- Home
- Politics
- Entertainment
- Sports
- Health
- Religion
- Society
- Tech
- Money
- People
- Science
- Galleries
McDonald's Marketing Fuels Food Addiction
One Sweet Obsession of Love with Fries Please
Huh? What kind of wacky title is that? My readers know I look at things differently, but maybe now think I have gone off the deep end.
My old pen name is The Diet Mafia Hitman. I know that may be a bit crude, but let me explain. My mission is to uncover and publicize the atrocious marketing that is going on in the food and diet industry. You see, I used to be a food addict topping the scales at over 400lbs. I lost over 170lbs, and have kept in my healthy weight range now for over eight years. One of the biggest tools I use to stay healthy is my brain. I no longer allow mass marketing to fill my head full of nonsense. For those of you who still think of current food marketing as entertaining, funny and harmless, I can say only to the same level as The Marlboro Man.
TV cigarette advertising certainly worked! It transformed a tube filled with a dried leaf that you set on fire to inhale into something that will make you sexy, cool, relaxed and appealing. This advertising is no different than having a piece of meat between a bun and promising a life-altering orgasmic experience. The scary part is, on a subconscious level these marketing ploys work on us and that is why the diet mafia marketers continues to produce this nonsense.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NUhk9m_4zg&feature=player_embedded
If you did not or are unable to view the above video, it is a McDonald’s commercial that shows a couple looking at each other in rapture, just moments before they lock lips in an explosion of ecstasy. However, just as they move towards each other for that intimate kiss they instead open wide for a mouthful of a rib sandwich. The commercial continues with more people in rapture and loving life while the music playing has the lyrics “what is love?” That link is the 2008 version and ends with “I’m Lov’in it”; in the 2010 version it ends with “The Sweet Obsession of Love”.
Is it funny or entertaining? Well yes… we can all minimize it saying, “Oh it’s just a commercial”, however it has more effect than just that. The physiologists that work McDonald’s marketing department know your triggers and what is going to work on your subconscious. Instead of a piece of pork, with barbeque sauce they up the ante with the promise of humour, joy, fun and love and make these all available to you right now for a measly $1.99. What nice people, where else can you “take a break today” from your busy stressful life and enjoy a few moments of ecstasy for so little?
We read and see with our own eyes that in North America, obesity and food addiction is at epidemic proportions. So what is the driver of this epidemic? It is not a simple answer but certainly marketing plays a large part just like it did 20 years when smoking was the norm. Addictions all have the same motivation: taking a substance or behavior and using it to alter a less desired emotional state.
If you’re hungry, and a piece of pork in a bun with bbq sauce sounds good, please enjoy. If you want more humour, happiness and love in your life please look elsewhere as food is not a healthy place for those things. The only thing you will get with The Sweet Obsession of Love is 20 grams of fat and 860mg of sodium.
Please join me and help to end this senseless harmful marketing. I enjoy humor and fun as much as everyone else, however when it is used to promote a lifestyle that in the end will cause pain, I put my foot down. Food addiction is definitely not an obsession that will end with love. To me it caused considerable pain, what about you?
Sign up for the OV Daily Newsletter
Comments
Whatever happened to responsibility
Responsibility for your own actions is what should be demanded here. Marketing schmarketing. Today's incessant need to find blame outside of one's circle of influence is appalling and insulting. No one is putting a gun to anyone's head to force them to buy anything. And of course marketers are supposed to come up with the best marketing campaigns, and most often do. To their credit.
Stop assigning blame and take responsibility for your own actions. You are fat if you want to be, smoke if you want to, and no amount of blame fixing is going to change that.
Agree to a point
I completely agree, the buck stops with you and no one has a gun to anyone's head. However that does not mean I want crack dealers walking up and down the street. Cigarette ads were pulled from TV and smoking consumption when down. The lies and total manipulation of the tobacco industry is a good lesson we should apply to other harmful behaviors. What is appalling and insulting are marketing campaigns with no substance or truth to them.
Pulling
Cigarette ads only proves my point. It is a fix to a much bigger problem beginning with a lack of education and all the way to a victim mentality which makes us want to protect those who what? Are too weak? Too stupid? Too what? It still goes to responsibility. You do not commit murder because it is illegal I hope?
A bigger hammer
The well-known motivational theorist, Abraham Maslow, once commented: "If the only tool you have is a hammer, you will see every problem as a nail."
Bah!
We're all addicted to food - we have to have food to live. And we eat at McDonald's (those of us who do) because we happen to like burgers and fries. If we're unwise about our food choices, we might not like the results in terms of what it does to our bodies. I commend you for using your brain to become healthier - you made the conscious choice to improve your diet. Congratulations. But before you made that choice, no one at McDonald's was forcing you to eat poorly - that was your choice as well.
cigarette
Of course the same could be said about the tobacco industries deceptive advertising. Modern advertising is based on deception... creating a need to be filled.
advertising is even more essential to them
The tobacco companies have to create a need that doesn't exist naturally. The desire for food is automatic. I've not quite figured out what makes people want to light something on fire and stick it in their mouths...
desire
But the need for food does not translate into "eat a burger- >become happy" which is what the commercials portray.