Posted on 04/08/2006 7:29:41 AM PDT by Cvengr
What's the largest fast junk food chain in the country?
Wrong.
It's not McDonald's.
It's Subway.
Subway overtook McDonald's last year in the United States and now has 15,874 locations in the U.S. compared to 11,533 for McDonald's.
Worldwide, Subway has 21,528 restaurants in 75 countries.
McDonald's has more than 30,000 restaurants in 119 countries.
Subway founder Fred DeLuca says he wants 30,000 outlets worldwide by 2010.
Of course, Subway would not want you to think that it is not a fast junk food chain.
In fact, the privately held firm has overtaken McDonald's by riding a wave of publicity featuring Jared Fogle, who says he lost 245 pounds on the following diet coffee for breakfast, Subway sandwich for lunch, and Subway sandwich for dinner.
Soon, the word was out you could lose weight eating Subway sandwiches.
And tomorrow, on the National Mall, Subway founder and CEO DeLuca will join with Fogle, the American Heart Association, members of Congress (including the corporate liberal Rose DeLauro, D-Connecticut, whose district contains Subway's corporate headquarters), and various "nutritional experts" to "galvanize support for fighting childhood obesity."
We went and visited our local Subway and found that in fact, there was health and diet information displayed, including a nutritional and dietary guide with the American Heart Association's stamp of approval.
But as at most fast junk food outlets, Coke machines, the rows of bags of chips, and the rubbery chicken and unappetizing beef were screaming unhealthy, stay away.
You could order a salad, or a vegetarian sandwich. The chain markets seven subs with six grams of fat or less.
But for the most part, the staple of this franchise is processed meats and cheeses, soft drinks and chips.
Subway sandwiches include such classics as Steak and Cheese, Subway Melt (a first class blend of turkey breast, ham, crispy bacon, and melted cheese) Italian BMT (pepperoni, genoa salami, and ham) and the Cold Cut Trio (turkey based ham, salami, and bologna) not your typical heart healthy sandwiches.
Should members of Congress and the American Heart Association be promoting this multinational junk food company?
Of course they shouldn't.
The American Heart Association has sullied its reputation by getting in bed with whatever corporation comes around with its checkbook open.
According to a report from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the American Heart Association has taken big corporate cash from a long list of drug companies, junk food companies, and even from the National Livestock and Meat Board, which gave $189,000 to sponsor a HeartRide cycling series "to help ensure that people don't think that AHA recommends abstaining from meat."
In return for endorsing only Bayer aspirin, AHA gets $500,000 a year from Bayer. Nice deal, if you can cut it.
And how much money has Subway kicked in?
According to the AHA, Subway has given $4 million to the American Heart Association (AHA) since 2002, and will gave an additional $6 million through 2007. That's a total of $10 million.
In exchange, Subway gets to put the AHA "fighting heart disease and stroke" logo on its materials throughout its chain of stores, according to an AHA spokesperson.
In a written statement, the AHA said it will only accept sponsorships from "those restaurants that have a public/market positioning associated with healthy foods or have heart-healthy and non-fried food alternatives on the menu."
"Subway actively promotes low-saturated fat meal options and exercise in their advertising messages," the AHA said in the statement. "Their messaging reinforces that a well-balanced diet and exercise are important tools in maintaining a healthy weight."
We agree with Commercial Alert's Gary Ruskin that it's "not the proper role of the federal government or public health groups to hawk Subway or any other form of fast or junk food."
"This is part of the broader story of the corruption of the American public health movement," Ruskin said. "AHA ought to drop its support for Subway. They have been converted into an auxiliary marketeer for Subway. They are apparently for sale."
"The fast food companies are running in a panic over the obesity epidemic," Ruskin said. "They are striving to do something to make it seem that they are not responsible for it or part of it. This is just one more way that companies like Subway try to hide their tracks and boost their public relation images."
The government and independent public health organizations should be helping the American people fight off the hyperbreeding of fast food outlets cannibalizing the country not promoting it.
In addition to promoting his beloved Subway and making millions a year doing so, DeLuca wants to bring an Indian gambling casino to Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Call it the junk food/junk economy connection.
According to Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, DeLuca invested $10 million in the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation's successful effort to gain federal recognition so they could build a casino in Connecticut. Blumenthal is challenging that recognition.
And the House Government Reform Committee is in the middle of an investigation of how the Schaghticoke Tribe and the Eastern Pequots gained such recognition from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Earlier this year, the Hartford Courant reported that a rival band of Indians charged that the federal recognition of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation "was hijacked by outside investors and high-priced lobbyists intent on winning a lucrative gambling franchise for their own benefit."
