On April 18th, a transgender woman, Chrissy Lee Polis, was beaten at a McDonald’s near Baltimore, MD. Trans women experience violence and the threat of violence constantly, but what made this case rise to public notice was that a McDonald’s employee stood by and videotaped the assault, and then posted it to the internet.

The video was not made to document the assault for the victim, it was made for “entertainment” value. People can be heard laughing. Almost nobody actually tries to help the victim. As the Baltimore Sun reports, “Throughout the attack, a man is filming and does not intervene. But when the victim appears to have a seizure, he yells, “She having a seizure, yo. … Police on their way. Y’all better get out of here.” The McDonald’s has fired this video maker.

The video is up at Bilerico, but please be aware that this is a real video of a real assault – it’s cruel, and brutal, and damn hard to watch. And it’s part of a larger experience of violence faced by transgender women, which should give everyone pause.

A couple of items the Baltimore Sun reporter (Jill Rosen) and her editor should/could have done better with:

I recently posted here in defense of a San Francisco law requiring fast-food and other restaurants that offer toys along with certain children’s meals to limit the calories, fats and sugar content of the toy meals. This produced a number of comments taking issue with my position. I would like to respond to a few of the points the commenters made.

Today, I’d like to reply to this observation made by Kevin D.:
“I believe you are… misrepresenting the nutritional value of the Happy Meal. For example, the Chicken Nugget Happy Meal with Apple Dippers and 1% milk represents less than 1/3 of the USDA recommended fat, sodium, and calories. If you choose fruit juice, you can lower the total even further, with 380 calories and 12 g of fat (only 2.5 of which is saturated).”

He’s quite right in this regard. You can order the Happy Meal with apple slices instead of fries and juice instead of a soft drink. Moreover, most of the fast-food chains offer some form of “healthy” version of their standard kid’s meal. But there are two problems with this.

(CC) DESIGNFACTS/FLICKR

First, the actual number of those healthy options is almost vanishingly small. Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity analyzed the nutritional information for kids’ meals provided at eight major chains: McDonald’s, Wendy’s Taco Bell, KFC, Burger King, Dairy Queen and Subway. Out of a grand total of over 3,000 childrens’ meal combinations, they found exactly 15 that met the accepted nutrition standards for elementary school kids. There were 20 more that met the kids’ calorie limit, but exceeded other limits such as on fats and sodium. And while some offered as few as 300 calories, there were plenty that topped out at 1,000 or so. In short, a minuscule 0.7 percent of all possible kids’ meals studied qualify as “healthy.”

The second problem is that you, the parent, have to know which chains offer the healthy options, and what those options are, and make a point of asking for them. At every chain but Subway, if you fail to specify otherwise, you’ll be given their default combo, which is in most cases is the entree (usually a burger or breaded chicken) plus fries and a sugary soda.

Since 84 percent of parents surveyed say they take their kids to a fast-food place at least once a week, the numbers mount up impressively. One Yale researcher estimated that if the healthier kid’s meal options were made the default choices, America’s youth would consume literally billions of fewer calories per year.

Source: “Choosing meals is not child’s play,” Nanci Hellmich, USA Today, 11/8/10, p. 6D.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

Fast-Food Children’s Meals: Odds of Getting a Healthy One are Roughly 150 – 1 is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News

Using Lures to Tempt Kids into Making Bad Choices? Isn’t that what Pederasts do?

As you’ve probably heard, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has just passed a new ordinance, effective December 1, which restricts the ability of fast-food and other restaurants to offer free toys with children’s meals. Under the new rule, toys can only be given away with kids’ meals that (1) contain less than 600 calories or 35 percent of their calories from fat, (2) include fruits and vegetables, and (3) come with drinks that are low or moderate in fat and sugar content.

San Francisco isn’t the first locality to do something like this — Santa Clara County, just south of the city, passed a similar law earlier this year — but it is the first major American city to do so, and it is San Francisco, after all, and inevitably this is being ridiculed in some quarters as nanny statism and/or liberal interference with the free market run amok.

Unsurprisingly, it has been strongly criticized by the National Restaurant Association and McDonald’s, which introduced the free toy ploy with its Happy Meals in 1979.

As it happens, I live just a half hour across the Bay from San Francisco, and as it also happens, I wholeheartedly support the new restrictions, and below are a few of the reasons why I rise to defend it.

