p>which, I suppose, ignores every other piece of one’s diet and personal choices as studiously as only a dogmatic liberal could do, you then condemn a good cause with support from a well established and well loved American franchise for a cause that – one would think – everyone should support.
<
p>So what should KFC do, close its doors? Start serving vegan fare?
<
p>I bet you anything that Komen in this one act raises more than you ever will in your life for a good cause.
kbuschsays
kbuschsays
It’s amusing when conservatives tell liberals that they are dogmatic or partisan or blinkered. This comes after the enormous group think project on the part of conservatives that became the Iraq invasion. Back then, Demolisher was more than happy to tell you that liberals are just unbearably wimpy and unwilling to use force. And so early on, he, too was a big Iraq War booster.
<
p>How nice of the Bush Administration to make Iran a shiny new ally.
<
p>Countervailing evidence on the wisdom of the Iraq invasion? Demolisher never heard of it: it would contradict his — might I say? — dogmatic conviction that liberals just say stuff out of pure wimpiness.
<
p>So, Demolisher, if you would like the platform from which to taunt, you have some explaining to do. As of 2010 we’re not going to accept you as some sort of paragon of intellectual honesty.
<
p>The discussion below handled the dietary issues and whether KFC was helping a good charity.
So, Demolisher, if you would like the platform from which to taunt, you have some explaining to do. As of 2010 we’re not going to accept you as some sort of paragon of intellectual honesty.
Did we ever? I can’t recall that his behavior ever merited being so accepted…
tbladesays
Would you also think that everyone would support buying Malboros for heart disease was a good idea?
<
p>Foods like KFC and McDonalds, however loved, are probably more poisonous to public health than cigarettes.
huhsays
They’re frequently held up as a an example of a charity more focused on fundraising then helping people. They hold the copyright on “for the cure” and the pink “running ribbon” and aggressively go after anyone who infringes.
<
p>Oddly, one thing they DON’T do is help women find sources for low-cost mammograms.
<
p>
Call 1-877 GO KOMEN:
– to speak to someone on our breast care helpline
– to learn more about Komen events and programs
– to make a donation
– to purchase unique gifts and educational items from the Promise Shop
– if you are a researcher interested in learning more about funding opportunities
– for information about becoming a corporate partner or sponsor
to find a Komen Affiliate or Komen Race for the Cure near you
We do not provide medical advice, make referrals to physicians or evaluate physicians, medical facilities or services
dcsurfersays
From that article you linked to:
The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, based in Dallas, filed a trademark lawsuit in federal court in Dallas last week against Smithfield Foods, which makes packaged deli meats under the brands Armour, Butterball and Lean Generation.
The meatpacker had approached Komen in March for a joint marketing campaign, promising to donate $250,000 to breast cancer research and awareness in exchange for using its pink-ribbon logo on its products.
But the foundation rejected the request because studies have shown that eating red and processed meat can lead to cancer.
Smithfield’s Lean Generation brand went ahead with the “Deli for the Cure” campaign anyway, announcing it during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October.
Protecting the pervasive pink-ribbon symbol is important for the foundation, which has raised more than $1 billion to fight breast cancer since Nancy Brinker founded it 25 years ago. Komen has licensed the “for the Cure” trademark to other companies, such as General Mills (“Pink for the Cure”), Sun Chips (“Crunch for the Cure”) and KitchenAid (“Cook for the Cure”).
But the foundation drew the line when Smithfield – the world’s largest pork processor and the leading turkey processor in the U.S. – approached it earlier this year.
“Many people rely on Komen for the Cure for current and accurate health information that helps them make wise lifestyle choices that could reduce their risk of developing breast cancer,” Komen’s chief operating officer, Kimberly Simpson, said in a written statement.
Interesting that Smithfield Foods approached them and wanted to donate $250,000. I guess they recognize that people avoid eating hotdogs if they are worried about health risks, but if they believe that medicine will cure whatever the hotdogs cause, they’ll keep eating hotdogs.
huhsays
As you note, Smithfield is not just a pork processor, it’s a turkey processor.