Whether or not the investors and lobbyists hijacked the process we'll leave to federal investigators.
But what is clear is that Subway and DeLuca have hijacked the American Heart Association, Congresswoman DeLauro, and various federal agencies to promote their own brand of fast junk food.
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter, http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, http://www.multinationalmonitor.org. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.corporatepredators.org).
(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
This article is posted at: http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2004/000181.html
Use a different approach the next time like I do. I'm not a wild asshole. I always connect with the cuties that make my food...
Do you really think so? Because you just replied like one. Does your "treating people well" regimen include responding to them completely out of the context of the words they're speaking?
If so, allow me to explain that most people feel that a person they're dealing with, who's not paying attention to anything they're saying, is not treating them well.
Also, do you verbally refer to women you don't know as "cuties" or do you just demean them that way in your mind? Do you think the average man treating women they've just met as "cuties" isn't a sure fire sign that the man is, in fact, most likely a "wild asshole" in the classic sense of the phrase?
liberalism is dead; all they can do is bitch and moan. Soon that will be a thing of the past too.
Couldn't agree more, I have never understood what people see in Subway.
It depends on the company, McDonald's is brilliant at making money on every side of the deal, they actually subcontract out to companies to be the final packaging and distribution for a region (for instance when and where I worked for McHell the company we dealt with was Golden State Foods) some stuff they actually made according to McD spec some stuff they bought from other companies making it to McD spec. The store places the order twice a week and it would show up on the right day (full truck, that's what we called the receiving of the order) was Saturdays and frig truck was Tuesdays for every McDs in Tucson, those owned by our franchise holder and those not. Then on the side Holsum made the buns, oh and some of the soda was delivered seperately on Thursdays but most came from GSF.
Eegees (whom you've never heard of because they've never gone national) owned EVERYTHING so their distribution center sent the trucks out to all the stores every morning, this is of course part of why they never went national, when you control the entire process expanding to other regions is very difficult, much better to get somebody to pay you to delivery your goods.
Oh it's in Mahnattan, yeah everything gets pricey there. I hated fastfood before I worked in it, and working in it taught me I was right to hate it. I rarely go to fastfood and when I do I prefer places I never worked and if I can't swing that I only order stuff that's been added to the menu since I left, I prefer to not know what's in it.
An idea I've had was a combination kosher/ non-kosher deli, they'd have a wall of seperation to keep the rules but the idea is that all meats that could be kosher would be to start with, and then if you wanted it in a non-kosher way you have to go to the unclean side where they have the kosher meats delivered from next store. I got the idea when I stopped by a kosher deli to get some pastrami then took it home and made ruebens, best rueben ever which I named "the formerly kosher rueben" and that got me thinking.
I know what you mean by not eating where you've been in the kitchen. I've seen horrible accidents and deliberate sabotage of food in some very pricey kitchens. Yet another reason to always tip generously.
Subway was highly rated by them a while back.
Welcome to modern America, where a sandwich now represents an ethical crisis.
I wouldn't get worked up. The article is written by grass eaters.
Oh, what's that about????
The absolute best sub I EVER had was from Cornois Market in Newport, NH.
I'd pay big bucks if they would ship me some.
I've seen the commercial, and it's all about the medicines that the Bayer company has made. I believe you made a mistake, and a funny one. (Which I do regulary on line ;)
You misunderstand, BSR. It is an advertisement for the many medicines made by the Bayer COMPANY, NOT Bayer aspirin.
I've been long baffled by the term "junk food".
Take Subway for example.
Bread, meat, cheese & vegetable make up a sandwich.
Which is the "junk"?
There's a chain of salad restaurants around here called Crispers. I guess they do okay, but I don't eat there much at all - too expensive. For that kind of money, I prefer to go to a restaurant that has a salad bar and make my own.
95% percent really bad tasting bread. The bread, IMO, is the worst thing about it ... and the yellow mustard just sloshed over the sandwich ... even tuna salad.
It's horrible.
I Agree ... and their Roman Chicken Salad is excellent also ...
After reading your comments, I beg to differ.
My favorite Publix sub is the italian - I get them with mustard on the roll and have it piled high with hot peppers. Schlotsky's Deli also makes a really good sub, but the closest one to me that I know of is in Winter Park, about and hour and a half drive from where I live.
If you're ever in Gainesville, definitely stop by a sub shop called Hogan's Heroes. The restaurant itself is really cool, done up in a WWII motif, and the sandwiches are just fantastic - even better than Publix's.
Eat half a loaf of bread for lunch....low fat.....lose weight........ROTFLMAO!!
So all those old geezers sitting in WalMart's cafeteria and staring at everybody who walks by will be eating subs?
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