Since its founding in the 1940s, McDonald’s, the world’s largest restaurant, has navigated many threats to its bottom line. Other fast food companies have imitated and sought to improve on its concept. Labor activists have decried its treatment of workers. Food and environmental activists have assailed the way it has industrialized food production. The international community has deplored McDonald’s trade practices and protectionism. Animal welfare activists oppose its wholesale commodification and mistreatment of animals. And, of course, public health experts condemn its hawking of unhealthy, fattening food to children and adults.
But this year, McDonald’s stock has begun to show the effects of problems past and present.
Movies like Super Size Me
What if you ate nothing but McDonald’s three times a day for a month and tried everything on the menu? What would happen to your health? It was the premise of a funny but shocking 2004 movie, Super Size Me, directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock.
One of the movie’s first shockers was a group of children Spurlock interviews who do not recognize photos of U.S. presidents but do recognize Ronald McDonald. But the main shocker was the effects of an all-McDonald’s diet. After only five days of eating McDonald’s three times a day, Spurlock gained 9.5 pounds, after 12 days, 17 pounds and after 30 days, he had packed on a walloping 24.5 pounds. Since 3,500 excessive calories add one pound, Spurlock had consumed 87,5000 excessive calories in one month of eating at McDonald’s. One doctor in the movie even thinks that Spurlock is losing muscle as he gains fat.
Nor were the health effects from his McDonald’s experiment just obesity. Spurlock’s cholesterol vaults to 230, he accumulates fat in his liver and it takes him fourteen months to lose the fat he gained from one month on McDonald’s. He experiences mood swings, lack of energy and, according to his girlfriend, lack of a sex drive. Some symptoms Spurlock experiences like depression, lethargy and headaches, are only relieved by eating more McDonald’s, which his doctor observes is a classic demonstration of the phenomenon of addiction. Is that why people keep going back to McDonald’s?
Two McDonald’s CEOs die of food-linked diseases
Trailers for Super Size Me were no doubt already running when Jim Cantalupo, McDonald’s chairman and CEO, died suddenly of a heart attack in April 2004 at the age of 60. He was attending a convention for international McDonald’s owners and operators in Orlando and died at his hotel, said McDonald’s. While it had been 16 years since James Garner suffered a heart attack while serving as the face of the “Real Food for Real People” beef campaign, the parallels were hard to ignore: this food is so good, it kills you.
Dick Adams, a former McDonald’s executive and franchisee consultant put the blame for Cantalupo’s death squarely on . . . international travel. International travel takes a toll on industry executives, resulting in numerous premature deaths, said Adams, ignoring any mention of unhealthy diets, “He was doing an extensive amount of international travel,” he said. “That’s about the most stressful thing you can do to yourself.”
Cantalupo was swiftly replaced by Charlie Bell, who, at 44, was the youngest chief executive ever named by McDonalds. But a month after he assumed the post, Bell was diagnosed with colon cancer and passed away eight months later. Again, the dietary overtones could not be ignored since a high consumption of red meat is linked to an increased risk of colon cancer.
Contaminated meat in China, shuttered stores in Russia
Commercial opportunities overseas have also proven to be commercial risks for McDonald’s. This summer, a Shanghai reporter captured footage of contaminated and expired meat used by its supplier, Shanghai Husi Food, a subsidiary of Illinois-based OSI group. Video of the clandestine practices went viral and the Shanghai Municipal Food and Drug Administration found 3,000 cases of contaminated beef already sold to the public as “fresh. “Banned items reached other countries and, in Japan, McDonald’s replaced chicken nuggets and chicken fillets with tofu and fish. McDonald’s Asian sales declined.
Just weeks later, in August, 12 Russian McDonald’s were shut down by the state consumer regulator, over alleged sanitary violations, including Russia’s first iconic McDonald’s restaurant that opened in Pushkin Square. One hundred other McDonald’s were inspected for violations and Russian regulators sought to ban some McDonald’s burgers and milkshakes because of alleged food safety violations. Internationally, the regulatory pressure was viewed as capricious and political and related to the Ukraine crisis but McDonald’s global stature and profits were still affected. McDonald’s closed all of its outlets in Crimea, following Russia’s occupation and annexation of the peninsula last spring.
Losing out with millennials
This fall, McDonald’s found younger customers, especially people born from the early 1980s to the early 2000s, were walking away. For example, the number of people ages 19 to 21 alone in the U.S. who visit McDonald’s monthly has fallen by 12.9 percent since 2011, say published sources.
To explain the defection, business analysts cite young people’s desire for healthier foods or foods they can customize and speculate about which fast food chains are picking up McDonald’s slack. But they miss two larger demographic trends that have a lot to do with young people’s disenchantment with McDonald’s: Vegetarianism and a drop in car culture.
A full 12 percent of millennials now characterize themselves as “faithful vegetarians” according to research from the Hartman Group. Only four percent of Generation Xers are vegetarian and only 1 percent of post-World War II baby boomers. Meanwhile, the number of “per-person miles traveled” has dropped by 25 percent among those 16 to 30 since 2000 says the Federal Highway Administration. In fact, the portion of Americans aged 16 to 24 who even have a driver’s license fell to 67 percent in 2011! While certainly many McDonald’s are within walking or biking distance, their exurban locations and drive-through features connect McDonald’s strongly to car culture.
And there is another possible disconnect. People who are vegetarians and bicyclists are likely to have opinions about the treatment of workers, animals, the environment and the industrialization of food production that put McDonald’s on the bottom of their list.
Martha Rosenberg is a freelance journalist and the author of the highly acclaimed “Born With A Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health,” published by Prometheus Books. Check her Facebook page.
