It’s the country that turned its back on McDonald’s.
The fast food giant added the traditional llajwa sauce to its
classic patties, but still Bolivians weren’t conviced.
So after five years, McDonald’s closed its eight branches and left
the country in 2002.
Now a new documentary, “¿Por qué quebró McDonald’s en Bolivia?”,
explores why McDonald’s failed. Filmmaker Fernando Martinez focuses
on social and cultural aspects to explain the company’s lack of
success. “Culture beat a transnational, globalized world,” he said.
Here’s the movie trailer.
Yes, it’s in Spanish, but I think you’ll get the general idea
from the pictures without needing to follow the dialog.
Or here’s
another version with even less dialog and some English subtitles.
Continue reading →
We spend our lives being paranoid about death, murder, homicide,
you name it, it’s on the front page of every paper, CNN…. Look at homicide at the bottom, for God’s sake!
Every single one of those ones in the red is a diet-related disease.
Any doctor, any specialist, will tell you that.
The top three are heart disease, cancer, and stroke.
Number 6 is diabetes.
Those are the ones in red on Jamie Oliver’s graph.
Homicide is number 15.
See CDC for numbers.
(
In 2006 72,449 people died of diabetes and 18,573 of homicide.
You’re almost 4 times as likely to die of diabetes.
And about 40 times more likely to die of heart disease.)
I want to show a picture of my friend Brittney.
She’s sixteen years old.
She’s got six years to live.
Because of the food that she’s eaten.
She’s the third generation of Americans that hasn’t grown up within a food
environment where they’ve been taught to cook at home
or in school.
Or her mum. Or her mum’s mum.
She has six years to live!
More pictures of people with very round faces and rounder bodies:
This is a normal family, guys!.
We need to change normal.
That’s what Jamie Oliver wants to do.
Obesity leads to diabetes and heart disease.
And what leads to obesity?
Lack of exercise combined with food stuffed with
high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), salt, and fat
in massive portions.
Fast food has taken over the whole country, we know that.
Time to take it back.
I wish I could come up here today and hang up a cure for AIDS or cancer,
you’d be fighting and scrambling to get to me.
This, all this bad news, is preventable. That’s the good news.
It’s very preventable.
How?
Vote with your food purchases.
Demand a food ambassador in every supermarket.
Demand big food businesses back food education.
Get the government to work with the fast food purveyors
to wean us off the fat, sugar, and salt.
Schools, ages 4-whenever: proper fresh food cooked from local sources on site.
Every child should leave school knowing how to cook ten recipes
that will save their life.
Corporate American should feed their staff properly.
You can care and be commercial.
That’s his prescription.
Doesn’t sound so hard, does it?
The fast food giant added the traditional llajwa sauce to its classic patties, but still Bolivians weren’t conviced.
