Counting the calories... I never was much good at maths.

Well, McDonald’s have done it again. Not only are they responsible for a large number of people feeling bad for being stout/fat/obese, whatever your name for it is (just for this post I’m skipping over the fact that people have free will, and whatever goes down their gullets is their own choice, and it’s no good blaming someone else for your health problems, then expecting the public to fork out for a gastric band surgery you lazy bastards!). Now McDonald’s have found a way to make people feel bad before they’ve even eaten anything.

The golden arches are now going to be showing how many calories are in each of their foodstuffs. The first thing I’m going to say, is that anyone who consistently eats at Maccy-D’s should feel a nagging sense of shame. The second, is that I would think a lot of people who eat McDonald’s food, do not want to know what’s in it. The third is that this blatant advertising of calories is a slap in the face to some of our most vulnerable people. The calorie-counters.

This fragile section of our society have their lives ruled by those little tables printed on the side of everything we consume telling us that “100ml semi-skimmed milk is: 49 kcal.” (Honestly I prefer the missing kid pictures). Lately I have been dipping into this curious mindset, to have to know everything about what you are eating. It’s nothing short of a drug. And not the fun kind that make pretty colours and sleepiness abound from fluffy white clouds. The kind that takes obsession to a higher plane of existence. And means you just can’t have another Jaffa cake, Or even the first one.

Now, this McDonald’s business won’t have any effect on the hardcore CC, as they have memorised the calories of everything they could possibly ever venture within 10 feet of. The people who are going to be most affected are the rookies. The dabblers. The people that were ‘just curious’ to see what they were eating. And this news about the Big Mac could just about turn them insane.

You see, eating just stops becoming fun when you’re thinking to yourself “this pizza just doesn’t taste as good knowing that it’s damn near half of my calorie GDA.”

Does this mean I’m going to stop eating the food I like? No. but, it almost makes being a vegan seem an easier to live with alternative.

Almost.