In The Belly (Part Three)

I closed the first part of this essay by stating that we are afraid of food. I still believe this, even with my recent suggestion that we enjoy getting our fix. An addict is often fully aware of the damage they are doing to the body and mind while enjoying a particular high. In the film, “Supersize Me,” Morgan Spurlock decides to go thirty days eating three meals per day only at McDonald’s. He does become sick, gain weight, and threaten his long-term health with his experiment. But he also confesses that he feels better while eating the meals he buys (an interesting counterbalance to the depression he feels after these same meals are done). An addict needs that high to last if they are not to feel the crash. But how can it last without more and more of the same junk to fill that hole? Again, it is a cycle with its needs and rules.

I note that it is not just the food itself that gets us. The packaging of convenient food that may not be very good for us has only existed for the last two hundred years (the time canned food was introduced to the public). With the rise in advertising and a more literate and demanding public, companies began to be known worldwide for the same exact product. When I had French fries in a McDonald’s in Tokyo, it tasted exactly like the ones I had in Canada. Consistency is the key. People have to be drawn back again and again to the same goods. In Spurlock’s film, the various budgets of brand-name food companies are compared to the much more natural food sold by other distributors. There is no contest here. The sexier and brighter the product, the more it is pushed and bought by consumers. And doesn’t giving a sexy look to a product we know we should not be enjoying also motivate millions of men to enjoy pornography (as addictive as potato chips if we are being honest)? It is another bad gift in an attractive package and we cannot give it up.

We sell food the way we sell cars, new technology, celebrities, and, it must be said, the West. America is not just the best advertiser of goods in the world; it also knows how to read its populace. Bigger and brighter sells, and the noise people get on TV and other media will always be there. Food is just another item on a long menu.