<
p>I’d LOVE to see an argument that processed chicken is safer than processed turkey.
<
p>My guess is KFC came up with a much larger donation.
stomvsays
is it possible that there’s also a target demographic of females which can be reached via KFC in particular? There’s lots of data which show that fast food is readily available in poor urban communities, but grocery stores are in short supply.
<
p>Yeah, it’s a huge stretch…
tbladesays
dcsurfersays
is to be able to continue to eat fried chicken.
<
p>Industrial food and industrial medicine go hand in hand, they’re two branches of the same industry.
<
p>What would be surprising would be some vegan organic farm contributing to research for a cure. I certainly don’t contribute any extra money to research, they already get billions upon billions from taxpayers, and just burn it right up, wasting tons of oil that we need for the future.
<
p>Getting rid of factory farms, shutting them down, would do more for public health and fighting cancer than finding a cure would.
that most of demolisher’s first comment is, indeed, ignorant taunting. And huh is quite right that there are a lot of things to question about the Komen organization, as well – this particular promotion is far from the strongest reason to avoid giving them your money.
<
p>However, “cancer-causing food” is absurd scaremongering, and “Some research suggests” is not remotely the same thing as “known to.”
tbladesays
kbuschsays
Responsible scientists reporting on population studies will always say they have found “this may cause that” and “this thing may be bad for you.” That’s because responsible scientists know that no one should be convinced by a single study. One can’t control all the variables, correlation is not causation, etc.
<
p>However, the evidence is abundant that what KFC offers should become a regular part of no one’s diet. And that abundant evidence all comes from careful scientists who will tell you their particular study showed such food may be harmful.
tbladesays
…that it is fair to categorize “cancer-causing food” as a bit inaccurate. On the other hand, “cancer-risk-raising food” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
<
p>But I would not back down on the fact that KFC and KFC-type food known to have serious harmful health effects and eaten regularly would make one’s body more susceptible to and and less resilient against cancer.
kbuschsays
For populations, increasing the individual risk of cancer means the same thing as causing it.
<
p>We liberals should get to scaremonger every now and then. It shouldn’t be the sole province of Rudy Giuliani and Dick Cheney.
stomvsays
shiltonesays
…how about “death-causing food”? That obviates the need to nit-pick about whether this so-obviously unhealthy food kills you from cancer, heart disease, obesity, or the planet swallowing you whole in a fit of karmic revenge.
…as long as you’re eager to label all other food “death-causing” too. Moral panic over food is tiresome. Sure, a diet of nothing but Double Downs would be bad for you, but so would a diet of nothing but spinach.
tbladesays
There is much solid science demonstrating that “foods” like KFC, McDonalds, processed junk bought at the supermarket, etc are contributing to increased rates of disease and health problems and cutting life expectancy rates. The current generation of children is the first generation who have shorter life expectancies, due to obesity, by 10 years.
<
p>There are foods that nourish your body and there are foods that poison your body. There’s no reason to keep spinach in the same category as KFC.
p>My point is, buying into moral panic that demonizes certain kinds of food is 1) missing the point that the problem is not the existence of “bad” foods but the insufficient availability and affordability of a wider variety of foods; and 2) hitting the wrong target, because there’s not much daylight between calling the food bad, and calling the people who eat it bad, when (for example, if they live in one of the depressingly common “food deserts” or simply don’t have time to prepare food from scratch) they may not have much choice available to them.
<
p>Are current industrial agriculture practices seriously harmful, both to public health and to the environment? Of course they are. We need better regulation, better education, and especially we need initiatives both to make wider varieties of foods available to more people and (by, for example, fixing our broken health care system, increasing the minimum wage, subsidizing child care) to make it more feasible for more people to buy and prepare fresh food instead of packaged. What we don’t need to do is panic about fried chicken. The existence of fried chicken isn’t the problem.
centralmassdadsays
That’s the problem
tbladesays
Before I fired up Google and saw that high fat diets increase risks of breast cancer, I was astounded by the utter contradiction of the idea of fighting cancer by promoting foods that cause a significant number of other serious and deadly health risks.
