A healthy McDonalds is an oxymoron.If it ever becomes healthy people will stop going.

You’re absolutely right. But I got a taste of what the fast-food restaurant of the future will entail the other day when I took my son to Jamba Juice.

I hadn’t really paid attention before, but what Jamba Juice is actually selling is a tasty milkshake, full of sugar and all that other good stuff we crave. Not just a milkshake, but a huge milkshake. These things could supersize you in no time flat. But why isn’t Jamba Juice instead of McDonalds the target of the Neopuritans? Well, on the side of the milkshake cup it says “Your body is your temple.” So the milkshake is kosher in the new religion you see. Better than kosher, it’s a direct offering to your deity. They also sell the new blood of Christ in the form of wheat grass shots. Below that on the cup, and I deemed this particularly brilliant, it is written that “Littering is strictly prohibited.” So here you are, slurping your gigantic milkshake while feeling a little guilty about breaking your diet, and you’re reminded about strict prohibition. Yes! Redemption is yours: you’re not a criminal rulebreaker for breaking your diet, au contraire, you’re a law-abiding citizen of your community because YOU DON’T LITTER. You’re green! You’re a superior person, a moral person, a noble person. It just gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling all over.

In the post-modern fast-food restaurant, every unhealthy act of gluttony is actually a paean to your temple (piety made possible without having to be one of those moronic Red-Staters) and the act of indulgence makes you a law-abider to boot. Physical and spiritual and social fulfillment, simultaneously. What more could one ask for in this world of sin?

I only use olive oil and real butter. I figure one counteracts the other.

There are very few traditional Polish food items that I make, one of them are very thin, light tasting fried pastries made to celebrate the New Year (they go well with oysters and champagne). The traditional recipe calls for lard. No vegetable oil replacement ever made up for the taste that one gets with lard, but go ahead and try to find lard in a California superstore.

One more fine culinary tradition sacrificed on the altar of health PC. Sigh.

Mmmm, chips.

McDonalds trying to make fast food that will make the trial lawyers and the “Super Size Me” crowd happy is like Playboy trying to make pornography that makes Jerry Falwell happy. It can’t be done.A glass or two of cabernet at dinner is fine. A quart of thunderbird twice a day is a major problem. It isn’t the product, it is the abuse of the product. I smoke and it is my fault, not the tobacco growers. I either have to quit or suffer the consequences. Joe Camel didn’t come to me and plant chips in my brain that made me smoke.

And it won them public acclaim from nutritionists, right? Well, actually it got them bad press and a bunch of lawsuits from Jews, Hindus and vegetarians who discovered that trace amounts of animal fat were still used, as if McD’s had claimed their new recipe was glatt kosher.

Same thing here. This isn’t going to get them anything but trouble in the long run. The fast food companies, particularly McDonalds, are making the opposite mistake the tobacco companies made. They’re accepting responsibility that will only be used to burn them.

It’s not about the taste, it’s not about the color, it’s about what the customer believes while chewing.