08.10.07

McDonald’s Controls Our Youth

Posted in Culture, Health at 1:48 pm by telly_wong

“Mommy, get that thing away from me. I want a Mickey D’s milkshake instead!”

Here at Fallout Central, a common gripe we have is the consistently negative and/or culturally insensitive images of Asians in the American media as we believe it breeds aspiring racists. While critics of our criticism tell us to relax and laugh it off, a recent Stanford University study has discovered some eye-popping new findings about the effects of mass media on the physiological perceptions and responses in young children.

In the study, pre-schoolers aged 3 to 5 were presented with identical McDonald’s foods in name-brand and unmarked wrappers and asked which tasted better. The unmarked foods always lost the challenge. Even carrots in McDonald’s wrappers tasted better than their generically-wrapped counterparts. (!)

Experts blame the relentless onslaught of McDonald’s marketing to impressionable young minds in conditioning these tykes into McLemmings.

If we take these findings a step further, wouldn’t it be possible that in a culture where mocking and berating Asians passes as socially acceptable, popular entertainment (i.e. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, shock jock radio), that children can be subconsciously conditioned to internalize these images and ideas and have them manifest themselves in the form of real-world bigotry and xenophobia? (I’m talking to you “Anti-Asians Anonymous”).

Or perhaps I should just wrap myself up in McDonald’s wax paper the next time I’m in the Fox Chapel High School area.

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