<
p>Promoting all-around wellness will do far more to fight breast cancer than eating a bucket of processed fried chicken.
dcsurfersays
It’s not just a personal choice of how to live your own life and choose your own risks and rewards, either. The poultry industry harms everyone, even people who don’t eat at KFC. They create antibiotic resistant deadly bugs that might lead to global pandemics, because they feed antibiotics to chickens so they grow faster. And they pollute groundwater, etc. I guess that’s what you were getting at with your “planet swallowing you whole” thing, but I just wanted to make it explicit.
dcsurfersays
And what is really truly “known to” cause cancer anyhow? Everything we supposedly “know” is actually just suggested by some research, isn’t it? What is threshhold of research being “known to”? Aren’t you just doing what the climate deniers do? They say that global warming is absurd scaremongering too, and for the same reason, probably- to avoid facing the fact that we have to change our lifestyles to be more local and sustainable and not be industrial and globalist.
Everything we supposedly “know” is actually just suggested by some research, isn’t it?
No. Most things we colloquially say we “know,” including global warming, are not merely suggested but consistently supported by an overwhelming preponderance of the evidence.
dcsurfersays
and you are a chicken denier.
kbuschsays
(minus the ranty parts)
<
p>From a search of recent articles on dietary fat and cancer, you will learn that the association of dietary fat with breast cancer has been quite controversial.
<
p>What is clear is that industrial food is simply not good for you. People who don’t live on industrial food get much less cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. They even have much less need for dentists.
<
p>And what does KFC produce?
<
p>Industrial food.
<
p>Michael Pollen’s critique (Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food) is pretty good here. The simple fact is that we eat too processed crap (“edible food-like substances” as he calls them). Too much food from plants (the buildings) and not enough from plants (the organisms).
lightirissays
The “fight” breast cancer industry is big business. Even though I am personally touched in major ways in my life by this disease, I wouldn’t give ten cents to the Komen foundation. I am offended by all the pink, especially for my 13-year-old son whose FATHER died of metastatic breast cancer at the age of 46. I am offended by those damned pink ribbons that people wear like badges. And nothing, absolutely nothing, offends me more–as well as my own sister, who is 10 years s/p radical surgery and chemotherapy for breast cancer–than those horrific “save the boobies” stickers and shirts.
<
p>Had some bozo paraded around me wearing a pink ribbon or some “save the boobies” piece of crap while I was watching my 11-year-old son offer his 85-lb father his last sip of fluids before dying 12 hrs later, I’d have gone ballistic.
…it was said that lung cancer was a lot deadlier to women, but gets a fraction of federal research dollars compared to breast cancer. Of course we should pursue cures for any cancer, but there has always seemed to be a bit of a political/emotional side to this out of proportion to its effects.
stomvsays
The Komen folks have managed to really tap in to women’s empowerment. That’s what a lot of this is about, women asserting their wealth, their influence, their importance in a visible, productive way.
<
p>I don’t say that with any negativity at all; if you’re going to spend money to celebrate and emphasize your collective, doing it by supporting any medical research is a beautiful thing.
<
p>My medical donations go to The V Foundation for Cancer Research instead, for as arbitrary a reason as a woman might give to Komen instead of any other medical research.
<
p>
<
p>Neither money raised nor money spent publicly on medical research seems to be particularly correlated with either (a) maximizing suffering reduction per dollar spent, (b) maximizing the reduction of lost productivity per dollar spent, (c) minimizing the number of deaths per dollar spent, (d) minimizing the cost of treatment per dollar spent (think: avoiding expensive treatment for something at least as effective and cheaper).
kirthsays
At the bottom of the bucket pictured above is this message:
KFC restaurant operators have contributed 50 cents to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure for each Komen branded bucket purchased by the operators from April 5, 2010-May 9, 2010. Guaranteed minimum contribution is $1,000,000.00. Customer purchases of KFC buckets during the promotion will not directly increase the total contribution.
