That does constitute a major research design flaw.

Another problem with data that old: it was before Title I (high-concentration of poverty) schools started offering free fast food meals as rewards for student performance. It was also before grocery stores in city neighborhoods started closing en masse, leaving for the suburbs and outskirts of town—-food deserts existed before 1994-96, but not like now, where they’re the norm for urban areas.

You’d also think that a magazine called Reason would use more of it. Sadly, I often find that’s not the case.

Love that headline, by the way.

I suspect a cherry-picker somewhere, because fifteen-year-old data without a follow-up study is practically useless.  “Of course, I’d vote for Clinton again!”

Nah, the poor-urban food desert thing was around even in the 90s. Even when there were larger grocery stores, prices were higher and quality was worse.

When did schools start eliminating recess and school-wide sports?

Don’t know if anyone else noticed, when you click on the journal article, it brings you to the publishing site. I browsed around the publishing site and one of their main thrusts is five journals of alternative medicine. I wouldn’t really put much stock in the methodology of this paper. If it was a hard find, then it would appear in a high quality journal. The investigators probably payed to have it in a vanity journal.

I worked at a Burger King in the late 90’s.  We had the $0.99 Whopper right up until the minimum wage in went up in ‘97.  People would come and buy them by the tens to freeze at home or take to lunch for the week.  Unlike pretty much everything on McD’s menu, the Whopper had lettuce and tomato and for a buck was a really decent sandwich.  The advertising for the $0.99 Whopper brought in a good portion of our business.  Of course then people would go for fries and a drink, maybe a pie or a side of chicken nuggets, so it was worth it to management.  When the 99 cent Whopper went the way of the dinosaur, there were a lot of unhappy customers.  A sandwich that was a bargain at 99 cents was not fancy enough for $1.39.  Of course management was happy to let them know that it was those darn labor laws, requiring them to pay the workers a living (with your parents) wage.

I don’t know Reason’s stance on global warming off-hand, but given this nonsense I wouldn’t be surprised if they fall into the “There was no warming from 1998-2006, so let’s all let our cars idle overnight” camp.

Burger King changed their cheapie from the Whopper to the Whopper Jr. I haven’t noticed much difference; I suspect they renamed the old Whopper the Whopper Jr., then increased the patty size of the Whopper to 1/4 pound or something. Then they do things to the Whopper as promos (Guacamole, Jalepenos, whatevs).

The best thing BK has put out in like the last decade was the LOTR Promo glass goblets. Really well-constructed glassware, especially for fast-food promos.

One of the things I never understand is that why couldn’t the fast-food makers make their food healthier to begin with.  Their excuse of course is that the more unhealthy it is, the more delicious it is.  Of course the reason why the unhealthy food is delicious is because they add artificial flavors to it to make it taste good.  Of course healthy food can taste good without certain artificial flavors, but the excuse falls flat around unhealthy food that benefits from the same artificial flavors that could benefit “yucky” healthy food, assuming those artificial flavors don’t lead to obesity themselves.  This leads me to think that the reason why they make their food unhealthy is more sadistic than accidental.

Albert, it’s unhealthy because it’s extremely cheap. It’s the crap nobody else wants. Yes, they could make better food from better ingredients; but they’d have to charge more for it, and the slightly-more-expensive market segment is already saturated with competitors.

Yes, fat and sugar taste good, and are super-cheap here in the states, which is why they are the main focus of the dollar menu. My city is smack-dab between “small” and “mid-size”, and yet our relatively small low-income “urban” area has the same “food desert” problem as larger cities. The only groceries available are from convenience stores and crappy clearance/bulk/big-lot dollar stores.

I think Albert has an interesting point. Given the current state of food chemistry and manufacturing, you could quite possibly make fast food that tasted very similar to the current favorites and was still made from cheap leavings, but wasn’t nearly so bad for you.

Of course, it would take a bunch of R&D money (why bother) and if the news got out it would be roundly attacked by the usual suspects, purely on the basis that Real Men Eat Unhealthy Food.

They do make cargo-cult healthy food, oatmeal and salads and stuff that’s as bad for you as the hamburgers, which is more evil than stupid (or, rather, more evil than business). It’s one thing to say “the hamburgers are bad for you because you can only make a hamburger so healthy,” but to say “look, we have healthy menu items!” and they just aren’t ... that’s tantamount to actively trying to harm people/

Fat and sugar not only taste good, they have real addictive properties. Fast food manufacturers don’t want to have to guess what we like and will buy unthinkingly over and over, and they don’t have to.

