How Has Mcdonald's Affected Society

McDonald’s has affected society in several ways including the impact to the overall health of Americans. At first, Americans did not care about the nutrition facts or the sanitary of the food they were eating, but soon started to concern themselves with what was really inside of this fast food. Previously McDonald’s did not have any nutrition facts available in the physical restaurant, only on the internet. McDonald’s did this to hide the reality that their food was not as good as they advertised. Some unique people took it to themselves to bring awareness to this issue so it could be resolved. Morgan Spurlock is a filmmaker who made the movie Super Size Me in an effort to make it known that McDonald’s can be harmful to the human body if eaten too often. Morgan Spurlock ate McDonald’s for thirty days straight for every meal. “Spurlock had gained 24.5 pounds, and his cholesterol level had climbed by sixty-five points” (“Controversies Related to McDonald’s Nutrition and Labor Practices”). Morgan sacrificed his own health permanently in order to protect the health of other citizens. After the movie became very popular, McDonald’s eventually did make some changes.
McDonald’s continued to receive negative publicity and needed to bring more nutritional meals to
the table. Previously McDonald’s offered the supersize option (increases the size of your meal), but was forced to take this away in order to seem like a healthier restaurant. Along with this, McDonald’s introduced salads to the menu to bring more of a variety to the people. McDonald’s made many attempts to seem more appealing but sometimes it did not work, for example, “In 2016, it introduced a kale caesar salad, but the salad was found to be worse for customers than a Big Mac” (“Controversies Related to McDonald’s…”). Even though McDonald’s made slight changes to their menu, it is still an unhealthy option that would continue to portray itself to be nutritional.

PREVIEW 2

McDonald’s uses deceitful advertisements that are targeted towards children to make them want to buy their food by enticing kids with toys and healthy food. In the advertisements, kids are shown eating fruit and finding their promised toy inside of their happy meal box, but in reality, the kids are not getting a healthy meal and the toys are only included with the happy meal to lure kids into wanting it. “McDonald's spent about $115 million advertising Happy Meals during 2010, about 13 percent of the company's $884 million in measured U.S. media spending”(Bryson York). The McDonald’s corporation is determined to entice kids to eat there, even if they had to spend millions of dollars. The McDonald’s corporation uses social media to manipulate the minds of the youth into thinking this was a healthy and organic restaurant. McDonald’s used videos of farmers working to show that the food they sell to the public is naturally grown and not harmful. Keith O'Brien said, “McDonald’s would pay to appear at the top of the trends list on Twitter’s home page, using the social-media site to drive people to its new commercials”(O’Brien). This strategy that McDonald’s used reached out to the teenagers of America to persuade them to eat at McDonald’s. Again, McDonald’s found another way sway the minds of kids who don’t know better for the sole purpose of making money. McDonald’s uses Ronald McDonald the clown to become more appealing to the youth of America.
At first, Ronald McDonald was supposed to be a fun mascot for the company, but they soon realized that Ronald McDonald could be used as a clever advertisement tactic. Bruce Horovitz said, “In the past three years, Ronald McDonald has become more a symbol for botched marketing schemes than fast-food finesse”(Horvitz). McDonald’s pushed many television advertisements that showed Ronald telling kids to come to the restaurant to bring in more customers. McDonald’s took advantage of the situation by making Ronald the face of the company, and to seem more inviting towards kids, again just to make money from the less
informed.

PREVIEW 3 Few Americans actually realize the impact McDonald’s has on eating habits along the lines of what we are eating. McDonald’s has lied and will continue to lie to their customers about what is inside of the food they are serving. The corporation uses several types of antibiotics and hormones in an effort to save more money at the expense of the quality of the food. Antibiotics have been used for years to prevent sickness and to make birds fat (Trotter). McDonald’s has inexpensive medicines given to their livestock to make them fat and more profitable. Because of this, McDonald’s received plenty of scrutiny from their own customers, which led to them limiting the amount of unsanitary medicines that were given to the livestock. This still has not changed completely, McDonald’s is not removing hormones and antibiotics, and never will for the sake of profit.