Opinion : Should restaurants run competitions linked to eating food?

It was certainly nice at lunchtime today indeed yours truly enjoyed my stroll down the High Street to find a place to sit and at my sandwiches.

As usual my favourite bench overlooking the was memorial was free in the grounds of the Parish Church.

No sooner had I got my lunch box out than one of my friends came along. Naturally we sat and talked while enjoying our food.

My friend prefers to buy food from one of those newfangled fast food restaurants that specialise in beef burgers and insist on calling chips ‘fries’.

As we sat talking my friend was continually putting one hand into the brown bag in which their luncheon was served and taking out chips while they ate a burger which was held in their other hand.

After they had finished their meal they started taking stickers off the containers in which their food was served. Naturally this aroused my curiosity, so I asked what the sticker were for.

Apparently the restaurant concerned was running a promotional competition and the stickers could be collected in the hope of winning a prize.

My friend told me that he only purchased the meal because he was one sticker short of winning one of the prizes.

How come my good self hadn’t heard of this competition in which one wins prizes for eating food? Indeed with my gargantuan appetite my good self was sure to be a winner!

Coming back to a more serious note I advised my friend, who is quite slim, to forget the competition as if he ate too much there is a serious danger that he would become obese like me and that’s not a nice thing to have happen to one’s self.

My friend could see what I was trying to tell him, indeed he had become obsessed with eating his way to winning a prize.

In this age of health conciousness is it right that a fast food restaurant should encourage customers to eat more in the hope of winning a prize? I think not.

Suppose a cigarette manufacturer ran a competition where people won a prize by smoking more, or a producer of alcoholic beverages gave away prizes for drinking more? There would be outrage.

However nobody bats an eyelid because a restaurant offers prizes based on food consumption.

No doubt there are many people at the restaurant, including school children, who are busy collecting the stickers in the hope of claiming a prize.

Rather than advertising the eating competition in their window perhaps they should put a life-sized picture of my good self to show what happens when someone is struck down with obesity.

It’s about time fast food restaurants became socially responsible for their actions. Over eating, smoking and alcoholic drinks are the three vices which Lucifer himself is using to entice the weak into his wicked lair.

What do you think?

*My next blog will be published on Friday evening around 8pm here on the WycombeToday.com website.