McDonald's Attacked Overseas
McDonald's was arguably the first U.S. food enterprise to globalize and at its 35,000-plus global locations Big Macs and fries usually transcend individual cultures and languages. But not everywhere. In 1999, French food activist and farmer Jose Bove led a protest in which nine trucks, driven by other farmers, destroyed a half-built McDonald's restaurant in Millau, France. According to the BBC, other farmers "filled a McDonald's branch with apples [and] another with chickens, geese, turkeys and ducks." Bove said the struggle was "between two ways of farming and eating, between real food from real farmers and industrial agriculture under corporate control" and U.S. trade protectionism. He was incarcerated for three months.
France was far from the only country echoing Bove's complaints about unfair trade, corporate strong arm tactics and industrialization of global food. McDonald's stores in Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Finland, the Netherlands, India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, and UK have all been attacked, says the BBC. In 2002, McDonald announced it was leaving Bolivia and two unnamed Middle Eastern countries and by 2009, it had also left Iceland and Jamaica. During protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999 McDonald's stores were also attacked.
Super Size Me Super Slams McD's
What if you ate nothing but McDonald's three times a day for a month and tried everything on the menu? What would happen to your health? It was the premise of a funny but shocking 2004 movie, Super Size Me, directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock. One of the movie's first shockers was a group of children Spurlock interviews who do not recognize photos of U.S. presidents but do recognize Ronald McDonald. But the main shocker was the effects of an all-McDonald's diet. After only five days of eating McDonald's three times a day, Spurlock gained 9.5 pounds, after 12 days, 17 pounds and after 30 days, he had packed on a walloping 24.5 pounds. Since 3,500 excessive calories add one pound, Spurlock had consumer 87,5000 excessive calories in one month of eating at McDonald's. One doctor in the movie even thinks that Spurlock is losing muscle as he gains fat.
Nor were the health effects from his McDonald's experiment just obesity. Spurlock's cholesterol vaults to 230, he accumulates fat in his liver and it takes him fourteen months to lose the fat he gained from one month on McDonald's. He experiences mood swings, lack of energy and, according to his girlfriend, lack of a sex drive. Some symptoms Spurlock experiences like depression, lethargy and headaches, are only relieved by eating more McDonald's which his doctor observes is a classic demonstration of the phenomenon of addiction. Is that why people keep going back to McDonald's?
Two McDonald's CEOs Die of Food-Linked Diseases
Trailers for Super Size Me were no doubt already running when Jim Cantalupo, McDonald's chairman and CEO, died suddenly of a heart attack in April 2004 at the age of 60. He was attending a convention for international McDonald's owners and operators in Orlando and died at his hotel, said McDonald's. While it had been 16 years since James Garner suffered a heart attack while serving as the face of the "Real Food for Real People" beef campaign, the parallels were hard to ignore: this food is so good, it kills you.
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