So it makes no difference to the donation whether anyone buys a pink bucket o’ grease or not. What you’re supporting by buying the thing is KFC.
that sounds to me like “Corporate strongarmed our franchisees into being ‘participating locations,’ which meant they had to cough up a bundle for these stupid pink buckets, and we’re going to donate some fraction of that amount to Komen.”
<
p>Might as well work for Uncle Enzo.
dcsurfersays
They just came up with a much larger donation than Smithfield. I guess that Dr. Evil million dollar figure still works (what was Smithfield thinking? A paltry quarter million? Sheesh! I’d reject them too.)
<
p>A major point though: what you are supporting by buying a bucket is more than just KFC, because when you support KFC, you are supporting INDUSTRIAL FARMING, which means supporting biotech research, global finance and corporate law, etc. Factory farms feed seven times the antibiotics to the animals than humans use (that’s lots of butter on a lot of people’s bread), they pioneer research into cloning and genetic engineering and biology (that’s lots of butter for all the thousands of recent biology graduates too). KFC and their chicken suppliers already spend millions on genetic and cancer research in order to make a better chicken, so they might as well call some of it “breast cancer research”, since the science is so general and interrelated. But it’s the same money being spent on the same kind of research.
<
p>My guess is that many of the people that defend industrial farming here work in biotech or are corporate lawyers or work in media and have a lot invested in a scientific globalist industrial corporate marketed food/health system, as opposed to a local organic sustainable food/health system. I think some full disclosure is in order.
<
p>
tbladesays
Great find.
<
p>This brings things into focus for me. It’s like licensing Disney movie characters to brand the sides of Happy Meal boxes; the pink branding is simply a commodity to be bought, sold, and licensed out. So instead of McDonald’s buying the rights to put Buzz Lightyear and Woody drive hamburger sales, KFC buys the right to make pink buckets to increase fried chicken sales.
<
p>Now, setting aside the legitimate and well-founded other criticisms of Komen for one moment, this is a very useful idea for organizations like Komen that opens up numerous new lucrative revenue streams. However, as lightiris points out and this Buckets for the Cure campaign illustrates, serious damage can be done to your philanthropic brand if these strategies are deployed in distasteful, tacky, sloppy ways or if partnerships are formed with brands that aren’t compatible with the charity’s core message.
<
p>Komen for the cure is a damaged brand in my mind. Given the fine print and the Smithfeild Foods example, I would further extend huh’s guess about KFC coming up with more money and say that I would not be surprised if any brand could license Komen branding for the right price. In the future we might see Komen editions of Hustler Magazine, Komen dipping tobacco, or the Susan G Komen interstate Power Ball drawing.
<
p>The lesson here is DO form tasteful, smart partnerships to increase revenue, raise awareness and further your cause. But above all else, manage and doggedly protect your brand.
stomvsays
Your “in the future” is over the top. I guarantee you that you won’t see the Hustler or chaw partnerships. Power Ball? Perhaps.
<
p>What’s the difference? It isn’t hard science nor social science per se. The difference is in societal norms. We’ve got a norm for “legal, but with social stigma in relatively large communities” which includes things like porn, firearms, tobacco, and so forth. Fast food, while known to be unhealthy, simply isn’t in that category. Maybe it will be some day, but it isn’t right now.
<
p>I do think less of Komen as a result of their interaction with KFC, and I do think that it suggests the possibility for future equally inappropriate partnerships — but I really don’t think that the first two ones you listed are amongst them.
