New Iceberg Lettuce, Same Toxic Worldview

New Iceberg Lettuce, Same Toxic Worldview
Mark Morford

McDonald's has taken the very weird step of enlisting the aid of Oprah Winfrey's personal trainer to promote an adult version of the Happy Meal, the fast-food giant's latest effort to offer healthier products. Instead of Happy Meal standards like a burger and a toy, the new Go Active meal will include a salad, an exercise booklet and a pedometer meant to encourage walking, along with a pamphlet saying, yo, dude, what the hell are you thinking and you say you're trying to be all healthy and eat more greens and be all vigorous and cool and yet you're stepping foot into a goddamn McDonald's?

Hello? Have you heard of a produce aisle? Salad bar? Organic? Isn't getting a salad from McDonald's pretty much the equivalent of having your black-tar heroin cut with cheap meth? Masturbating with sandpaper? Nothing like a little old pre-frozen iceberg lettuce and some shaved carrot slivers tossed with some meat-like chicken chunks and topping it all off with some lo-fat ranch to drive you right back to double toxic cheeseburgers and a choco shake, am I right? Sorry, too bitter? At least they're trying?

Is this progress? Should we be grateful for small remotely healthy blessings when they come from the hell-mouth of noxious garbage food itself? Maybe we should. Fitness guru Bob Greene has agreed to help promote the Go Active Meal, mostly because they're paying him a freakin' boatload of money and he really doesn't give a crap anymore and Oprah never comes over for his special no-sugar all-wheat gluten seitan weekend barbecues anyway, so, you know, screw it.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2003/09/17/national1242EDT0588.DTL&nl=fix