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    This is a fascinating slice of life in Kuwait, a country with the fourth highest per capita income in the world.

    Kuwait City’s Gulf Road has beautiful beachfront real estate but instead of seeing big fancy hotels and private mansions, you see McDonald’s Burger King, KFC and Pizza Hut.

    VICE News looks into the economic, environmental, cultural and food addiction forces driving the explosion of fast food in Kuwait and the obesity epidemic that has become this country’s largest public health crisis in the wake of the Gulf Wars.

    Kuwait is now one of the most obese nations on Earth, with roughly double the percentage of diabetic adults than the US. A big part of what’s allowing this trend to grow unchecked is a lack of awareness.

    VICE then goes to Murfreesboro, Tennessee to meet with Andy Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Carl’s Jr., Hardee’s and other fast food restaurant brands. Food labeling laws in the US make now fast food restaurants display calorie information and offer healthy options on their menus, inuring customers of their own responsibility for what they eat and absolving fast food restaurants of their liability for offering highly addictive, unhealthy products.

    Puzder says that over the past three years, CKE has opened more restaurants outside the United States than inside. The largest untapped region right now is Africa, where CKE has opened a chain in Kenya and looking to expand to Tunisia, Nigeria and South Africa. He explains how fast food restaurants abroad are selling the American Dream and “When you stop growing, you start dying and we don’t want to start dying.”

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    Alexandra Bruce

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    7 comments

    Leave a Reply to Joe Cancel reply

    • There’s a sucker born every minute. Any person on the planet can research the destructive effects of American culture before being taken over by it.

    • Advertising/propaganda reads our desires and Industry/banking fulfills them. Seems like a symbiotic relationship; what could go wrong?

    • I can see why American culture is easy to export, it is really seductive (even to a country that has recently been in conflict with the USA!) these predatory corporations know exactly what they’re doing. It takes time to become aware of the health risks and by then you’ve already got the all too familiar epidemics. It’s a perfect indication of how little power governments have to act in the interests of the public.

    • Corporation mindset. If you don’t grow, you die.
      How have, cobbler shops in Europe, for example, been passed down through generations, remained in the same location, without growing into enormity? Common sense tells us growth is not the opposite of stagnant.
      When I owned a carpet cleaning business, bank loans were unavailable without a “business plan” showing certain growth aspects in place.
      It’s a massive con game, run by slavers that run on greed and control. They will stop at nothing to make a buck.

    • Wow, a lot to think about. Personally, I haven’t eaten “fast food” for at least 5 years now, but sometimes I do have a hankering for it.
      I’m curious as to why the buns in Japan are black?

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