<
p>As for Power Ball… yeah, I could see that big time. Scratch tickets would be better. Scratch off the 10 breasts, and if they’re all cancer free, you win! If they want to emphasize education, they might even make ’em different sizes, shapes, colors, and even (gasp!) have a male breast too, to remind folks that it strikes men too.
tbladesays
In reality I WOULD be shocked if there were pink dip tins and an issue of Hustler. Using the hyperbole was a rhetorical maneuver designed to make clear my point that charity brands can be damaged through questionable partnerships.
huhsays
What goes with chicken? Soda.
And what’s in soda? Phosphates.
<
p>
High phosphate levels may also increase the prevalence and severity of age-related complications, such as chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular calcification, and can also induce severe muscle and skin atrophy.
“Humans need a healthy diet and keeping the balance of phosphate in the diet may be important for a healthy life and longevity,” said M. Shawkat Razzaque, M.D., Ph.D., from the Department of Medicine, Infection and Immunity at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. “Avoid phosphate toxicity and enjoy a healthy life.”
“Soda is the caffeine delivery vehicle of choice for millions of people worldwide, but comes with phosphorous as a passenger” said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of the FASEB Journal. “This research suggests that our phosphorous balance influences the aging process, so don’t tip it.”
<
p>Scarily enough, phosphates are increasingly used as a food additive:
<
p>
W]hile a moderate level of phosphate plays an essential role in living organisms, the rapidly increasing use of phosphates as a food additive has resulted in significantly higher levels in average daily diets. Phosphates are added to many food products to increase water retention and improve food texture.
“In the 1990s, phosphorous-containing food additives contributed an estimated 470 mg per day to the average daily adult diet,” he said. “However, phosphates are currently being added much more frequently to a large number of processed foods, including meats, cheeses, beverages, and bakery products. As a result, depending on individual food choices, phosphorous intake could be increased by as much as 1000 mg per day.”
If it isn’t enough to exaggerate your own
<
p>
<
p>into
<
p>
<
p>which, I suppose, ignores every other piece of one’s diet and personal choices as studiously as only a dogmatic liberal could do, you then condemn a good cause with support from a well established and well loved American franchise for a cause that – one would think – everyone should support.
<
p>So what should KFC do, close its doors? Start serving vegan fare?
<
p>I bet you anything that Komen in this one act raises more than you ever will in your life for a good cause.
It’s amusing when conservatives tell liberals that they are dogmatic or partisan or blinkered. This comes after the enormous group think project on the part of conservatives that became the Iraq invasion. Back then, Demolisher was more than happy to tell you that liberals are just unbearably wimpy and unwilling to use force. And so early on, he, too was a big Iraq War booster.
<
p>How nice of the Bush Administration to make Iran a shiny new ally.
<
p>Countervailing evidence on the wisdom of the Iraq invasion? Demolisher never heard of it: it would contradict his — might I say? — dogmatic conviction that liberals just say stuff out of pure wimpiness.
<
p>So, Demolisher, if you would like the platform from which to taunt, you have some explaining to do. As of 2010 we’re not going to accept you as some sort of paragon of intellectual honesty.
<
p>The discussion below handled the dietary issues and whether KFC was helping a good charity.
Did we ever? I can’t recall that his behavior ever merited being so accepted…
Would you also think that everyone would support buying Malboros for heart disease was a good idea?
<
p>Foods like KFC and McDonalds, however loved, are probably more poisonous to public health than cigarettes.
They’re frequently held up as a an example of a charity more focused on fundraising then helping people. They hold the copyright on “for the cure” and the pink “running ribbon” and aggressively go after anyone who infringes.
<
p>Oddly, one thing they DON’T do is help women find sources for low-cost mammograms.
<
p>
From that article you linked to:
Interesting that Smithfield Foods approached them and wanted to donate $250,000. I guess they recognize that people avoid eating hotdogs if they are worried about health risks, but if they believe that medicine will cure whatever the hotdogs cause, they’ll keep eating hotdogs.
As you note, Smithfield is not just a pork processor, it’s a turkey processor.
<
p>I’d LOVE to see an argument that processed chicken is safer than processed turkey.