They do make cargo-cult healthy food, oatmeal and salads and stuff that’s as bad for you as the hamburgers, which is more evil than stupid (or, rather, more evil than business).

I wouldn’t put any numbers on the evil/business ratio, but yeah, they do know these products aren’t really healthy, and they also know people aren’t actually buying them. You can get more asses into McDonald’s by marketing your salads and oatmeal, even if most of them end up ordering cheeseburgers once they’re inside. It’s about building your image.

Paul @ 5, I know it was a shock to my kids (and to me) how much less recess my kids got here in MA when we moved from ID in ‘95.  Recess had been severely cut the year before (I think for a 2nd time in a few years) to meet new contact/study hour requirements at the state level without lengthening the school day.  ID had chosen to lengthen the school day and my district there had stronger requirements that the MA state ones for elementary school.  Those requirements in ID were not state wide though; we benefitted from living in a college town in ID.

Suburbs = obesity.  Once kids grow up in suburbs, they’re gonna be fighting obesity until they die or massively change their lifestyles.

Also, Americans hate the shit out of other Americans’ kids and will sacrifice their children to make sure that other Americans’ children get bad, cruel educations.

Fast-food hamburgers are made from the meat of geriatric dairy cows, with extra fat from beef-carcass trimmings.

Of course it’s cheap—they make it out of industrial waste!

The McDonald’s dollar burger is actually one of their healthier options compared with the quarter pounder or big mac.  Ugh.

If only fast food hamburgers were made from just old cows.  But it’s not true:  They’re made from the feedlot mix and mash.  There is just too much demand for cheap meat that you can’t fulfill the orders with just old cows.

Don’t worry about Reason.  They’ll be back in another week, trying to explain why obesity in America is a good thing and we should all be grateful for the amazing successes of free market capitalism in feeding our nation.  And a week later, they’ll be explaining why the government made us fat by something something public schools food stamps agricultural subsides something something.

The problem with Reason is that they’re never working from a question “Why are we fat?” and looking for answers.  They start from conclusions “Corporations have never done anything wrong!” and then build an article that supports their viewpoint.  Once you realize that, you recognize that even when they’re right, they’re wrong.  They’re always working from prefabricated conclusions, pitching for whatever corporate think tank footed their bill for the month.

Unhealthy food is only cheaper because of the food industry lobbying the government.  Products aren’t inherently more expensive than others, they only get that way because we put value on them.  HFCS for example is cheaper than cane sugar because of higher tariffs on imports thanks to lobbying from the corn growers.  The fact that the food industry openly demands that unhealthy food is cheaper makes me want to put them down more in the category of ethically challenged than stupid.  They’re like the tobacco industry in how they market their unhealthy product, except that food can have the potential to be healthy (duh, because we need it to live), but all tobacco is unhealthy.  And until they change their act or are forced to change their act by the government, we need to treat them like the tobacco industry.  They want to make us fat, there’s no accident.

#22

You are right on the money, they will find a way to blame the government.  It’s a catch 22, Reason will criticize the government either way.  If the government cracks down on the food industry and unhealthy food, that’s too much government.  If they give subsidies and tax breaks to the food industry to make unhealthy food, that’s too much government too and the government wants us fat, bla bla bla.  The truth is is that Reason deep down supports businesses getting subsidies to make unhealthy food, period.  These people are not libertarians, they are pseudo-libertarians and conservatives who want big business to rule us instead of democracy.  Their title “Reason” is quite Orwellian.

Also note “The sample contained 4972 individuals who were 21 years of age or older. Dependent variables measured number of restaurant visits on 2 nonconsecutive days. Income was total annual household income. “

So they don’t even look at anyone under 21.  Kids who scarf it down aren’t counted as high fast food consumers!

Also, these years were fairly good economically.

Also, “regular” restaurants include crap restaurants where the food is more expensive but no better than fast food for most of the menu.  Junk- and dressing-laden salad, fried everything, pasta with greasy sauce, “broiled” meat coated in oily pseudo-butter, ditto for vegetables if you bother to order them.

Dr Psycho @ 20:
some of the best beef I’ve ever had came from my in-laws geriatric dairy cows.  It is increadably lean.  McDs likely uses them so they can more easily control the fat content and so their timing for the automated cooking systems.  I hate that I know McDs uses automated cooking ssytems and that fat content really messes with how well that works as I’ve never even worked there.