The idea of progress: Quantity vs. Quality

This post is meant to focus on the notion of de Idea of Progress. This notion is often associated with technological innovation which is meant to improve our living standards, but with this post I aim to show that progress not only can apply to technological devices but also to many aspects of our life without us being even aware of it; and also that progress isn't necessarily about improving our life. It might also have become an issue.
 Quality vs quantity has become nowadays quite of an open battle that concerns the whole society, since consummers are often forced to chose either the first or the second one. In order to illustrate the overwhelming contrast between these two terms and as a vegetarian concerned about this kind of issues I am, I decided to focus on the social stuggle of food. The following documents aims to debate about this. The first one is an extract of the article The easy way to lose weight... just go for quality not quantity written by a Daily Mail reporter and published in the Daily Mail in December 2011
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2007041/Dieters-told-Quality-food-quantity-counts.html

The quality of the food you eat rather than how much you consume has the biggest impact on losing weight, a study has found.

Diet also has a greater impact than physical activity, watching TV or sleep duration.

But focusing on calories alone was not the best way to stay slim, according to the scientists. The secret was to focus on the quality of foods, especially carbohydrates

Weight-watchers were advised to cut out sweetened drinks, potatoes and refined grain foods such as white bread, white rice and low-fibre breakfast cereals.

At the same time they were urged to eat more ‘natural’ foods, such as fruit and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and yoghurt, while avoiding anything processed.

Professor Frank Hu, a nutrition expert at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, U.S., said: ‘These findings underscore the importance of making wise food choices in preventing weight gain and obesity.

‘The idea that there are no “good” or “bad” foods is a myth that needs to be debunked.’

The second document I choose is a McDonalds advertisement created by the advertising agency DDB in April 2013.

I picked these two documents because they both illustrate the idea of progress concerning food, each one from a different perspective. For the first one, food progress consists not only in how many calories contains what you eat but in the quality of the food itself, in how it affects your body and how healthy it might be considered. It goes against the idea that every "light" or "diet" product is good for you and will help you fight your personal battle against overweight. The second one, as an advertisement, aims to transmit a message to a wider range of people. This is a typical advertisement that can be found in the subway and among any magazine's pages. This kind of advertisement wants people to feel related to it, that is why it's oversimplified: it's easier to understand, therefore the message is easier to transmit. And also it sticks a bit more to nowadays reality: people do not care anymore about enjoying what's healthy and good for them. They eat healthy as if they were somehow forced to do it. Quantity has become more important and representative in their lives than quality. They'd rather chose quantity over quality.

To put it in a nutshell, the contrast between these two documents is representative on how quality over quantity has become an overwhelming paradox in our nowadays society: although people might be aware of how damaging choosing "quantity" is for them, they still do it everyday;  and when they don't it's for a cause (such as losing weight, following my example). We don't enjoy quality anymore.