Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins committed during the holiday season, a time when binge eating and drinking is at an all-time high. As another new year begins, people resolve to shed their excess pounds by either regularly attending a gym or by consuming less calories. However, some people feel they are merely victims of obesity and are combating their roly-poly frames with financial lawsuits instead.
Two teenage girls from New York, one who is 19 years old and 270 pounds, and the other who is 14 and 170 pounds, blame McDonald’s for their obesity. The plaintiffs (being daily consumers of the fast food chain) claim that the company neglects to provide adequate warning that excessive consumption of their food products may lead to obesity and other health problems such as diabetes.
Similarly to the way cigarettes place graphic pictures of people with gum disease and tooth loss on packages to avert adolescents from lighting up, should McDonald’s place pictures of people with pot-bellies, or more seriously, a person who is experiencing heart failure on top of a super-sized package of fries? Seriously, you don’t have to ace home economics to know that Big Macs, salty fries, and soda pop does not liken a well-balanced meal. In fact, when you walk through the golden arches you can witness first hand that the fries are dipped in vats of fat and then generously sprinkled with salt.
McDonald’s is not trying to hide the fact that their food products are fatty, sugary, and downright unhealthy in excess. In the super-sized world that we live in today, there comes a time when people must ask themselves, is this good for me? We can’t litter the world with warning labels and rely on scary pictures to guide our consumer choice. People must use their common sense and not blame somebody else for their bad decisions.
Although McDonald’s may offer Happy Meals with toys to ease the consumer’s conscience as to the junk food they stuff into their children’s mouths, there comes a time when people have to turn their brains on and take responsibility for what they are putting into their bodies and the bodies of their children. Eating at McDonald’s occasionally won’t cause a person to seriously tip the scale overnight. These teenagers did not wake up one morning to find themselves obese; this condition developed over time. In order to extinguish the obese epidemic, people must pay more attention to the food they eat and the way that food makes them feel. It will be a really sad day when the public has to solely rely on warning labels to guide what they do or do not consume.