On the way to work each morning, I regularly get held up in traffic on Days Road heading east towards the M1 going past the Coomera Anglican College. As I plod along in the traffic listening to Hot Tomato on the radio, I’m looking around at the volume of high end cars flowing in and out of the school and I’ve started to notice something about the kids – 2 or 3 out of 20 have energy drinks.

Just so I’m clear, it is 8:00AM and I’m driving to work and kids are throwing back cans of Red Bull and V like they are water. What I don’t understand is how their parents think that it’s acceptable for children as young as 12 to be drinking before going to school.

The next thing that stumped me about it – why do the kids want/need a drink like that in the morning in the first place? I know when I was at school, energy was certainly not something I was lacking. Is this a response to the fact that most kids don’t exercise anymore and their bodies are getting lazy – even when they are at school? Are they not getting enough sleep or has the average house holds food quality dropped compared to what I was eating at the same age?

I don’t have the answers but it sure is concerning.

While there are far more sound and reliable ways of measuring the relative popularity of fast food outlets, like their financial performance – but I think I’ve found the simplest measure – the volume of rubbish generated.

If you assume that people are as equally likely to litter, regardless of the take-a-way food that they eat then the most littered product would be the most popular in the market place.

I see a lot more McDonalds rubbish floating around than any other fast food brands such as KFC or Subway. I know the fast food chains spend a lot of energy on keeping their stores clean, some more than others but I think McDonalds recognise that seeing their product littering a neighbourhood works against the image that they invest so heavily to create. To reduce that negative association, you’ll regularly see McDonalds staff picking up rubbish on or near their stores to make sure they are litter free – even though they didn’t litter and provided the consumer ample bins to do the right thing.

What other crude measures of popularity are there?