Blogspot, ofenfrische croissants.

As anyone who has even remotely kept up with the state of American healthcare knows, McDonalds' profit wagon has been pulled by a largely Black and Hispanic population for whom obesity rates have been setting records once every ten seconds.

For a long time I wondered how someone could let themselves (or their children) become so strikingly fat. Sure, salads and whole wheat cost extra, but I had always subscribed to that old saying--that even with the ex-boyfriend who just dumped you for another man, even with the dead-end job, even if your teenager has burned down your apartment building: you still have your health. It's a truism, one that is infuriating if any of those things actually happened to you, but it's a truism that always seemed close to universal: staying physically alive comes first.

(Cool people are, naturally, exempt.)

This was before I realized what I was missing. I've just found out that the McDonald's Dollar Menu features, among the usual 6-piece McTurds and medium frozen McBilgewaters, the Double Cheeseburger. This is a deal that is simultaneously breathtaking (for the as-of-yet-unemployed 20-something in me) and unspeakably horrific (for the flamingly liberal pre-med in me). Suddenly I understand what effect such sinisterly cheap junk has on the psyche. When I see that 99 cents next to 'DOUBLE CHEESEBURGER', I become every peckish twelve year old Latino kid that has ever walked into a Mickey D's with $1.43 in pocket.

The only thing keeping me from stuffing my face is the knowledge that burgers are just glistening oil-cakes sandwiching patties that would have made Upton Sinclair cry. Fast food is scary. Poorly educated on nutritional topics, the communities most adversely impacted by the fast-food being marketed to them lack this paradoxical safety net of fear. So while I'm not saying that maintaining an unironic Morgan-Spurlockian diet does poor people any favors, I at least find that type of behavior more understandable.