Tongue Tyed: The Absolutely Totally Cool, Alton Brown

Nov 9, 2004

The Absolutely Totally Cool, Alton Brown

When I linked to the Alton Brown site in my last post, I decided to catch up a little on his site. He has a blog of sorts, although he only writes in it about once a month, but nonetheless, it's a blog. And I hadn't read it in a couple months, so i caught up. He had a great post back in July that I want to share. He saw Supersize me, and wasn't suprised by the movie but by the audience's reaction to it. As though they thought McDonald's has ever given a damn and they were suddenly wisened up...anyway, here is what he said:

Here’s what it comes down to kids. Ronald McDonald doesn’t give a damn about you. Neither does that little minx Wendy or any of the other icons of drivethroughdom. And you know what, they’re not supposed to. They’re businesses doing what businesses do. They don’t love you. They are not going to laugh with you on your birthdays, or hold you when you’re sick and sad. They won’t be with you when you graduate, when your children are born or when you die. You will be with you and your family and friends will be with you. And, if you’re any kind of human being, you will be there for them. And you know what, you and your family and friends are supposed to provide you with nourishment too. That’s right folks, feeding someone is an act of caring. We will always be fed best by those that care, be it ourselves or the aforementioned friends and family.

We are fat and sick and dying because we have handed a basic, fundamental and intimate function of life over to corporations. We choose to value our nourishment so little that we entrust it to strangers. We hand our lives over to big companies and then drag them to court when the deal goes bad. This is insanity.

Feed yourselves.
Feed your loved ones.
And for God’s sake feed your children.

Don’t trust anyone else to do it…not anyone. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t go out to dinner every now and then…that is after all one of the great joys of life…but it isn’t life itself and that’s what I’m talking about.

Is MacDonalds food bad for you? What do you think? Does that mean you shouldn’t eat it? No, it just means you shouldn’t live on it or anything else made by someone you wouldn’t hug.

And as a side note, if I ever cook for you, you can be sure Alton is right, "feeding is an act of caring" and I am providing you with sustanence because I want to show you I care. It takes a heck of a lot more energy to cook you a meal than to buy you a burger, so be sure, it is my way of saying, I care. I had never heard it put the way Alton said it, but he is exactly right.

posted by Ty @ 11/09/2004

2 Comments:

At 3:04 PM, November 11, 2004, Anonymous said...: Interesting enough, for those who didn't know, the McDonald's CEO passed away at the annual meeting in January due to a heart attack.
On the other side of the coin, the height increase in Japanese is a very interesting case study. The Japanese have increased in height dramatically over the last 40 years. This is widely attributed to introduction of red meat into their diets (McDonald's first introduced in 1971). Interesting enough, between 1995 and 2000, some have the average height of 11 year old rising as much as 5.5 inches.

-Jeff
At 3:18 PM, November 11, 2004, Ty said...: I had heard about the CEO's heart attack...just terrible. I hadn't heard about the height change! It doesn't really suprise me that it's the meat that's doing it. They are starting to suggest that the growth hormones given to cows are being transmitted to us too. Scary. I can't wait until I can afford to buy only organic food. I have no desire to eat fertilizer, pesticides and growth hormones.

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