To the editor:

Re: The 10 Worst Corporations of 2004. I really don’t see why Hardee’s is on your list. I would think KFC’s behavior far more egregious for having implied that their fried chicken was healthy, but Hardee’s has not been misleading anyone on the unhealthiness of the Monster Thickburger. In fact, I think the danger of consuming a Thickburger has been fairly well-publicized through the jokes of Letterman and Leno as well as it’s own advertising (“Be Very Afraid” Oh, if only most advertising were as truthful!) and the links to heart disease so obvious, that I think the average consumer pretty much knows what they are doing when they buy one.

The last thing I want to see is a kind of “food fascism.” As long as unhealthy foods are not marketed as good for you, I don’t have a problem with it. I would think the diet food industry would be a better target for your lambasting because most of that stuff just isn’t good for anyone and yet people buy that stuff thinking they will lose weight. Ha! I’m a vegetarian and have been for years. I have no plans on ever buying a Thickburger and I think any diet where one consumes meat more than once a week is unhealthy. I think people will be better off if they eschew meat, but I do not want to infringe on anyone’s right to eat themselves to an early grave if that’s what they want to do, providing that they are informed of the risks.

I feel that way about cigarettes, though I’m glad that New York City has banned them from public places. That’s because other people’s right to smoke must not infringe on my right to breathe clean air, though if they want to smoke outside or in their own homes, that’s their prerogative.

I just can’t stand self-righteousness and militancy, even for causes I agree with. Though I stopped eating meat for health reasons, I have, on one occasion, eaten a burger just to annoy a militant vegetarian who was making a scene in the restaurant screaming, “Look, NO MOO!!!”

The food industry is rife with bad actors. Surely, you could have picked a company that didn’t commit the sin of telling the truth.

Pamela,
New York City

To the editor:

Our household has been reading your wonderful publication for several years now.

There is only one thing missing from your articles. I have no quarrel with the facts presented. It is the underlying connection that is missing.

Corporations could not do the damage they do, if they did not have six and a half billion customers. We read about people who climb on top of redwood trees to protest the logging company. Instead, they should focus on all the people who want redwood picnic tables, without which demand there would be no logging company.

Yes, corporations could do things differently, but in the end it is unending demand for energy and products that is destroying all systems that support life.

Jared Diamond recently published a book called Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed that has been reviewed in several publications and that details this connection.

Kerry Lund,
Oklahoma City