McDonalds, the apple of your die

The Guardian's Gary Younge is able to find doom and gloom everywhere he looks. Today's article raves about McDonalds' calorific foods only in passing, focusing instead on the restaurant chain's probable, eventual destruction of apple cultivation in America. Embedded deep in the article is the following mish-mash:

"Childhood obesity is like a massive tsunami headed toward the United States," says paediatric endocrinologist David Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children's Hospital in Boston and one of the study's authors. "We're in the quiet before the storm. It's like what happens if suddenly a massive number of young children started chain-smoking. At first you wouldn't see much public health impact. But years later it would translate into emphysema, heart disease and cancer." This is exactly the kind of comparison that makes companies such as McDonald's shudder. Those who sued cigarette companies, after all, were also once ridiculed as opportunists. (Despite several calls over five days, McDonald's failed to provide comment.)

McDonalds didn't want to respond to this twit? Gee, I wonder why?

I'll bet McDonalds gives John Quiggin a fright.