{"id":167,"date":"2008-06-09T18:48:50","date_gmt":"2008-06-09T16:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ultimatefatburner.com\/wordpress\/having-it-their-way\/"},"modified":"2015-08-11T11:35:35","modified_gmt":"2015-08-11T15:35:35","slug":"having-it-their-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/having-it-their-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Having it Their Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just finished\u00a0a recent article\u00a0on trends in fast food marketing: Fat Profits, by Joe Keohane<\/a>.\u00a0 An excerpt:<\/span><\/p>\n

In an age when other chains have been forced to at least pretend that they care about the health of their customers and have started offering packets of apples and things sprinkled with walnuts and yogurt, Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. are purposely running in the opposite direction, unapologetically creating an arsenal of higher-priced, high-fat, high-calorie monstrosities\u2014pioneering avant-garde concepts such as “meat as a condiment” and “fast-food porn”\u2014and putting the message out to increasingly receptive consumers with ads that are often as controversial as the burgers themselves.<\/em><\/p>\n

That message may be revolutionary or totally evil or maybe both, but in any case, it goes like this: Anyone can make Americans fat (hell, everyone already has), but only one fast-food company can make them fat and allow them to feel good about it, even get them to feel like they’re making a statement and striking a blow against the forces of political correctness. It’s downright Jeffersonian in its own weird way, and judging by the growth of both chains, it’s working extraordinarily well.<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m speechless…<\/p>\n

So let me get this straight: slavishly responding to advertising messages = rebellion.\u00a0 And health and fitness = “political correctness.”\u00a0 Ummm…ok, then.<\/p>\n

There’s a certain kind of genius at work here, evidence of a well-thought-out defensive game. By not merely disclosing the fat and calorie content of its products but actively boasting about it, CKE effectively declaws the so-called food police, who act on the assumption that people eat fast food only because they don’t know it’s bad for them. This frankness makes CKE less vulnerable to the sort of social, political, and even legal pressure that its rivals\u2014particularly McDonald’s, which offers pedometers with its Go Active Adult Happy Meal\u2014feel so acutely. Far from shameful, it’s a point of manly pride to go to Hardee’s for lunch and scarf down a Monster Thickburger, a chocolate shake (made with real ice cream, it has three times the fat of the McDonald’s version), and a medium fries, which adds up to 170 grams of fat and 2,760 calories. And the more society’s nannies say you shouldn’t, the more you kind of want to.<\/em><\/p>\n

Since\u00a0I work within the bodybuilding\/fitness community, I guess that makes me one of “society’s nannies.”\u00a0 Except I’m not\u00a0chasing after people, nagging at them about what they put into their mouths.\u00a0 Instead,\u00a0they come to me (and others like me), to help them out of the fast\/junk\/convenience food hole they’ve dug for themselves.\u00a0\u00a0“Food Police” my a**.\u00a0 Frankly, I couldn’t care less how people choose to live \u2014 or what they choose to eat, for that matter.\u00a0 If\u00a0some people\u00a0don’t like what I have to say, then they don’t have to listen (or read, as the case may be).\u00a0 But if they want to lose fat\/add muscle\/get fit, then they need\u00a0to understand that\u00a0“Monster Thickburgers,” fries and shakes\u00a0should be\u00a0eaten only as\u00a0occasional treats (if they’re eaten at all).\u00a0 That’s not being “PC” \u2014 that’s reality, baby.\u00a0 Deal with it.<\/p>\n

Nor do I get the “manly pride” angle.\u00a0 This is seriously obesegenic food<\/a>: what’s so “manly” about having a gut composed of highly estrogenic fatty tissue<\/a>?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And obesity (especially abdominal obesity) exacerbates age-related declines in testosterone<\/a> and contributes to erectile dysfunction<\/a>.\u00a0 The\u00a0man in this ad:<\/p>\n

[youtube:http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vGLHlvb8skQ]<\/p>\n

may be\u00a0lean…but that’s because he’s an actor, for crying out loud.\u00a0\u00a0I notice they didn’t have the cojones to\u00a0cast someone who looks more like your average American male<\/a>.\u00a0 And\u00a0any guy\u00a0who needs fast food to validate his manhood,\u00a0has more problems than a\u00a0“Texas Double Whopper”\u00a0could possibly\u00a0fix.\u00a0\u00a0Personally, I think the\u00a0TV stations running that ad\u00a0should\u00a0have\u00a0followed\u00a0it with this one:<\/p>\n

[youtube:http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=mFGpI8bfep0]<\/p>\n

In short, toeing the corporate line isn’t the way to make a “statement.”\u00a0 Taking control of your own health and well-being, on the other hand, is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just finished\u00a0a recent article\u00a0on trends in fast food marketing: Fat Profits, by Joe Keohane.\u00a0 An excerpt: In an age when other chains have been forced to at least […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14,26,28],"tags":[631,645,1863],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10120,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions\/10120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}