Vox Polis

I’m glad to see that Burger King have launched a new “double” whopper burger - aimed at those who only feel manly having eaten at least half a cow a day. Those people probably idealise Desperate Dan and his cow pies.

I’ve always believed that people should be free to do what they like; and that includes eating as much fast food as they’re bodies can take. I believe that government and society should have an enabling role; to teach us all about the dangers but allow us to make our own mistakes. To stigmatise rather than to paternalise. The trouble is people are stupid.*

The other day I was discussing the film Super Size Me with a few “intelligent” friends of mine, who proclaimed how much they had been put off McDs after watching Spurlock’s disastrous experiment. They then went on to explain that because of this they only eat at Burger King’s now. Somehow I think they missed the point.

Burger King burgers are actually worse that McDs’ burgers in terms of calories- and have now got even worse: even McDs’ bigger big mac wasn’t as bad as the double whopper.

But to believe that one fast food restaurant is better than another is simply unbelievable. Perhaps some people should be banned from eating fast food after all. Or maybe we should just blame Spurlock for not explaining to his audience the bleeding obvious.

*I’d like to believe that people are only stupid because we have a paternalistic government; that they’ve been conditioned to believe that they need things restricted. But its probably not true.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 at 5:44 pm and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.