The concept of fast food has always been taken with a grain of salt since the first fast food outlet was opened. However, despite the low value of fast food, people are still willing to consume it, which can be attributed to the sophisticated marketing strategies and the companies’ ability to create a façade of sustainability and health-oriented manufacturing. “Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!”, a movie by Spurlock, has shown that fast food has direct negative implications on people’s health due to low quality of products used for cooking fast food.
The efforts that fast food chains make to represent themselves as sustainable and health-oriented have been perceived as questionable, at best, up until recently, when the introduction of innovative tools has allowed making fast food seemingly healthier. Due to the inability to fact-check the information that fast food companies provide, buyers tend to take the statements made by these companies for granted, which leads to a drop in their ability to question the quality of the food. The described causal relationships are particularly evident in the movie: “Let’s have a conversation of how healthy our sandwiches are” (Calogero LM, 2020). As a result, low quality of McDonald’s food has direct implications on people’s health. Obesity is the primary outcome in this cause-and-effect relationship, the choice of meals being the main cause, and weight gain among customers representing the key effect on their health (Calogero LM, 2020).
Another obvious cause and effect relationship portrayed in the film concerns the rise in the threat of diseases such as diabetes as the effect of the food choices that McDonald’s provides to its customers. Although the direct connection between the development of diabetes and the consumption of McDonald’s food specifically is yet to be proven, indirect facts point not only to correlation but also to causation in the food that McDonald’s offers and the increase in health risks such as diabetes type II (Tong & Wong, 2016). Therefore, there is an ostensible and highly probable cause-and-effect relationship between the specified issues, which is why McDonald’s policies regarding food quality and production process require more detailed scrutiny.
Finally, one should mention the obvious connection between the quality of the product offered by McDonald’s, as well as its affordability and availability, and the increase in the threat of cardiovascular diseases in customers. As the video shows, since McDonald’s uses products with high fat saturation, the probability of consumers who purchase McDonald’s products frequently to develop cardiovascular issues increases exponentially (Calogero LM, 2020). In turn, the solution to the dilemma that McDonald’s has created, namely, the choice between the taste of the product and its health-related value, is rather complicated. Although Spurlock’s idea of becoming a part of the problem may imply complicating the relationships between customers and fast food organizations even more, it leads to unraveling the truth, thus contributing to the resolution of the conflict.
The movie has demonstrated that, due to the ability to balance between the brand image of a sustainable organization and the focus on minimizing production costs, organizations operating in the fast food industry have been using low-quality raw materials to produce the food that causes people to experience health complications, which is a prime example of cause-and-effect relationships. In turn, the rise in the amount of negative publicity that fast food organizations receive could produce a greater impact if customers remained more skeptical about the claims that fast food organizations provide. Thus, a combination of marketing efforts and the attempts at sweeping adverse effects of fast food under the rug leads to multiple health issues.
References
Calogero LM. (2020). Super size me 2: Holy chicken. [Video]. YouTube.
Tong, C., & Wong, A. (2016). The effects of corporate social responsibility of fast-food restaurants on corporate reputation. Journal of Marketing and HR, 3(1), 126-144.