Anthony Bourdain: My war on fast food

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Anthony Bourdain: My war on fast food

The bad boy chef wants his young daughter to see fast food as the enemy. And in his eyes no tactic is too dirty in his fight against McDonald's

Anthony Bourdain
Saturday June 12 2010
The Guardian


http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jun/12/anthony-bourdain-war-fast-food


My wife and I are speaking in hushed tones outside our daughter's bedroom door, where she's pretending to be asleep. "Sssshhhh!! She can hear us," says my wife.

"No, she's asleep," I hiss in a stage whisper. We're talking about Ronald McDonald [http://www.downtownorlandoproperties.com/ronald_mcdonald_jumping1.jpg" title="] again. Bringing up the possibility of his being implicated in the disappearance of yet another child.

"Not another one!" gasps my wife.

"I'm afraid so," I say with concern. "Stepped inside to get some fries and a Happy Meal [http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/food/happy-meal/happy-meal.mcdj" title="], and hasn't been seen since. They're combing the woods? checked out the Hamburglar [http://broke207.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/hamburglar.jpg" title="]'s place ? but, of course, they're focusing on Ronald again."

This is just one act in an ongoing dramatic production, one small part of a larger campaign of psychological warfare. The target? A two-and-a-half-year-old girl. The stakes are high. As I see it, nothing less than the heart, mind, soul and physical health of my adored only child. I am determined that the Evil Empire shall not have her, and to that end I am prepared to use what Malcolm X called "any means necessary".

McDonald's [http://www.www.mcdonalds.co.uk" title="] has been very shrewd about kids. Say what you will about Ronald and friends, they know their market ? and who drives it. They haven't shrunk from targeting young minds ? in fact, their entire gazillion-dollar promotional budget seems aimed squarely at toddlers. They know that one small child, crying in the back seat of the car of two overworked, overstressed parents, will more often than not determine the choice of restaurants. They know exactly when and how to start building brand identification and loyalty with brightly coloured clowns and smoothly tied-in toys. From funding impoverished school districts to the instalment of playgrounds, McDonald's has not shrunk from fucking with young minds in any way it can.

But I want my little girl to see fast-food culture as I do. As the enemy.

Eric Schlosser's earnest call to arms, Fast Food Nation [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Food_Nation" title="], may have had the facts on its side, but that's no way to wean a toddler off Happy Meals, much less hold her attention. If the history of conflict has taught us anything, it's that one seldom wins a battle by taking the moral high ground. Kids don't give a shit about calorie count, or factory farming, or the impact that our insatiable desire for cheap meat may have on the environment or our society's health.

What's the most frightening thing to a child? The pain of being the outsider, of looking ridiculous to others, of being teased or picked on. Every child burns with fear at the prospect. It's a primal instinct: to belong. McDonald's has surely figured this out, along with what specific colours appeal to small children, what textures, and what movies or TV shows are likely to attract them to the grey discs of meat. They feel no compunction about harnessing the fears and unarticulated yearnings of small children, and nor shall I.

"Ronald smells bad," I say every time he shows up on television or [on a sign] out of the car window. "Kind of like... poo!

"I'm not saying it rubs off on you or anything ? if you get too close to him ? but..."

I let that hang in the air a while.

"Ewwww!!!" says my daughter.

The CIA calls this kind of thing "black propaganda" and it's a sensible, cost-effective countermeasure, I believe, to the overwhelming superiority of the forces aligned against us.



So how did I get here ? worrying about what kids eat? It's fair to say that turning 30 came as a cruel surprise to me. I hadn't really planned on making it that far, but there I was, and without a plan B. The restaurant business provided a degree of stability in that there were people who expected me to get up in the morning; and heroin, if nothing else, was useful in giving me a sense of purpose. I knew what I had to do every day: get heroin.

But by my late 30s, detoxed from heroin and methadone, and having finally ended a lifelong love affair with cocaine, I discovered a basic emptiness and dissatisfaction in my life, a hole I'd managed to fill with various chemicals for the better part of 25 years. I'd never lived in an environment where a child would have been a healthy fit, and I'd never felt I was a suitably healthy person. I don't know exactly when the possibility of that changing presented itself, but it was some time after realising that I'd had enough cocaine, that a naked, oiled supermodel was not going to make everything better in my life.

The precise moment of realisation came when I was 44, in my tiny apartment, lying in bed with my then-girlfriend. I caught myself thinking: "I could make a baby with this woman."

We discussed this. And Ottavia ? that was (is) her name ? also thought it a fine idea, though of my prospects for a quick insemination she was less optimistic. "Baby," she said (insert a charming Italian accent, with the tone and delivery of a busy restaurant manager), "you're old. Your sperm. Eez a dead."

Assuming a long campaign, we planned to get at it straight away. And since then it's all been about the little girl. Because I am acutely aware of the fact that she's a blank page, her brain a soft surface waiting for the irreversible impressions of every raised voice, every gaffe and unguarded moment.

I'm not against hamburgers. But I believe that a burger should be made of "beef" (not necessarily the best beef, but definitely recognisable as something that was, before grinding, mostly red, reasonably fresh, presumably from a steer or cow, something that your average doberman would find enticing). I don't believe my hamburger should have to come with a warning to cook it well done to kill off any potential contaminants or bacteria.

