satire that isn't really that unrealistic

[Rapscallion]

The law restricting how large your schooner of cola is definitely falls into nannying territory.

Generally speaking, I'd agree, but only when there are options other than, "Olympic swimming pool, schooner, and supertanker" sizes available. Whatever happened to reasonable sizes that didn't leave you diving to the toilet every half hour?

More to the point, it's good to acknowledge the reality. If someone's got a large amount of stuff in front of them to drink, they're more than likely going to drink it. The cola or whatever isn't really such a problem, it's the size of the cola involved as far as I'm concerned.

Rapscallion

[Nekojin]

it's already not just adding taxes. It's not just NYC's ban.

San fran banned the toys from children's meals, claiming it encourages childhood obesity. link

You really need to research your choices a bit more carefully. The first example isn't purely about unhealthy children's food options (note that you can still buy any Happy Meal on the menu) - it's about the marketing used to sell those unhealthy options. Have you seen McDonald's Happy Meal marketing? It's, "Toytoytoytoytoytoy - oh, there's food here too - toytoytoytoytoy." There's so much focus on the toys, and so little focus on the food, you have to wonder what they're selling.

But therein lies the problem - they're manipulating children (and, by extension, their parents) by marketing something kids want in order to get them to buy something that McDonald's wants to sell. The kid wants the toy, and knows that in order to get the toy, they have to get the food. So they whine at their parents to get them the Happy Meal.

This is pretty close to the same reason that Joe Camel got banned - excessively and deliberately pushing buttons on children that their psychologists have shown to be effective buttons to push. It's just like the HWFO about EA and Blizzard hiring psychologists to get people to play their games more, only this is food we're talking about - a somewhat more critical topic than your entertainment options.

Why is it paranoia to recognize that this is already happening? - people are being financially penalized for not picking the foods the government wants them to pick. I didn't just pull those links out of my arsehole.

All the video did was exaggerate what's already happening.

There's considerably more to it than just "exaggerating" it.

And when there's over 30,000 cities in the US, and you're cherry-picking a few that have gone out of their way to do something - right or wrong - and trying to illustrate that there's a problem, you're either missing something, or misleading people yourself.

[wolfie]

McDonald's once upon a time only sold what is now the small fries, in the bag... but people kept buying two of them.

Not quite so long ago, McDonald's sold 2 sizes of fries: small (the ones in the bag) and large (the ones in the red cardboard thing). You can still get the "old" large fries - except now it's called "medium".

[HYHYBT]

Not quite so long ago, McDonald's sold 2 sizes of fries: small (the ones in the bag) and large (the ones in the red cardboard thing). You can still get the "old" large fries - except now it's called "medium".

I don't think that's quite right, unless either they've changed the size of the medium box in the last three years, or else changed the size of large sometime before Supersize first came out.

When I started with McDonald's in 1994, there were three sizes: Small (then sometimes still called Regular), Large, and Supersize. As far as I know, though introduced at different times, none of them had ever changed their size, but I cannot be absolutely certain.

I do know that around 1998, they introduced the new Supersize, renaming the old SS to Large and the old Large to Medium. Then, of course, that movie came out and they dropped the Supersize size and name. It certainly sounds like that makes the current Medium the old Large...

EXCEPT that in the meantime, the Dollar Menu came out. And it originally had the Medium fries on it. Very quickly afterwards, they shrank the size of the Medium fry carton, which made it a more reasonable size for the price but also, sneakily, effectively raised the prices of the Extra Value Meals slightly because you were getting less fry for the same price. Almost nobody noticed the difference.

(I do like that McDonald's, unlike most other fast food, has not renamed their drink sizes... or at least not since the late 80s or early 90s. The 32 oz is still Large, while elsewhere it's become "Medium.")

[jackfaire]

Whatever happened to reasonable sizes that didn't leave you diving to the toilet every half hour?

In my experience they are still there. I can still find the smaller "medium" sizes out there but now a small because people wanted more.

People try to ascribe sinister motivations to corporations. Most companies don't make a lot of money when something like botulism starts killing consumers because no matter how they spin it if people are dying in great numbers from using their product then usually people will stop using anything from that company.

Companies make more money giving customers what they want. I am not sure how much misinformation is out there versus just over information or misinformation from the other side.

The thing is if a study is done that proves something is good for you but the study was done by a corporation it doesn't matter if the study is right. People will want to know what's the catch and why they are lying and latch onto the first study that says the corporation is just lying to you even if 30 other studies agree with the corporation.

It's why if politicians want you to vote against a law that will protect you the consumer from some company abusing you they will create a commercial using normal folks like you and me instead of having the same companies saying, "Hey don't stop letting us rip you off"