Owen
Kali
LeightonFiled under: Food, TV, Web | Tags: America, Bell, Commercials, Diet, Drive Thru Diet, Exercise, Fat People, Fine Print, Food, Nutrition, Obesity, Taco, Taco Bell, Taco Bell Diet
With the amount of sports that I watch, I’ve seen this commercial an exorbitant amount of times. At first I thought it was a joke but I’m still waiting for the punchline. Until then, I would be remiss to not rant about the disgust that I feel when I see this aired. Not just with Taco Bell, Christine Dougherty and whoever else decides to participate in this idiocy. It makes me feel dirty that I live in a country where something like this is promoted.
Lets run down the entire 30 seconds and note some of the things wrong with this spot:
1- Drive-thru Diet. Assuming Drive-thru is just 1 word, those are 2 words that should never be grouped together.
2- Let’s focus on what this chick is actually saying.
“I replaced my usual fast food with Taco Bell…”
“When I decided to trim down, I knew I had to be realistic…I didn’t want to give up fast food…”
These are the worst diet plans ever. All I hear is, “I don’t want to be a shiteater but I just love the taste.”
3- Note the massive amount of “fine print”. First it explains how her diet consists of a ridiculously low amount of calories. About 20% lower than the recommended intake for women trying to lose weight. It then immediately explains that these meals are low in FAT. NOT IN CALORIES. So it does close to nothing.
Kali jokingly wrote in an earlier post that I was afraid of fat people. Not afraid, you just don’t like them. Wait, did I say afraid? I asked him to take it down because I was afraid it would offend people. Yep, I said afraid. It was funnier that way though. When we started this we agreed wouldn’t censor each other but it was based on an opinion that I’ve never fully explained to him or anyone else before this appropriate time.
What it comes down to is my distaste for the unnecessarily obese. I fully understand that some people have medical issues that makes it difficult or impossible to control their weight. I’m not talking about them.
I also understand that there are people that the majority of people are not models or pro athletes and do not have bodies shaped as such. I understand that a healthy shape for most people has some extra padding. I’m not talking about them.
I’m not even talking about people that are normally or formerly in shape but their life has become more sedentary and they recognize that if they plan to maintain themselves the need to get active or change their diet. But it’s too cold outside right now to run around and it just tastes soooooooo good. I’m not talking about them. That’s me, cake is the shit.
I’m talking about people that eat themselves from out of shape, to overweight to obese and eventually unhealthy. Or just eat themselves to an extra 50 pounds, complain about gaining weight and then never do anything even when given the opportunity. To me it shows a lack of self respect. And if you don’t respect yourself, I feel no reason extend to you that privilege from myself. See and I think that’s cold. Yeah, some people do grossly overeat, and that does show a lack of control or maybe even self respect. But my thing is that, that is one of a myriad of aspects about that person. Just because their fat, or obese doesn’t mean their not smart, funny, cool, or whatever. To say you’re not gonna respect somebody simply because of their weight is wrong. It’s one tiny facet of that person, just like skin color, sexual orientation, gender, fuckin… height. And yeah, those things are different because those are things that people are born with, and some people are born with a body type but you’ve made it clear that’s not who you’re talkin about. But the sentiment is the same. Your choosing how to treat someone based on one small thing about them, that more than likely is gonna be insignificant in your relationship with them. No one’s sayin’ you gotta date ‘em or even find them attractive, but you should still respect them.
This commercial and ones like it seem to only enable these people. To brand the idea of eating fast food (that is so garbage that it marketed itself to drunk people as “4th meal”) as a means of weight loss. It only piles on to the international renowned fact that America is the fattiest and laziest country in the world. When diet spokespeople are too lazy to even get out their car and walk in to their choice of eatery, then we really have hit rock bottom.Yeah that is pretty bad.
I personally have eaten my face off during this holiday season and have much work to do to get back my body back in to the shape that years of soccer has accustomed me to. But I also know that I won’t be able to pick up that body in any drive thru aisle.
Owen, Running past Taco Bell.
Kali, the See-food dieter
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The quantity of weight loss did not differ between groups, but instead was associated with how closely the participants followed the diet. Declan Dieting
Comment by Declan Dieting January 5, 2010 @ 2:18 am