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Martin Schelasin
WRT 105
10 | 13 | 2010
But McDonald’s Made Me Do It

In the modern world it is becoming increasingly easy to find the tell-tale signs of the

abundance of fast food all around you. That same fatty McDonald’s’ fare however, comes with its

own list of consequences. In the three articles “How Big Nutrition Destroys Your Will to Fatness”,

“Broad-based Effort Needed to Attack Americans’ Obesity”, and “The Sixth Deadly Sin” the authors

address how the boundless availability of this delectable slop has led to an unprecedented infection-

like spread of obesity and other weight-related conditions the likes of which the world has never

seen before. In addition, the authors discuss the inevitability that the afflicted masses would begin

foraging for a means through which to displace their guilt about their own deterioration. Ultimately

they find that when those victims of fat-laden comestibles turned their finger at fast food

conglomerates was when the issue really became noteworthy.

In the article “The Sixth Deadly Sin” by Elizabeth M. Williams, a New Orleans attorney and

president of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, the author examines the problems that

came to a head when the obesity-stricken hordes attempted to sue their junk food eateries of

choice for causing their ailments. In doing so, Williams reveals one of the core issues when it

comes to blaming fast food giants for peoples’ obesity. This problem is the issue that the obesity

is not the fast food companies’ fault so much as it is self-inflicted and thus the fault of the people
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themselves. In order to exemplify her point, Williams juxtaposes the modern obesity crisis to the

comparatively-old battle against tobacco. She makes note of the particularly pertinent idea that

“volition” is a key concept when contesting who is at fault in any given situation. Williams

elaborates by referring to specific instances in the struggle against tobacco. In these instances,

court cases were made again and again suing tobacco companies based on the argument that

smokers were smoking and consequently getting diseases, not because they were acting of their

own “volition” but rather that they were forced to by an addiction caused by nicotine in the

cigarettes. Williams draws a contrast between this circumstance and the circumstance encountered

with obesity suits. She emphasizes that while smoking was proven to be a non-volitional activity, it

is, almost exclusively, the opposite for overeating. Therefore, she concludes that while it is possible

to sue tobacco companies for smoking-related diseases, it is borderline impossible to sue fast food

companies for overeating-related diseases due to infeasibility of proving that the “gluttony” was non-

volitional. In finality, a compilation of Williams’ information compiles into an impressive statement: No

matter how much people want to displace the guilt about their obesity, no one other than

themselves to blame.

On the contrary to Williams’ proclamation, in his article “How Big Nutrition Destroys Your

Will to Fatness” Greg Beato, a San Franciscan writer, suggests that there is much less choice

involved in the contemporary “scrumptiousness epidemic.” Beato utilizes on quotations from Robert

Lustig, a professor of clinical pediatrics at UCSF Children’s Hospital, in order to explicitly convey
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what he believes is a “toxic environment” in which people’s choice about what they eat is

compromised on a biological level. Beato summarizes the professor’s theories describing how Lustig

suggests the following: “Supermarkets and fast food outlets push fructose-laden, low-fiber processed

fare on us, which in turn causes excess insulin production. Apparently the extra insulin makes our

brains think we’re still hungry even as our bellies are engorged with a sweet mush of Big Macs

and Milkshakes” (19). Beato goes even further and completely condemns the ideas previously used

by Williams by using a quotation from Lustig that stresses that “Everyone’s assuming you have a

choice, but when your brain is starving, you don’t have a choice… Congress says you can’t sue

McDonald’s for obesity because it’s your fault. Except the thing is when you don’t have a choice,

it’s not your fault” (19). This direct rebuttal leads to a dramatic contention between ideas. This

contention broaches the possibility that Beato has stalemated the argument on whether or not

overeating is “volitional”. However, Beato surprisingly counteracts the case he just built up by first

questioning the validity of Lustig’s postulations, and then continuing into a well-rationalized firestorm

of arguments explaining that the infinite availability of healthy options all around the afore-mentioned

“starving minds” is more than enough to invalidate their claims of being deprived of their choice to

be healthy.

