Did you know...

That Today Show weatherman and Smuckers birthday announcer Willard Scott was the original Ronald McDonald? Me either!

Willard Scott played Bozo the Clown in a local Washington D. C. TV show, Bozo's Circus, in the early 1960s. When the show was canceled, a local McDonald's hired Scott to create a new clown that would make appearances at local McDonald's. A costume was designed and Scott came up with the name Ronald McDonald. When McDonald's decided to take Ronald throughout the U.S., they fired Scott because he was considered too overweight to play Ronald. They wanted someone thinner to hock their fattening foods.

I picked up this tidbit of trivia from Eric Schlosser's Chew On This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food. Schlosser repeats much from his earlier book, Fast Food Nation, but there are some interesting personal stories of people whose lives have been affected by fast food. One story I found particularly disturbing is the rampant tooth decay found among the Eskimo population. Many Eskimos drink copious amounts of soda. The soda, combined with a lack of access to dental care, has resulted in a large number of Eskimos who are toothless. Doctors have also found "baby bottle syndrome" quite common among Eskimos. Mothers put soda into their babies' bottles, the babies fall asleep with the bottles in their mouths, which creates a breading ground for tooth decay. As a result, many babies' upper teeth rot away into black nubs. You would think that if Coca-Cola is flying in cargo planes full of pop, they could make room to bring in a few dentists as well.