video games : need for achievement :: McDonalds : need for calories
Why the McDonalds hate? There’s not that much difference between McDonalds food and what you get in fancier, more expensive restaurants. Whether you order a steak or a hamburger, you’re still eating dead cow flesh. And the steak won’t have lettuce and tomato on it.
This is because video games have divorced the feeling of achievement from actual life progress. I used to wake up and play video games all day, then feel good, shut off the video game, and look around and realize I hadn’t cleaned the apartment or studied for professional exams. Unlike pica, this is an actual feedback loop—these situations grow worse when I ignore them, and the worse they got the more I tried to fight off the feeling of “not achieving” with video games—ignoring them.
Perhaps this is backwards, but I’ve been measuring my personal level of accomplishment by how I do at games—video and otherwise—instead of more conventional measures for a long time now. I’m not particularly proud of my academic achievements, and consider them more a credit to my parents than myself.
I mean, in terms of nutrition and being a superstimulus. What you get in a fancy French restaurant is likely to be just as good—or bad—for your body as what you get in McDonalds. Heck, the fancy restaurant probably uses a lot more butter, for one thing.
In terms of taste, though, I agree that McDonalds is less than impressive—the other common fast food chains are significantly better, as far as I’m concerned. Personally, I don’t notice much of a difference in the amount of pleasure I get from eating Really Expensive food (I’ve been to a Really Expensive restaurant once or twice on vacation) and from eating more ordinary food that I happen to like.
The fancy French restaurant may use more butter, but they also know about the existence of vegetables that aren’t iceberg lettuce, the most ordinary of tomatoes, and onion. And they use spices more esoteric than salt, some of which have beneficial health effects. And they don’t encourage you to consume your meal with an enormous container of fizzy sugar water.
Frankly, for a lot of people (myself included), I think increasing the portion size by 10% counts for more enjoyment than using more than one kind of tomato or eight kinds of lettuce. It’s reliable in a way that adding other kinds of things isn’t, since the more different things there are, the more likely it is that one of them or some combination will be unpalatable.
Please consider the possibility that some of us actually prefer chain restaurant food to “fancy Xish restaurant” food, bizarre as it may seem to you, if you don’t. :)
I think such a preference is more likely to result from an inadequate sample of fancy food (because some upscale places aren’t at all good enough to justify their cost) and/or sour grapes about its expense, but perhaps some people are well-sampled and find fancy food financially accessible and still don’t think it’s an improvement over McDonald’s. These people, I contend, do not have tastebuds. McDonald’s can ruin chicken fingers.
(For what it’s worth, I virtually never go out to eat at all (on my own dime): when I do, I make a point of getting mostly things that I don’t know how to cook myself, such as sushi.)
Y’know, I plain can’t eat McDonalds myself. But I also can’t tell the difference between low-quality and high-quality chocolate, and my girlfriend can, and she thinks McDonalds is one of the culinary wonders of the world.
I contend that it was because they were working outside their milieu. Chicken McNuggets are already perfect, and so one must feel a tearing at one’s soul to work for McDonalds and invent another chicken dish.
Well, you’re right about the diversity of ingredients. And indeed, the fizzy sugar water is definitely bad. I don’t order it myself, though, because fizzy drinks usually give me heartburn. (I get water or orange juice.)
I just think that a lot of the food served at fast food restaurants isn’t as awful as people assume it to be. At least, I think we can agree that there are things that are a lot worse than a McDonalds hamburger, which, for all its flaws, is still more like actual food than a Twinkie is. ;)
Neither the fancy restaurant nor the fast food restaurant is optimizing for nutrition.
However, the fast food restaurant is optimizing for cost, while maintaining acceptable taste. The fancy restaurant, though, is probably serving food that is in some way traditional (else it would be Weird, not Fancy; there are exceptions of course); that is, there is a long history of people eating it. I have heard (no sources, sorry) that any particular traditional cuisine tends to be reasonably healthful [compared to what? I forget], presumably because people have been successful living off it.
So given that, the fancy restaurant is likely to serve more nutritious food.
(I think the weakest link in this is whether the average fancy restaurant does, in fact, serve traditional-in-that-sense food, and whether the presumable skew towards the particularly appealing, rather than typical, food of that cuisine opposes this effect.)
California cuisine in particular can get expensive, and one of its hallmarks is the inventiveness of the chef in combining fresh ingredients into a new dish. So you’re probably right that expensive French or expensive Italian is mostly traditional food, but there are other cuisines that aren’t like that.
That’s the type of exception I had in mind. Of course, “fresh” says something about the nature of the food too. (Unless you mean “novel” as opposed to “recently alive”.)
McDonald’s is also maximizing for serving size. Fancy restaurants rarely do this; some pretty much minimize portion size so they can sell you as many overpriced microportions as possible. But a lot of fast food (and chain restaurants) sell huge, cheap portions compared to more expensive restaurants, so it is something of a case of having a whole lot of something compensates for it not being quite what you need.
