This past week I read an article on CNN about activists who are displeased with KFC over their Pink "Buckets for the Cure" campaign. For those unfamiliar, KFC has pledged to donate fifty-cents from each bucket they sell to Susan G. Komen for the cure.
They are unhappy because KFC sells more than a few products that are less than healthy which can lead to obesity and other issues linked to an increased risk for cancer. You can read the entire article here.
To an extent, I agree that the irony is a bit hard to ignore. My other thought, though, is that KFC could simply be doing nothing. They were going to sell buckets of chicken this year with or without helping Komen, so kudos to them for donating. It is more than they had to do. Period.
What really aggravates me about this article and others like it is the underlying message that it's somebody else's fault we are all so fat. If it's not the fault of the restaurants who sell unhealthy food, then maybe it's the fault of congress for letting them.
Shut up. I mean really. Shut up.
What about the right of fast food companies to expect we won't eat the entire bucket in a single sitting? The fact is, if these companies weren't making money selling those menu items with ludicrously high calorie\fat\sodium content, then they likely wouldn't be on the menu, would they? What about the right of congress to worry about things like national defense and national infrastructure without also being asked to regulate our waist lines?
I have actually lost a significant amount of weight in the past 1-1.5 years. People who notice often want to know what diet I went on. I call it the common sense diet. It goes something like this: I make sure I got off my butt for at least thirty minutes a day, regardless of how much work I have yet to do; I throw in fifteen minutes of weight lifting to tone the arms; I haven't stopped eating junk food, but I have started eating less of it. When I'm craving Taco Bell or curly fries from Arby's, I still go... I just don't feel the need to eat it all. I eat enough to take care of the craving and throw the rest away.
Here's the thing, guys. We are a free society. Why would we want or expect corporate America to be regulated into making decisions for us? Won't we be better off if we learn to control ourselves, before all these groups with really good intentions regulate every last Krispy Kreme off the map?
Now that... would be truly tragic.
