Slow week

Well, I am still around just hadn't been inspired to post on the blog recently, nothing has really caught my eye as worth ranting about until now. Normally I would have plenty of Australian Idol stuff to go on about, but I don't know... this year is just... meh. I think it has reached such a pinnicle of lameness, it isn't even worth pointing it out anymore. It exudes waves of lameness so feverishly, it is bordering on a physical sensation.

I've also been aghast at the latest attempt from McDonalds to fool idiots into thinking they sell healthy food and always have. The latest campaign, ironically called "Make Up Your Own Mind" while telling you what to think, basically aims to counter the "myths" about McDonalds. Things such as the high sugar content in their bread, or the fact that apple pies included choko.

Needless to say, the adverts themselves couldn't be more blatantly manipulative if they tried (they seriously have someone say "we were tired of our friends telling us lies about McDonalds, so we decided to find out the truth for ourselves! And now you can all check out what we found on this slick, corporate website which clearly shows us as actors and shills hired to pretend that McDonalds is made of hugs and snuggles". Ok, maybe I paraphrased the end a little).

Of course, many of these rumours aren't true... any more. After Super Size Me in 2004, a documentary where a guy did some serious damage to his health simply by eating nothing but McDonalds for a month, the company has clearly gone to a lot of effort to eliminate the most egregious of their past discretions. They started serving salads and providing nutritional information (once they eliminated some of the worst offenders such as the sugar in bread), and generally speaking gave off the air of a company actively trying to change its ways.

But now they have the gall to proudly crow about having nothing but chicken meat in their chicken nuggets, eliminating animal fat from their ice cream and putting apples into their apple pies! Like they have done us this big favour, rather than just providing the absolute bare minimum expected of "food" and actually being honest for a change about what it contains.

The website is clearly designed to give you the impression that all these "myths" and "rumors" are not true now, and never have been true in the past. They also skip over dodgy topics such as the dried powder they call "onions" (or the word "preservatives") and never actually discuss how anything USED to be done, only how they are done now. I have some pretty solid suspicions that if they were upfront about how things were before 2004, that website would not be looking quite so upbeat...

Some interesting reading can be found in forum threads like this one where people discuss the campaign and website. It is both fascinating and scary to see how some people see right through the spin, while others seem to buy right into it!

I promise another Candy Technology post tomorrow, with two reviews to make up for the lack of posts.