Why the McDonalds hate? There’s not that much difference between McDonalds food and what you get in fancier, more expensive restaurants. Whether you order a steak or a hamburger, you’re still eating dead cow flesh. And the steak won’t have lettuce and tomato on it.
Perhaps this is backwards, but I’ve been measuring my personal level of accomplishment by how I do at games—video and otherwise—instead of more conventional measures for a long time now. I’m not particularly proud of my academic achievements, and consider them more a credit to my parents than myself.
Do you have tastebuds?
I mean, I know I’m a food snob, but… Maybe the problem is that you have a confused category of “fancy, expensive restaurant”?
I mean, in terms of nutrition and being a superstimulus. What you get in a fancy French restaurant is likely to be just as good—or bad—for your body as what you get in McDonalds. Heck, the fancy restaurant probably uses a lot more butter, for one thing.
In terms of taste, though, I agree that McDonalds is less than impressive—the other common fast food chains are significantly better, as far as I’m concerned. Personally, I don’t notice much of a difference in the amount of pleasure I get from eating Really Expensive food (I’ve been to a Really Expensive restaurant once or twice on vacation) and from eating more ordinary food that I happen to like.
The fancy French restaurant may use more butter, but they also know about the existence of vegetables that aren’t iceberg lettuce, the most ordinary of tomatoes, and onion. And they use spices more esoteric than salt, some of which have beneficial health effects. And they don’t encourage you to consume your meal with an enormous container of fizzy sugar water.
Frankly, for a lot of people (myself included), I think increasing the portion size by 10% counts for more enjoyment than using more than one kind of tomato or eight kinds of lettuce. It’s reliable in a way that adding other kinds of things isn’t, since the more different things there are, the more likely it is that one of them or some combination will be unpalatable.
Please consider the possibility that some of us actually prefer chain restaurant food to “fancy Xish restaurant” food, bizarre as it may seem to you, if you don’t. :)
I think such a preference is more likely to result from an inadequate sample of fancy food (because some upscale places aren’t at all good enough to justify their cost) and/or sour grapes about its expense, but perhaps some people are well-sampled and find fancy food financially accessible and still don’t think it’s an improvement over McDonald’s. These people, I contend, do not have tastebuds. McDonald’s can ruin chicken fingers.
(For what it’s worth, I virtually never go out to eat at all (on my own dime): when I do, I make a point of getting mostly things that I don’t know how to cook myself, such as sushi.)
Y’know, I plain can’t eat McDonalds myself. But I also can’t tell the difference between low-quality and high-quality chocolate, and my girlfriend can, and she thinks McDonalds is one of the culinary wonders of the world.
It takes all sorts.
I contend that it was because they were working outside their milieu. Chicken McNuggets are already perfect, and so one must feel a tearing at one’s soul to work for McDonalds and invent another chicken dish.
Well, you’re right about the diversity of ingredients. And indeed, the fizzy sugar water is definitely bad. I don’t order it myself, though, because fizzy drinks usually give me heartburn. (I get water or orange juice.)
I just think that a lot of the food served at fast food restaurants isn’t as awful as people assume it to be. At least, I think we can agree that there are things that are a lot worse than a McDonalds hamburger, which, for all its flaws, is still more like actual food than a Twinkie is. ;)
Neither the fancy restaurant nor the fast food restaurant is optimizing for nutrition.
However, the fast food restaurant is optimizing for cost, while maintaining acceptable taste. The fancy restaurant, though, is probably serving food that is in some way traditional (else it would be Weird, not Fancy; there are exceptions of course); that is, there is a long history of people eating it. I have heard (no sources, sorry) that any particular traditional cuisine tends to be reasonably healthful [compared to what? I forget], presumably because people have been successful living off it.
So given that, the fancy restaurant is likely to serve more nutritious food.
(I think the weakest link in this is whether the average fancy restaurant does, in fact, serve traditional-in-that-sense food, and whether the presumable skew towards the particularly appealing, rather than typical, food of that cuisine opposes this effect.)
California cuisine in particular can get expensive, and one of its hallmarks is the inventiveness of the chef in combining fresh ingredients into a new dish. So you’re probably right that expensive French or expensive Italian is mostly traditional food, but there are other cuisines that aren’t like that.
That’s the type of exception I had in mind. Of course, “fresh” says something about the nature of the food too. (Unless you mean “novel” as opposed to “recently alive”.)
The “fresh” in California cuisine is about “recently alive”, though “novel” is often part of the experience as well.
McDonald’s is also maximizing for serving size. Fancy restaurants rarely do this; some pretty much minimize portion size so they can sell you as many overpriced microportions as possible. But a lot of fast food (and chain restaurants) sell huge, cheap portions compared to more expensive restaurants, so it is something of a case of having a whole lot of something compensates for it not being quite what you need.