<
p>My guess is KFC came up with a much larger donation.
is it possible that there’s also a target demographic of females which can be reached via KFC in particular? There’s lots of data which show that fast food is readily available in poor urban communities, but grocery stores are in short supply.
<
p>Yeah, it’s a huge stretch…
is to be able to continue to eat fried chicken.
<
p>Industrial food and industrial medicine go hand in hand, they’re two branches of the same industry.
<
p>What would be surprising would be some vegan organic farm contributing to research for a cure. I certainly don’t contribute any extra money to research, they already get billions upon billions from taxpayers, and just burn it right up, wasting tons of oil that we need for the future.
<
p>Getting rid of factory farms, shutting them down, would do more for public health and fighting cancer than finding a cure would.
that most of demolisher’s first comment is, indeed, ignorant taunting. And huh is quite right that there are a lot of things to question about the Komen organization, as well – this particular promotion is far from the strongest reason to avoid giving them your money.
<
p>However, “cancer-causing food” is absurd scaremongering, and “Some research suggests” is not remotely the same thing as “known to.”
Responsible scientists reporting on population studies will always say they have found “this may cause that” and “this thing may be bad for you.” That’s because responsible scientists know that no one should be convinced by a single study. One can’t control all the variables, correlation is not causation, etc.
<
p>However, the evidence is abundant that what KFC offers should become a regular part of no one’s diet. And that abundant evidence all comes from careful scientists who will tell you their particular study showed such food may be harmful.
…that it is fair to categorize “cancer-causing food” as a bit inaccurate. On the other hand, “cancer-risk-raising food” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
<
p>But I would not back down on the fact that KFC and KFC-type food known to have serious harmful health effects and eaten regularly would make one’s body more susceptible to and and less resilient against cancer.
For populations, increasing the individual risk of cancer means the same thing as causing it.
<
p>We liberals should get to scaremonger every now and then. It shouldn’t be the sole province of Rudy Giuliani and Dick Cheney.
…how about “death-causing food”? That obviates the need to nit-pick about whether this so-obviously unhealthy food kills you from cancer, heart disease, obesity, or the planet swallowing you whole in a fit of karmic revenge.
…as long as you’re eager to label all other food “death-causing” too. Moral panic over food is tiresome. Sure, a diet of nothing but Double Downs would be bad for you, but so would a diet of nothing but spinach.
There is much solid science demonstrating that “foods” like KFC, McDonalds, processed junk bought at the supermarket, etc are contributing to increased rates of disease and health problems and cutting life expectancy rates. The current generation of children is the first generation who have shorter life expectancies, due to obesity, by 10 years.
<
p>There are foods that nourish your body and there are foods that poison your body. There’s no reason to keep spinach in the same category as KFC.
And even “healthy” foods can poison it – some people can’t eat spinach, for example, because the oxalates cause them to get kidney stones.
<
p>
That’s a good sound bite, but I don’t think the data support it. It’s not actually clear at all that we can causally tie reduced lifespans to “obesity,” especially since “overweight” and “obese” people may actually have lower average mortality risk than “normal weight” and “underweight” people.
<
p>My point is, buying into moral panic that demonizes certain kinds of food is 1) missing the point that the problem is not the existence of “bad” foods but the insufficient availability and affordability of a wider variety of foods; and 2) hitting the wrong target, because there’s not much daylight between calling the food bad, and calling the people who eat it bad, when (for example, if they live in one of the depressingly common “food deserts” or simply don’t have time to prepare food from scratch) they may not have much choice available to them.
<
p>Are current industrial agriculture practices seriously harmful, both to public health and to the environment? Of course they are. We need better regulation, better education, and especially we need initiatives both to make wider varieties of foods available to more people and (by, for example, fixing our broken health care system, increasing the minimum wage, subsidizing child care) to make it more feasible for more people to buy and prepare fresh food instead of packaged. What we don’t need to do is panic about fried chicken. The existence of fried chicken isn’t the problem.
