It's almost too easy of a rant going by the title, isn't it? Well, I'll go ahead and do it anyway. I think most people reading this would be surprised at the extent of the idiocy.

We are going to completely ignore the horrendous nutritional content of the "Olympic" food, and focus on the calories instead. Let's have a look at the McD menu - [link] How about a Big Mac, large fries and coke, and a strawberry banana smoothie for dessert?

550 + 500 + 310 + 260 = 1620 Calories in one meal. This is already 80% of the daily norm for an average person. If this is one of your meals, you will be well over the limit after two more meals - whatever they are.

How many of the athletes would still be able to qualify for the Olympics if they ate exclusively the above mentioned crap consistently? Let's think about it. My guess would be somewhere between zero and a quarter. How many would win Olympic medals? I think none of them. They would be carrying extra fat, and would likely be in poor health.

Here is why. Hardcore exercise makes you tired and hungry. Let's give them three of the above meals per day without any snacks whatsoever (unreal assumption, by the way). That works out to 4860 Calories. These are professional athletes we are talking about, so they train very hard. Their muscles are larger than average, so let's suppose that their bodies use 2200 Calories per day at rest, leaving us with 2660 Calories to burn off.

Morning - 2 hr insane, non-stop, highest intensity weightlifting = 1000 calories
Evening - 10 mile run or equivalent cardio = 1200 calories

Most professional athletes will not be able to complete the above routine every day without either getting injured or overtraining, unless they are endurance athletes. Most people who eat at McDonald's don't complete this amount of exercise in a week. After all, it's the equivalent of running ~3 miles PER DAY for a week.

So where is our athlete left after this insane workout and a mere three McDonald's meals per day? That's right, he's getting fat very quickly! One pound of fat contains 3500 calories. It turns out that he ate roughly 500 more calories than he used, translating into a gain of 1 lb of fat per week, every week. After a year of this insane exercise routine, our athlete will have gained 50 lb of fat and his career would be over until weight loss can occur.

In fact, quite a number of professional athletes could benefit from a lower body fat percentage. Here is just one example - [link] - of a tennis player dropping 30 lb of fat and storming into the Top 10 in the world late in his career.

I can tell you from personal experience what it takes to burn off 1000 calories. I can do it in exactly 1 hour on a bike at the gym. Put on your shorts, t-shirt, and shoes and dive into a pool. When you get out, without shaking off or squeezing out the water, take a look at yourself in the mirror. You are dripping all over the place, leaving a trail of water behind you. If you shake your hand, you create a localized rainstorm. Now you have a good idea of what I look like when I finish. In this hour, I drop more than 5 lb of sweat, and there is a huge puddle which requires a mop to clean up. That's in addition to a fully saturated towel of decent size which is wet enough to drip if held up. I feel rather sick, my whole body is burning. Walking is a bit of a challenge.

The Olympic motto is "Faster, Higher, Stronger" which is somewhat ambiguous. However, I am fairly sure didn't mean faster death, higher blood pressure, and stronger constipation. The sad part of this whole debacle is that their pathetic ad campaign will probably be effective and kill tens of thousands more through diabetes, heart disease, and all the other awesome things obesity brings.

Fuck you McDonalds, fuck you Coca-Cola. Oh, and fuck you US government, for having corn subsidies which make this disgusting food much cheaper than it should be. Coke is 100% corn (high fructose corn syrup). McDonald's meal is probably >50%.

Edit: On further reflection, I missed the bigger picture. It's not the companies which are the culprit, it's the people. The clueless, and often fat as a result of their ignorance, person who is the average consumer. So fuck you, the average consumer who falls for this shit. I hope I won't be insulting anyone who has read it this far, because you aren't falling for it any more, right?

P.S. No, Michael Phelps never ate 12000 Calories per day. It's bullshit according to the man himself. He probably ate half that much.