Wendy's must be trying to kill you.

Wendy's restaurants are following up their health terminator, or as they called it ‘Baconator' with their newest concoction; the double bypass-inducing ‘Stack Attack,' commonly referred to as the ‘heart attack.'

It's as if these poisonous McRestaurants are embracing the fact that they sell slow death to their customers, and are flaunting it because they know they have us hooked on their over-processed, nutritionally-deficient, artery-clogging, chemically-addictive food-like products (you can't even call the shit they serve us food).

They've given up trying to adapt to the rise in popularity of healthy lifestyles because they know that they'll never be able to exploit that market. Fast-food joints aren't even on the radar of most health-conscious people. Buying a salad from Burger King is just as sketchy as buying nicotine patches from cigarette companies.

They have a couple salads here, and a few fruits there. They've tried doing a half-assed health thing, and failed miserably. So now it's time to stick to their guns, or buns, which, when loaded, are just as deadly.

It's time to get back to their main customer base before they loose them to the ‘healthy trend.' The goal now is to make unhealthy food, which is immensely profitable, popular again. Make people proud to eat garbage. Convince them it's ok to eat shit because it ‘tastes better or is more convenient than healthy food'. Make peoples mouths water when they hear about food that is so good it causes cardiac arrest.

They are attempting to shift the dominant culture back into the mentality that everything is bad for us, that we can't escape the poison, and that we might as well indulge in the most blatant forms of pleasurable, consumption-oriented, self-destruction. Most people have seen Morgan Spurlock almost die in ‘Supersize Me' and McDonald's still manages to convince people to eat there. They're laughing all the way to the bank because they know they could have the cashiers ask, “Would you like a toxic aspartame cola and greasy fat sticks with your factory-farmed, hormone-injected, flesh-burger you pimply-faced fat-ass?” and still not loose customers.

I did the fast-food thing for a while; it wasn't pretty. Although I couldn't afford to eat enough to get fat, I got sluggish, was always tired and got nasty pimples all the time. Then I went vegetarian and everything changed.

My acne cleared up, my energy level went through the roof, my stress level decreased, and my outlook became more optimistic. Personal health is a great reason to go vegetarian, but there are other very important reasons, specifically environmental, as well.

I know that solutions presented to global warming have mostly focused around shutting down coal plants and convincing people to stop driving. What the mainstream media neglects to mention is that the biggest way you can personally reduce your carbon footprint is by going vegetarian.

Meat-production has been declared the number one contributor to global warming by the United Nations. Meat-production is also the biggest cause of deforestation, as virgin rainforests in the Amazon are cut down at a rate of 2000 trees a minute to make way for grazing lands for cattle. Also, more than 260 million acres of forests in the United States have been cut down to grow grain to feed factory-farmed animals. It is estimated that nearly half of the entire landmass of the United States is being used for meat-production.

Did you know that the meat industry in the United States creates more water pollution than every other industry combined? Almost half of America's freshwater is used for meat.

Did you know that 27 billion animals are slaughtered unnecessarily by the meat industry in the U.S. every year? The statistics are similar per capita for Canada as well, since our process of manufacturing meat (factory farming) and our consumption of flesh per capita is quite similar to the U.S.

When there are so many healthier and greener options out there, why do we still rely on this inefficient, uncompassionate and self-destructive way of getting our protein? We must evolve and escape the trap of this fast food nation that will kill us.

If you are a vegetarian, thinking of becoming one, or interested in animal rights, there is a new club on campus named AHIMSA. Ahimsa is an ancient Buddhist term, which represents a rule of conduct that bars the killing or injuring of living beings. It is closely connected with the notion that all kinds of violence entail negative karmic consequences. Here is the contact email to join and get involved: ahimsaatfanshawe@hotmail.com
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.