That’s the problem
Before I fired up Google and saw that high fat diets increase risks of breast cancer, I was astounded by the utter contradiction of the idea of fighting cancer by promoting foods that cause a significant number of other serious and deadly health risks.
<
p>Promoting all-around wellness will do far more to fight breast cancer than eating a bucket of processed fried chicken.
It’s not just a personal choice of how to live your own life and choose your own risks and rewards, either. The poultry industry harms everyone, even people who don’t eat at KFC. They create antibiotic resistant deadly bugs that might lead to global pandemics, because they feed antibiotics to chickens so they grow faster. And they pollute groundwater, etc. I guess that’s what you were getting at with your “planet swallowing you whole” thing, but I just wanted to make it explicit.
And what is really truly “known to” cause cancer anyhow? Everything we supposedly “know” is actually just suggested by some research, isn’t it? What is threshhold of research being “known to”? Aren’t you just doing what the climate deniers do? They say that global warming is absurd scaremongering too, and for the same reason, probably- to avoid facing the fact that we have to change our lifestyles to be more local and sustainable and not be industrial and globalist.
No. Most things we colloquially say we “know,” including global warming, are not merely suggested but consistently supported by an overwhelming preponderance of the evidence.
and you are a chicken denier.
(minus the ranty parts)
<
p>From a search of recent articles on dietary fat and cancer, you will learn that the association of dietary fat with breast cancer has been quite controversial.
<
p>What is clear is that industrial food is simply not good for you. People who don’t live on industrial food get much less cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. They even have much less need for dentists.
<
p>And what does KFC produce?
<
p>Industrial food.
<
p>Michael Pollen’s critique (Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food) is pretty good here. The simple fact is that we eat too processed crap (“edible food-like substances” as he calls them). Too much food from plants (the buildings) and not enough from plants (the organisms).
The “fight” breast cancer industry is big business. Even though I am personally touched in major ways in my life by this disease, I wouldn’t give ten cents to the Komen foundation. I am offended by all the pink, especially for my 13-year-old son whose FATHER died of metastatic breast cancer at the age of 46. I am offended by those damned pink ribbons that people wear like badges. And nothing, absolutely nothing, offends me more–as well as my own sister, who is 10 years s/p radical surgery and chemotherapy for breast cancer–than those horrific “save the boobies” stickers and shirts.
<
p>Had some bozo paraded around me wearing a pink ribbon or some “save the boobies” piece of crap while I was watching my 11-year-old son offer his 85-lb father his last sip of fluids before dying 12 hrs later, I’d have gone ballistic.
<
p>I highly recommend Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled American and the World . for a refreshing look at the idiocy around breast cancer. Breast cancer is now kitsch.
<
p>And now for your moment of zen:
<
p>
…it was said that lung cancer was a lot deadlier to women, but gets a fraction of federal research dollars compared to breast cancer. Of course we should pursue cures for any cancer, but there has always seemed to be a bit of a political/emotional side to this out of proportion to its effects.
The Komen folks have managed to really tap in to women’s empowerment. That’s what a lot of this is about, women asserting their wealth, their influence, their importance in a visible, productive way.
<
p>I don’t say that with any negativity at all; if you’re going to spend money to celebrate and emphasize your collective, doing it by supporting any medical research is a beautiful thing.
<
p>My medical donations go to The V Foundation for Cancer Research instead, for as arbitrary a reason as a woman might give to Komen instead of any other medical research.
<
p>
<
p>Neither money raised nor money spent publicly on medical research seems to be particularly correlated with either (a) maximizing suffering reduction per dollar spent, (b) maximizing the reduction of lost productivity per dollar spent, (c) minimizing the number of deaths per dollar spent, (d) minimizing the cost of treatment per dollar spent (think: avoiding expensive treatment for something at least as effective and cheaper).
