McUsecrime
September 23rd, 2004McDonald’s UK have published a riposte to the film Super Size Me (via Linkbunnies). While trying to dispute the allegation that McDonald’s makes you fat, they thoroughly prove that doing webdesign work for McDonald’s makes you commit hideous, unspeakable crimes against usability. What the fuck is up with that stupid slider? And why not just have it in HTML?
September 23rd, 2004 at 14:29:45
Grrrrr.
The slider is pants - in Mozilla 1.0PR I can’t drag outside the slider thing itself. D’uh!
Then, as for the “facts”:
Convenient omission of the McLibel case
Their way of saying that the statement “All McD salads contain more calories than a big mac” is false is “Lots of our salads have less [sic] calories than a big mac”. Implication: some of their salads do contain more calories than a big mac.
All these changes have come recently, as a result of consumer pressure rather than at McD’s initiative. In France you’ve been able to get salads from french fast food places for ages - McD’s are very late. Can you get a veggie burger yet? How long have Burger King been doing 2 types of veggie burger? (Answer: several years.) Years ago I was pleased to find a Wimpy, and even more pleased to try a Quorn burger there. They go on about how much _less_ salt is in their nuggets - why did you put so much in to start with (to get people to buy more drink, probably, and to mess with salt cravings).
“There’s a guy who’s eaten loads of big macs and he’s still healthy” (Implied: you can eat this much too and be equally healthy.) This is standard statistics rubbish. Why not also say “I know someone who smoked 60 filterless a day for 40 years and is fit as a fiddle” => smoking’s fine or “I know someone who fought through all of World War 2 without a single injury” => war is not hazardous to health.
There’s no getting away from the fact that their main products (burgers) are full of saturated fat, and their image is still based around burgers.
Even if they somehow managed to clean up their food, there’s still the larger issue of American cultural imperialism i.e. Coca-colonialism. It is a worldwide chain with no regional variation that I’m aware of.
September 23rd, 2004 at 17:01:42
So, first they say that eating McDonald’s food for thirty days straight is silly, and it would take a normal customer six years to eat that much McD’s. Then they provide a full week’s worth of “healthy” menus that revolve entirely around McD’s food.
Logic? Consistency?
…And that zoom effect is really irritating, too.
(Found you, incidentally, by searching for “qwghlm”.)
September 24th, 2004 at 09:54:16
Bugger - I think I’m dlsyecxi. I originally read “slider” as “spider” and was surprised when I couldn’t find any arachnid action anywhere on the site!