Fast Food Critic: Olympians Shouldn’t Be Sponsored By McDonald’s or Coca-Cola

I’ll keep this article short and (not-so) sweet since it’s a pretty straightforward premise within it. In fact, if you’ve read the title, you pretty much get the gist. If you’ve ever read any Fast Food Critic postings before, you can probably guess my reasoning.

You see, I enjoy watching the Olympics (even on NBC’s much hated coverage of them). But what I don’t like is the blatant product placement that has become ever more obnoxious and obvious in recent decades. And I especially don’t like the sponsorship and whoring out of athletes by corporations that make food they would never touch.

You don’t get to the Olympics by scarfing down Big Macs and guzzling Coca-Cola, but that’s exactly what many athletes seem to be suggesting by pretending that their sponsors make products they would ever put in their bodies. Recently, a gold medal winning Olympian—–almost immediately after he won—–put up a Twitter picture of his “Post-Game meal” that consisted of three quarter pounders and two fries at McD’s and let’s see if you can guess who sponsored him at the games…

So no, I don’t think Lolo Jones with her model’s face or cyborg-perfect body spends much time at Burger King, nor do I think the awesome Hope Solo quenches her post-game thirst with a Pepsi. Allyson Felix may look like a Goddess, but not even Goddesses could win gold if they ate Oreos. I think that because I know that people who eat like that never get to the Olympics.

So I don’t think kids should be getting the subconscious message that these products will give them super-human athletic ability when the exact opposite is true. When they look up to these Olympians (and they do), they should be looking up to the actual regiments they do. An Olympian’s food source is like fuel for a well run machine, only taking in the proteins they need for power, not sugar for enjoyment. The lettuce and organic chicken lobbies may not have the money that Coke and McDonald’s do, but that shouldn’t alter the truth.