Pleasure is... a McRib?

This is a post by Ron.  During class this past Monday, I mentioned some disturbing--indeed, truly frightening--news. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is predicting that rates of diabetes are increasing so fast that one third of all Americans may have the disease by the year 2050.  Type II diabetes, which is largely preventable with good diet and exercise habits, accounts for most of the increase.  Diabetes is the single greatest cause of loss of limb and of blindness.  It also leads to or contributes to impotence, bladder problems, nerve damage, heart disease, and stroke.  Currently, complication from diabetes are listed as the seventh highest cause of death in the United States (according to the CDC website). The thought of one third of the American population developing diabetes staggers the imagine.  The medical system would be overwhelmed.

But what is the connection between pleasure-seeking and diabetes?  We are surrounded by quick, cheap, processed foods that have been sweetened with sugar and corn syrup, or battered and fried in cheap oil.  We are served hamburgers and sodas in portion sizes that were once unimaginable.  Have we created a food delivery system in the United States that meets our desires?  Or does the food delivery system that we have--fast food restaurants, casual dining outlets, slurpees and big gulps and french fries and giant aisles of candy and Wendy's triples--shape our desires?  If better, more nutritious food were available, would we be more likely to eat them?  Would this lower our rates of diabetes and heart disease?  Or do stores market a steady diet of unhealthy products because those are the items that we are more likely to order or to buy?

The day after I spoke about diabetes, the Daily News carried an article celebrating the return of the McRib.  In the accompanying photo, a young woman held up a McRib sandwich and flashed a huge smile, behind which was a huge McDonald's sign.  The McRib is a processed pork patty SHAPED like a rib cage.  It has only about 500 calories (which is low compared to the 750 for the Angus Deluxe), but it contains 48% of a full day's worth of saturated fat.  Add a medium fries, and push the saturated fat allowed up to 60%. 

The first quote in the article is from a 31-year-old Web designer from Flushing, NY who told the reporter: "I'm going to eat as many as I can until I throw up... It's so tasty! We don't know what animals McDonald's killed to make the McRib, but we don't care because it tastes so good."

The Daily News reports that there are 300 independent Facebook pages dedicated to the McRib.   

For the record, I am not pretending to be a purist.  I fall prey to high-fat, corn-syrup-flavored food items just as much of most my fellow Americans.  But I don't think I do it for pleasure, or at least not most of the time.  To me, the biggest problem is lack of convenient, reasonably priced and decently-prepared alternatives.  It feels as if we are caught in a giant food processing machine.  I teach at several colleges in New York, and I am amazed by the junk food served in their cafeterias.  The worst cafeteria by far is at BMCC, where the visitor is confronted by rows and rows of potato chips (literally several racks positioned in four different sections of the cafeteria), individually wrapped pieces of cake, cookies, gummi worms, corn-syrup sweetened beverages, and slices of pie. 

On Monday I showed a documentary about a very unusual topic: zoophilia.  The purpose of the Daniel Bergner book, and of that film, is to shine a light on the "far side of desire."  The purpose of talking so much about diabetes on the same day of the film is to shine a light back on ourselves, or at least on those of us who think our desires fall within the range of normality.  Some of the psychoanalysts we are reading, especially Norman O. Brown, insist that pathology is inherent in every interaction between individuals and the societies that they live within.  It is easy to become squeamish during a showing of Zoo.  But then we let ourselves off the hook.  How scary is it to think a future in which one third of Americans have contracted a complicated, expensive and deadly disease.  How much of the rise in diabetes cases will be attributable to an American diet that has become self-destructive?  Diabetes, meanwhile, is only one of the "diseases of affluence" affecting large numbers of Americans.  Heart disease remains the number one killer in the U.S.  We know these things, we talk about them, we read stories about them, but there is little sign that we are changing our patterns of eating.  

George Ritzer would point out that the article in the Daily News was a triumph of marketing.  Did McDonald's have to pay for this two page spread about one of its sandwich items, which was written about as "news," rather than advertising?  If so, how much did they pay?  Did the Daily News simply decide to market this on its own?  And why did they decide to start with a quote about a woman who wants to eat so many that she throws up? 

I hope this post is not depressing!  I will be writing more about food, and pleasure, and normalcy.  Hopefully, those posts will not be so brooding.