The Guardian 25 January, 2006
Culture and Life
by Rob Gowland
"It’s cheaper than food"
It is an axiom of advertising that if you’re trying to convince your readers/listeners/viewers of something that is patently false, the thing to do is spend more money saying it louder and more often.
Take McDonald’s, for instance. Long before the McLibel case, everybody knew that Maccas sold rubbishy food.
Maccas-style fast food became a cartoonist’s cliché: we’ve all seen the cartoon of the couple sitting in a fast-food "restaurant" staring glumly at the styrofoam containers holding their meals: "Stop complaining", says one to the other, "it’s cheaper than food".
I used to know a woman who was a keen railway historical enthusiast. Whenever they went on an excursion to observe steam trains or photograph level crossings or whatever steam-train enthusiasts do, she made a point of patronising McDonald’s while away.
Why would you deliberately eat at McDonald’s, I asked her. The food is rubbish.
I know, she said, but wherever you go, you know the food at McDonald’s will be served up exactly the same. You can guarantee that a Big Mac here will be exactly the same as a Big Mac somewhere else!
Obviously, she had a low tolerance for surprises. Nevertheless, it seemed a poor reason for choosing to eat low-grade tucker.
However, when McDonald’s tried to silence a troublesome pair of anarchists by launching a libel suit against them, the fast food giant really shot itself in the foot. The two penniless English anarchists had distributed leaflets attacking McDonald’s for its unhealthy food and poor environmental record.
When Macca’s took them to court, the pair — instead of fleeing at the first show of corporate muscle — stood firm and defended the suit. Maccas found itself facing a PR disaster, with public sympathy entirely on the side of the underdogs.
In fact, the whole fast food "industry" found itself in the midst of a crisis: fast food was being officially deemed unhealthy, especially for children.
Now, they could have responded by making the food healthier, of course. But that is not the capitalist way, is it?
Instead, they launched a whole range of "new products" designed to look and sound healthier in advertisements. A heavily hyped campaign told consumers that the new products were ever so healthy. But still yummy!
For some reason consumer groups remained skeptical. They did not believe that McDonald’s, KFC, and their ilk, were really sincere about producing healthy fast food.
And of course, when the consumer groups actually tested the new "products" they were proven to be absolutely right — the new "healthy" food was chock full of salt or saturated fat or both.
English consumer magazine Which? tested the new "healthy" food from McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC and Pizza Hut — the big names in the business — and found for example that five out of eight of the salads used to show how these fast-food chains had embraced healthy eating actually rated "high" for salt or fat content.
Which? said: "Nearly all the fast food we tested contained a lot of salt. And salt can lurk where you least expect it. The KFC original chicken salad contains more salt than the KFC chicken fillet burger."
They didn’t help you keep trim, either. According to the British newspaper The Independent, "on average, the fast-food meals sampled by Which? had 274 calories per 100g of food, more than double that of a home-cooked roast dinner.
"Some of the fast-food meals scored astronomical calorific counts. A Big Mac, medium fries and small vanilla milkshake contained 1,169 calories. A diner would need to walk 16 miles to work that off."
I remember, when McDonald’s were just opening their first outlets here, consumer advocates pointed out that it took a whole swag (no less than eleven if I remember correctly) of added chemicals just to keep the lettuce looking "fresh".
It seems they’re still at it: Which? found that "McDonald’s chicken grills contained 19 other ingredients" while their cheddar slices included "cheese flavouring", trisodium citrate, diphosphates, polyphosphates and sorbic acid.
But it’s not just McDonald’s. As reported in The Independent, Burger King’s cheddar slices had the same additives as McDonald’s, while Burger King’s fries were only 86 per cent potato.
Like McDonald’s lettuce way back then, Burger King’s chips (sorry, "fries") have eleven other added ingredients besides potato, including "partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil, rice flour, dextrose, corn syrup solids and [predictably] salt".
That capitalism’s response to unhealthy fast food is to fabricate alternative fast food that is no healthier but can be sold as though it was, will be no surprise to readers of The Guardian.
Back in capitalism’s early years, in the time of Cromwell and the English Revolution, the social reformer Gerard Winstanley referred to commerce, the "backbone" of capitalism, as "the lying art of buying and selling".
And, as all those TV ads about how much things have changed at McDonald’s confirm, they are still using that same "art" to sell their goods and services — and their products.