I noticed that aren't any overweight people in McDonald's commercials, so I'm wondering why not, that is what happens to you if you eat here too much.

Newsflash: you get overweight if you eat too much regardless of what you eat.

Why don't they use overweight, pimply, cussing nerds that burst into flame when touched by sunlight to sell games?
Or sad lonely people with oversized livers in alcohol commercials?
Methinks you might not understand the concept of sales ;)

Also, what he ^ said.

I honestly can't remember the last time I've eaten At McDonalds...maybe 2-3 years ago?

The only fast food place I eat at sometimes is the Irish Hillbilly's chain, which serves the best Fried Chicken in the World

Cyanide.

Not me :P I'm blessed/cursed with a very high metabolism. If I were to eat low-energy food, I would simply not be able to eat enough to gain weight. I eat lot, far more than most other (it gets expensive!), and I'm still not overweight. If I were to eat fastfood, and only fastfood, I would probably start gaining weight though. mainly due to the french fries/chips and soda. While the hamburger dressing is usually rather fatty as well, and the bread contains too much sugar, the hamburgers are still not horrible meals.

I ate at a McDonald's a few weeks ago for the first time in ages. It was crowded and I didn't see a single obese person there. There was kids, students, mid-aged people and old people and they all looked average to slim. Judging from that a commercial with lots of fat people would be false advertising.

Also the fact that Europeans also eat a lot of fast food and aren't nearly as fat as Americans suggests that the problem lies elsewhere. :P

You do not want to see fat people with stains on their shirt eating Big Macs soaked in there own tears.

You want happy people smiling having fun, that way when you go to McD's you are part of that group, you want to feel happy and be like them. Everything from the color to the design-layout is made to make you smile and want to be there.

We do actually have a rather severe obesity problem here in Europe as well. It is not quite as bad as in the US, but it is still really bad.

I've read that an "average" person from the US eats out or eats pre-made meals far more often than the average Swede (between 40-50% more often), and considering just how bad pre-made meals tends to be in terms of fat, sugar & salt content, it is no wonder that people do gain weight. Also, restaurant meals don't tend to be great for you either. They tend to taste really good, but they also tend to be a bit fatty.
Also, I have a friend who has moved to the US, and she has time and time complained about how hard it is to find good quality vegetables compared to how it was in Sweden. It is probably a regional issue though.

Yeah, I've got pretty much the same thing going; I can't really gain nor lose a significant amount of weight no matter what I do. Vigorous excercise only seems to increase the density but not the size of my muscles and any fat that I eat mysteriously disappears into another universe before my body has a chance to metabolize it into something ugly and big. It's a pretty good deal in my opinion.

Why don't they use GOG.com on GOG.com?

Sex sells everything. Simple. Look at that redhead in the Wendy's commercials - I just want to grab that beautiful hair and... well, I admit, it doesn't make me want to buy burgers.

Wait until you get older. ;) I was pretty much the same until my late thirties, but started gaining weight slowly, but steadily, afterwards, until it reached a stage where I actually had to start taking care about how much I eat, for the first time ever.

Some people have a metabolism which lets them "waste" superfluous energy though. Instead of storing it as fat, the body simply uses it to build and dismantle certain molecules until it's gone. It's like an automatic weight-loss exercise that takes place _inside_ the body - pretty nifty in times when there's more than enough food available.
That's exactly why "sex sells" isn't a particularly successful strategy. :) It _does_ grab the viewers attention, but it also steers that attention _away_ from the actual product. ;)

Karen Carpenter once said to me...well actually she never said anything to me. She can't say anything to anyone. She died from not eating.

Because ads have nothing to do with portraying reality and everything to do with selling you stuff. If you don't believe me, ask the bikini clad chick lying on the hood of your car.