Stupid Style

I've got to confess something: I'm a fast food junkie. My love of fast food is probably the biggest reason why I find it difficult to lose weight. I got off the wagon earlier this year, spending over a month without the sensual delights of burger joints and taco stands. What nobody told me was that this would detoxify my body, nearly destroying my tolerance for this kind of food. Did you know that eating at Taco Bell after going over a month without causes muscular pain? And not just in the abdomen, either.

Unfortunately I decided to go against all logic and actually worked through the pain just to be able to eat food that's bad for me. So once again I find myself craving personal pan pizzas and deep fried chicken sandwiches with bacon on top. I now find it hard to resist going straight over to the local Burger King whenever they announce a new product (that new product being the aforementioned deep fried chicken sandwich with bacon on a commercial I saw just this morning). This is especially inconvenient since the trend at fast food restaurants over the past few years has been to release a new item about once a month.

Sometimes companies like to push their new products really hard for various reasons. Take, for example, the McDonald's Southern Style Chicken Sandwich. It came out a few months ago, and it looks like the chain is trying to make it a permanent menu item. The concept is simple: a breaded chicken breast with two pickle slices on a bun. The McDonald's website boasts: "The all-new Southern Style Chicken is so tasty, you won't even need to dress it to enjoy it."

I have a big problem with this sandwich. I haven't actually tried it, since I'm not really a McDonald's fan. No, I have a problem with the way it's being marketed. See, there is exactly one reason this "glorious" sandwich has the name, "Southern Style": McDonald's stole the idea from the Southern restaurant chain Chick-Fil-A. There is nothing "all-new" about it.

Chick-Fil-A's claim to fame is the "original" chicken sandwich, which contains - wait for it - a breaded chicken breast with two pickle slices on a bun. If you ever eat at a Chick-Fil-A, you'll see the recognizable phrase, "We didn't invent the chicken, just the chicken sandwich," painted on the wall. I wasn't raised in the South, so I'm probably not as fanatical about the restaurant as some of my friends who were. But I've lived here long enough to know that it makes much better chicken than McDonald's. Like, infinitely better. Which begs the question of why on Earth I would see any McDonald's Southern Style Chicken Sandwich commercials here in Georgia? I can sort of understand marketing this product in the North since those poor souls don't know any better, but everyone here sees the ads and thinks, "Dude, that is such a ripoff."

McDonald's will never make money off its new sandwich in the South. It just won't. If I'm going to take in that much cholesterol, I'm going to get it from something that tastes good. Advertising a blatant ripoff of a favorite Southern food in the South isn't just stupid, it's insulting. Despite what much of the world seems to think, the American South isn't solely made up of slack-jawed, dead-eyed trailer trash who will fall for something like this. Heck, even those people can see right through this McDonald's campaign. It is because of this that I am officially boycotting McDonald's! Well, I haven't eaten there in a year anyway, since I don't like the food in general, so I guess you could say that I am officially continuing to not eat at McDonald's. Only this time, I'm serious! I'm never eating there again. Of course, if I got hungry and there was nothing else available, I guess I'd have a Big Mac or something. But other than that, no more McDonald's! Period! Then again, there's always the chance that they'll bring back the Shamrock Shake. I'd totally go there if they had that again. Or if they brought back those awesome "Transformers" Happy Meal toys. Yeah, that'd be totally sweet.

Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh right. McDonald's sucks.