It is repugnant, in principle, to me ? the suggestion that we legislate against fast food. We will surely have crossed some kind of terrible line if we are infantilised to the extent that the government has to step in and take the Whoppers [http://www.bk.com/en/us/campaigns/whopper-freakout.html" title="] out of our hands. It is dismaying ? and probably inevitable. When we reach the point where we are unable to raise a military force of physically fit specimens, or public safety becomes an issue after some lurid example of a large person blocking a fire exit, they surely shall.

But if you are literally serving shit to children, then I've got no problem with a jury of your peers wiring your nuts to a car battery and feeding you the accumulated sweepings of the bottom of a monkey cage. In fact, I'll hold the spoon.

In this way, me and the Peta [http://www.peta.org.uk/" title="] folks and the vegetarians have something in common. They don't want us to eat any meat. I'm beginning to think, in light of recent accounts, that we should, on balance, eat a little less meat. Peta doesn't want stressed animals to be cruelly crowded into sheds, ankle deep in their own crap, because they don't want any animals to die ? ever ? and basically think that chickens should, in time, gain the right to vote. I don't want animals stressed or crowded or treated cruelly or inhumanely because that makes them provably less delicious. And, often, less safe to eat.

I am still genuinely angry at vegetarians. A shocking number of vegetarians and even vegans have surprised me with an occasional sense of humour, refrained from hurling animal blood at me, even befriended me. I have even knowingly had sex with one. But what I've seen of the world since my first book [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Confidential" title="] was published has, if anything, made me angrier at anyone not a Hindu who turns up their nose at a friendly offer of meat.

I don't like circuses, and I frankly think Siegfried or Roy [http://www.siegfriedandroy.com/" title="] ? whichever one of those guys got mauled by a tiger ? got what he deserved. Tigers like to maul people, and anything preventing them from doing that on the one hand, while tempting them with a German in a sparkly, cerulean suit on the other, is clearly animal cruelty. But the idea of a vegetarian traveller in comfortable shoes waving away the hospitality ? the distillation of a lifetime of training and experience ? of, say, a Vietnamese pho vendor (or Italian mother-in-law, for that matter) fills me with spluttering indignation. No principle is, to my mind, worth that; no western concept of, "Is it a pet or is it meat?" excuses that kind of rudeness.

This is, however, an area of overlapping interests. The cruelty and ugliness of the factory farm, and the effects on our environment, are, of course, repellent to any reasonable person. But it's the general lowering of standards inherent in our continuing insistence on cheap burgers, wherever they might come from and however bad they taste; the collective, post-ironic shrug we've come to give each other as we knowingly dig into something that tastes, at best, like cardboard and soured onion, that's hurting us. And our children.

Which is why Jamie Oliver [http://www.jamieoliver.com/" title="] is a hero. Before you spit up your gnocchi, let me explain. I hated The Naked Chef, too. And all that matey, mockney bullshit. And the Sainsbury's business... and the band... and the scooter ? all that shit that made Jamie a star.

Say what you will about how well, how attractively or advisably, but Jamie Oliver puts his money where his mouth is. He'd clearly prefer to be an annoying nag than make more money. Sure, he's still bringing down plenty of dough ? but you've gotta respect a guy who manages to embarrass the government with a show about what schoolkids are actually eating. That kind of talk will eventually make you unpopular. It's very rarely a good career move to have a conscience. Most chefs I know, were they where Jamie is on the Success-O-Meter, they'd be holed up at a Four Seasons somewhere, shades drawn, watching four tranny hookers snort cocaine off each other.

Like Jamie, I think constantly about ways to "help" my daughter in her food choices. So when I read of a recent study that found that children are significantly more inclined to eat "difficult" foods like liver, spinach, broccoli when they are wrapped in comfortingly bright packages from McDonald's, I was at first appalled, and then inspired.

Rather than trying to co-opt Ronald's all-too-effective credibility among children to short-term positive ends, such as getting my daughter to eat the occasional serving of spinach, I could reverse-engineer this! Use the strange and terrible powers of the Golden Arches for good, not evil.

I plan to dip something decidedly unpleasant in an enticing chocolate coating and wrap it carefully in McDonald's paper. Nothing dangerous, but something that a two-and-a-half-year-old will find "yucky!" ? even upsetting ? in the extreme. Maybe a sponge soaked with vinegar. A tuft of hair. A Barbie head. I will then place it inside the familiar cardboard box and leave it somewhere for my daughter to find. I might even warn her: "If you see any of that nasty McDonald's, make sure you don't eat it!" I'll say, before leaving her to it. An early, traumatic, Ronald-related experience can only be good for her.

This is an edited extract from Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine To The World Of Food And The People Who Cook, by Anthony Bourdain, published by Bloomsbury at ?18.99. ? Anthony Bourdain, 2010. To order a copy for ?14.99 (inc free UK mainland p&p), go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop [http://www.guardian.co.uk/bookshop" title="] or call 0330 333 6846.