At the bottom of the bucket pictured above is this message:
So it makes no difference to the donation whether anyone buys a pink bucket o’ grease or not. What you’re supporting by buying the thing is KFC.
that sounds to me like “Corporate strongarmed our franchisees into being ‘participating locations,’ which meant they had to cough up a bundle for these stupid pink buckets, and we’re going to donate some fraction of that amount to Komen.”
<
p>Might as well work for Uncle Enzo.
They just came up with a much larger donation than Smithfield. I guess that Dr. Evil million dollar figure still works (what was Smithfield thinking? A paltry quarter million? Sheesh! I’d reject them too.)
<
p>A major point though: what you are supporting by buying a bucket is more than just KFC, because when you support KFC, you are supporting INDUSTRIAL FARMING, which means supporting biotech research, global finance and corporate law, etc. Factory farms feed seven times the antibiotics to the animals than humans use (that’s lots of butter on a lot of people’s bread), they pioneer research into cloning and genetic engineering and biology (that’s lots of butter for all the thousands of recent biology graduates too). KFC and their chicken suppliers already spend millions on genetic and cancer research in order to make a better chicken, so they might as well call some of it “breast cancer research”, since the science is so general and interrelated. But it’s the same money being spent on the same kind of research.
<
p>My guess is that many of the people that defend industrial farming here work in biotech or are corporate lawyers or work in media and have a lot invested in a scientific globalist industrial corporate marketed food/health system, as opposed to a local organic sustainable food/health system. I think some full disclosure is in order.
<
p>
Great find.
<
p>This brings things into focus for me. It’s like licensing Disney movie characters to brand the sides of Happy Meal boxes; the pink branding is simply a commodity to be bought, sold, and licensed out. So instead of McDonald’s buying the rights to put Buzz Lightyear and Woody drive hamburger sales, KFC buys the right to make pink buckets to increase fried chicken sales.
<
p>Now, setting aside the legitimate and well-founded other criticisms of Komen for one moment, this is a very useful idea for organizations like Komen that opens up numerous new lucrative revenue streams. However, as lightiris points out and this Buckets for the Cure campaign illustrates, serious damage can be done to your philanthropic brand if these strategies are deployed in distasteful, tacky, sloppy ways or if partnerships are formed with brands that aren’t compatible with the charity’s core message.
<
p>Komen for the cure is a damaged brand in my mind. Given the fine print and the Smithfeild Foods example, I would further extend huh’s guess about KFC coming up with more money and say that I would not be surprised if any brand could license Komen branding for the right price. In the future we might see Komen editions of Hustler Magazine, Komen dipping tobacco, or the Susan G Komen interstate Power Ball drawing.
<
p>The lesson here is DO form tasteful, smart partnerships to increase revenue, raise awareness and further your cause. But above all else, manage and doggedly protect your brand.
Your “in the future” is over the top. I guarantee you that you won’t see the Hustler or chaw partnerships. Power Ball? Perhaps.
<
p>What’s the difference? It isn’t hard science nor social science per se. The difference is in societal norms. We’ve got a norm for “legal, but with social stigma in relatively large communities” which includes things like porn, firearms, tobacco, and so forth. Fast food, while known to be unhealthy, simply isn’t in that category. Maybe it will be some day, but it isn’t right now.
<
p>I do think less of Komen as a result of their interaction with KFC, and I do think that it suggests the possibility for future equally inappropriate partnerships — but I really don’t think that the first two ones you listed are amongst them.
<
p>As for Power Ball… yeah, I could see that big time. Scratch tickets would be better. Scratch off the 10 breasts, and if they’re all cancer free, you win! If they want to emphasize education, they might even make ’em different sizes, shapes, colors, and even (gasp!) have a male breast too, to remind folks that it strikes men too.
In reality I WOULD be shocked if there were pink dip tins and an issue of Hustler. Using the hyperbole was a rhetorical maneuver designed to make clear my point that charity brands can be damaged through questionable partnerships.
What goes with chicken? Soda.
And what’s in soda? Phosphates.
<
p>
<
p>Scarily enough, phosphates are increasingly used as a food additive:
<
p>