That being said about Beato’s argument, it is interesting to also take note that during his

assault on Lustig’s credibility, he does not seem fully aware of a point he makes against himself

in the first sentence of his attack. In that initial challenge, Beato asserts that “If Lustig lived in,
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say a French fry vat at Hamburger University his argument might be convincing.” Essentially, Beato

is trying to suggest that it is specifically because of a healthy environment that the argument that

choice is compromised is invalidated. What if someone did live in “a French fry vat at Hamburger

University”? Or perhaps, more realistically, in the southern United States where fried foods are so

heavily integrated into social culture that their consumption is a way of life? Would it then be

appropriate to say that those people, who are being marketed fast foods without the presence of

copious amounts of healthy alternatives, can legitimately claim their overeating “non-volitional”? If the

availability of healthy choices in one’s environment is the defining factor of whether or not their

overeating is “volitional”, as Beato suggests, could someone from a southern state, who engorges

themselves with KFC to the point of obesity, legitimately sue KFC because they were overeating

due to a biological imbalance of insulin and their location lacked alternative, health-conscious options

leaving them no other choice? Maybe there is a way to blame fast food companies for people’s

obesity after all.

In another article entitled “Broad-based Effort Needed to Attack Americans’ Obesity” by award-

winning journalist Cynthia Tucker, Tucker makes refers to this idea that environments affect people’s

ability to choose how much and what they eat. When Tucker uses this idea, she does so by

giving an example of the weight-loss success of her Aunt Mittie. In said example, she describes

her Aunt Mittie, a 69 year-old diabetic (who was assumedly obese at one time) who lost 70

pounds over the course of two and a half years. Tucker also however hints that the cause of the
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aforementioned success was a change in environment. Tucker alludes to this change in environment

when she says that her aunt lost the 70 pounds “after she [Aunt Mittie] took a part-time job as a

secretary at her church.” The environment change from wherever the aunt was prior to the church

seems to be one of the root causes for the weight loss. Tucker, seemingly unaware of the point

she’s making, continues on a tangent she believes is proving the vast power of personal initiative

where really she is just bolstering the argument that the environment was the key player. “The

church has no soda machines, and she doesn’t like to have to leave the phones untended to fetch

lunch from a fast-food restaurant. So she’s forced …” (A9), Tucker said. The operative word in that

quotation is “forced”. It was not the aunt’s personal initiative but rather the environment that “forced”

her to change. Is it not equally plausible to say that if an environment could force you to be

healthy, it could also force you to eat fast food on a regular basis? And, because the fast food

outlets don’t offer healthy alternatives they’re to blame for any malady that may arise from that fast

food consumption?

In summary, according to Williams’ article, “The Sixth Deadly Sin”, there is no possible way

that the droves of overweight Americans had no leg to stand on when it came to suing fast food

companies for their obesity because there is no method by which to argue that they weren’t eating

the food by choice. Contrary to that, in accordance with Beato’s quotations of Robert Lustig in

“How Big Nutrition Destroys Your Will to Fatness”, the biological imbalances caused by fast food

force us into eating more and more thus proving that obese Americans aren’t eating the “fructose-
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laden” fast food out of their own choice. Beato unintentionally adds another argument to the list in

favor of the illness-stricken obese populace of the U.S., by accidently insinuating that if someone

lived in a horribly unhealthy environment, that their claims of having no choice would be valid.

Finally, in Cynthia Tucker’s article “Broad-based Effort Needed to Attack Americans’ Obesity” she

fortifies the argument recently brought up by Beato, using an example of her Aunt to accidently

reveal just how relevant environment is to the healthy or unhealthy choices made by Americans

today. Taking all these points and synthesizing them into one cohesive proclamation, it can be

concluded that, despite the arguments that obesity is caused by the choice to overeat fast food, it

is equally if not more plausible that that obesity is caused by an overeating of fast food that is

spurred on by chemical imbalances that themselves were initially caused by the consumption of fast

food that was “forced” onto the consumer by environmental influences. So, maybe it’s appropriate

that when obese Americans cite the source of their obesity they be able to say “McDonald’s Made

Me Do It.”
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Works Cited

Beato, Greg. “How Big Nutrition Destroys Your Will to Fatness.” Reason Dec, 2006. 19.

Tucker, Cynthia. “Broad-based Effort Needed to Attack Americans’ Obesity” Portland Press Herald 30

Dec. 2006: A9.

Williams, Elizabeth M. “The Sixth Deadly Sin.” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture

2006: n.p.