eloquently describes it, "they just told us that they didn't want me performing no more."

This is where the hypocrisy comes in. McDonald's obviously knew that derogatory lyrics were used - not only from the public accusations on billboards, but the fact that, uh, TWISTA IS A RAPPER! We don't live in the 80s or even the 90s anymore. You won't hear "rapping" about happy things like "saying hello to the black, to the white, the red, and the brown, the purple and yellow" or even hilarious things like "cooking MCs like a pound of bacon". Rap has degraded into this amalgam of debauchery and violence, and we ACCEPT THAT. You either like rap or you don't. But don't say you like rap while trying to deny everything that rap now is.

Sure, I loved the Sugar Hill Gang. But then rap grew up and starting f*%^ing the police.

So here's what I'm saying to you, McDonald's: accept Twista and the fact that his lyrics are lewd because he is, indeed, a rapper. You and rap have so much in common, let's all face the facts...

- Most people either love it, or they hate it. There's a few fence-sitters, who likely haven't experienced much of it.

- Most people against it say, "It's bad for you and bad for society in general." Most people for it say, "Sure, but we like it anyway."

- If you hear about a person who likes it, you'll immediately jump to a negative stereotype of what that person looks like based solely on that fact and without even having seen them once.

- Both are having a huge impact on the newest generation of consumers, and a huge number of people are up in arms about it being a huge NEGATIVE impact.

- Both are always trying to claim to be "cleaning up their act"; we know it'll never really happen.

So c'mon, McDonald's - just say Twista can play in the concert again. He had such nice things lined up because it was such a big gig and in his hometown. He was going to get a children's choir to join him for a song, and he was going to donate the money raised by his performance to two of his favorite Chicago charities. Does that make up for "crude lyrics"? Beats me. But he's not the only one to come up with catchy chants that society wants to blame all its ills on, is he, McDonald's?

I'll leave you with a "rap" from my childhood, written by McDonald's itself:

"Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun!"

(Twista's RedEye blog telling the whole story from his perspective)

Read more!