Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Taco Bell's Fourthmeal


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Taco Bell's newest marketing campaign boasts the concept of the "Fourthmeal, the meal between dinner and breakfast." They go on to say you can "satisfy your late night cravings with Fourthmeal: crunchy, melty, spicy and grilled."

Often I wonder if our culture drives our advertising, or if our advertising drives our culture. Are Americans already filling their stomachs four times a day, or will people watching late night television see the Taco Bell commercial and think, "What a great idea!" and then hop in their cars and drive to the closest restaurant?

My desire is to not get into soapboxing, but I believe that Taco Bell is capitalizing on the fact that Americans like to eat. Often. And our desire to eat makes us a nation of consumers where the average person consumes 2,175 pounds of food per year. Do we need to eat that much food?

While Americans are eating their Fourthmeal, approximately 815 million people in the rest of the world are undernourished, and over 16,000 children are dying every day from hunger-related causes.

Just think: if we ate less we could save money, have less health problems, live longer and feel a whole lot better about ourselves.

OK, now that you know where I stand on the issue of eating, what can we do? I suggest first of all that we eat less. That was easy. Maybe we could consider skipping a meal a week (not the Fourthmeal, but one of the regular three - let's take the Fourthmeal off the table!). If we skip a meal a week, we could consider giving the money we would spend on that meal to feed the hungry.

Something to chew on and digest.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

We do not have T.V. in our home, so this is news to me. It does however reflect our consumer based society that is America. I agree we should be willing to sacrifice our desire for consumption. This does not just apply to the desires of the belly, but also the desires and lusts of what we preceive as necessity. Suggest to the majority of America that they should give up a meal or anything else that fuels their lust, then one will see what this society has become. A nation without God will be given over to their own lusts. So this "fourthmeal" really comes as no shock. I am looking for His return.

Brad Lewis said...

Great observations! Yes, we need to look beyond our food appetite for the other appetites that we overindulge ourselves to satisfy.

Claude Musy said...

Culturely, isn't the 4th meal when people consume mass quanities of alcohol and then decide a meal at 3 AM would be a really great idea?

Brad Lewis said...

Great thought Claude. I wonder...

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