Burger King Value Meal Diet

As social abnormalities become social norms, I am increasingly fascinated by them. Cash for Clunkers was a good one, as was Sarah Palin for Vice President 2008 (though I am increasingly concerned by the calls for "Sarah Palin for President 2012"). Another blip across the social spectrum was "The Subway Diet." Jared lost all this weight eating only Subway sandwiches for lunch and dinner and a steady stream of walking. I've written about that. I've also written about the push for more for less and the kamikaze diet I and my dear sweet wife were forced to subject ourselves to for a period of some months.

Now that I'm living in Sunny Southern California and we are prosperous again (not rich mind you, but not "floating the late minimum payment against pending PayPal transfers" either.) It is with an increasing amount of fascination that I approach the Burger King Value Meal and have begun integrating it into my diet. Why shouldn't I? Burger King is close to my house and even the great food we make at home can get old after a while. Plus "eating out" has become dirt cheap!

My wife works in Old Town Pasadena and I am there quite a bit. I was always interested by what a dichotomy Old Town Pasadena is; roaring youth and rampant homeless by night, beautiful architecture and old folks strolling by day. The veneer has worn away on Old Town Pasadena when I found out that it is adjacent South Pasadena which leads directly into the skuzzy part of Los Angeles; South Pasadena being quite the lint trap itself. Literally a short bus ride and you're there. What fascinated me about this was that the homeless whom operate exclusively out of Old Town Pasadena are regulars; they are there every day, all different times of the day! Getting back to Burger King, I began to wonder how they could afford to live on the scraps of change I watch them turn over throughout the day. Until I realized many of them could use something akin to the Burger King Value Meal Diet.

The popular Value Meals of fast food nation are perhaps implemented and kept running by state and local and maybe even federal governments. The simple law of averages states that people who sit begging in high traffic areas are going to get some money; it may not be much, but surely it's enough to afford any of the items on the McDonald's and Burger King "Dollar Menus." Soup kitchens are fine but why not pass the buck from the government to big business? This claim is not founded in any hard factual evidence, but I wouldn't put it past any of the players.

Big business knows just as much as the homeless that if you lower the price enough and keep pumping it out, people will respond. Even if your margins in the value meals are slim against other shenanigans like charging $1.79 for a large Coke (a drink which costs them pennies, if that, to produce), keeping people hooked on your product by charging cut rates against competitors is as smart an idea as any.