• Nobody’s “consumer rights” or “freedom of choice” have been impinged. Parents can still buy fat- and sugar-heavy meals, there simply won’t be a toy included. And they can still get the toys, simply by buying one of the healthy meals, which can then be eaten or thrown away, as they wish.
• What we have with the free-toy reward is an enticement, pure and simple, and moreover an enticement to do something that is not in one’s own best interest. The basic psychology is the same as the abuser who uses candy to get the child into the car. I know, this sounds like a wildly hyperbolic comparison, it’s just a damn hamburger, right? Wrong. In the case of the Happy Meal, it’s a hamburger or chicken McNuggets, fries, and a soda or low-fat chocolate milk or juice, totaling 580 calories and fully 26 grams of fat; roughly half the entire recommended daily calorie load for 4-5-year-olds and 40 percent of that for 9-year-olds. And it’s not just one meal, but millions upon millions of such meals, at a time when some 37 percent of Americans ages 2 to 19 are overweight or obese. They virtually guarantee soaring increases in our national diabetes and heart disease rates down the road.
• The problem with the free toy concept is that it works: it effectively lures the kids and their parents to choose the accompanying meals over other options. How effective? Well, fast-food chains spent over one-half-billion dollars on toys and ads to promote kids’ meals in 2006 alone, the latest year we have data for. You don’t spend that kind of money on something unless it’s moving the product like hotcakes.
• In essence, all the S.F. ordinance is doing is saying that if you have a gimmick that has been shown to effectively channel kids toward certain menu items, you can only use that gimmick to promote items that are beneficial, not detrimental, to the kids’ health.
• And don’t dismiss this as just another “only in lefty-loony San Fransicso” news item. A lot of localities have enacted or are considering similar restraints on the sale or marketing of trans-fatty foods, sugar-laden beverages and other nutrition-challenged restaurant offerings.

(CC) pyxopotamus/FLICKR

The Center for Science in the Public Interest has threatened McDonald’s with legal action over the Happy Meal toys used as a lure for minor children, and don’t be surprised if they file a suit before the month is out.

It’s really just this simple: McDonald’s and other fast-food chains are bribing children to choose food items that are at best insufficiently nutritious and at worst downright unhealthy for them. That may not qualify as child abuse, but it’s definitely child manipulation and exploitation. I applaud almost any measure taken to rein it in.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

In Defense of San Francisco’s “Happy Meals” Law is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News

Fat is Fine…able

Providing people with products that contain excess fats or that lead to excess fatness can’t get you arrested just yet, but there are hints of a trend in that direction. Several U.S. city councils have discussed the possibility of placing legal restrictions on the amount and kind of fats that dining establishments can serve up, and at least one city, Baltimore, is serious about it, having enacted a legal limit of 0.5 grams of trans fat per food item.

So far they’ve sent warnings to over 100 local restaurants, and just slapped a $100 fine on one eatery for racking up more than one violation. Given that some studies suggest trans fats may cause up to 30,000 premature deaths, our hat is off to Baltimore. But what really caught our attention was the name of the cited restaurant: Healthy Choice.

Actually, the Healthy Choice owners got off easy. Instead of Baltimore, they might have been located in Sao Paulo, Brazil. That’s where a former McDonald’s franchise manager sued the company, claiming that the requirement that he sample the fare each day to ensure quality, and the provision of free meals to employees, caused him to put on 65 unhealthy pounds over 12 years. The court bought the argument and ordered Mickey D’s to pony up a $17,500 settlement. We trust that the plaintiff will apply some of the funds to exercise equipment.

Putting the Din in Dinner

Weight Loss Tip # 7,449: Play CDs of bagpipe bands very loudly whenever you’re eating. Or hire someone to scrape their fingernails on a blackboard during your meals. Or eat your takeout lunches at the nearest auto body shop. Or set off a car alarm just before tucking into breakfast.

Why? Because research at the University of Manchester has determined that diners find food to be less flavorful when accompanied by loud noise, and their overall satisfaction with the food is aligned with whether the sounds they’re hearing strike them as pleasant or not. Based on that, just imagine the pounds you could shed simply by taking every meal while listening to the recorded speeches of either Nancy Pelosi or Sarah Palin, depending on your political persuasion.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

Busted For Dealing Trans Fats, and the Noise Pollution Diet is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News