The dark side of fast food culture

‘Fast Food Nation’ is not recent but it is a classic in its genre, and should be read by anyone who wants to know the truth about junk food and how it affects our health.
Fast food is an industry that began in the early years of the twentieth century, in the United States with hamburger and hot dog stands and then reached the rest of the world.
Americans spend more money on fast food than on higher education, computers, new cars, or movies, books, magazines and newspapers combined. In 1970, they spent $6 billion on fast food and three decades later, they were spending $110 billion.
“This is a book about fast food, the values it embodies, and the world it has made,” says author Eric Schlosser who believes that a nation’s diet can be more revealing than its art or literature. In a short period of time, the fast food industry has completely transformed the American diet as well as its landscape, economy, workforce, and popular culture.
While a generation ago, three-quarters of a family’s budget was spent to prepare meals at home. Nowadays, half the money is spent at fast food outlets.
Unsurprisingly, the McDonald’s Corporation is the largest purchaser of beef and potatoes in the United States, and the largest owner of retail property in the world. Consequently, it has even replaced Coca-Cola as the world’s most famous brand.
“The basic thinking behind fast food has become the operating system of today’s retail economy, wiping out small businesses, obliterating regional differences, and spreading identical stores throughout the country like a self-replicating code … Almost every facet of American life has now been franchised.”
And this movement is spreading to the rest of the world. The largest malls around the world feature the same boutiques and fast food outlets; shopping has lost its thrill because the choice of goods is the same all over the world. The main reason customers go to familiar brands is because they offer a feeling of reassurance, their products are simply always and everywhere the same.
Fast food has changed the face of rural life in America. Family farms are now being replaced by mega corporate farms. Rural communities are losing their middle class and small towns are becoming ghettos. This is the price to be paid for a fast food industry which is inexpensive, convenient and tastes good.
“Hundreds of millions of people buy fast food every day without giving it much thought, unaware of the subtle and not so subtle ramifications of their purchases. They rarely consider where this food comes from, how it was made. I’ve written this book out of a belief that people should know what lies behind the shiny, happy surface of every fast food transaction,” says Eric Schlosser.
The truth is that our food has changed more in the last forty years than in the previous forty thousand years. The food delivered to a fast food restaurant has completely been reformulated; it arrives frozen, canned, dehydrated, or freeze-dried. Yet the taste of McDonald’s French fries has been praised by customers and even food critics.
The ingredient which explains why the fries and most fast food taste good is, what is known as “natural flavor” or “artificial flavor”. The canning, freezing and dehydrating techniques used to process food take away most of its flavor. Without the flavor industry which gives processed food a good taste, the fast food chains would not exist.
However, this flavor industry is highly secretive. The fast food chains do not want their customers to know that the flavors of their food have been created in a factory, and not in their restaurant kitchens. The Food and Drug Administration allows the companies not to disclose the secrecy of their formulas.
This conveniently hides the fact that flavor compounds often contain more ingredients than the foods being given their taste. A typical artificial strawberry flavor similar to the kind present in a Burger King strawberry milk shake contains no less than 49 ingredients! It is interesting to know that soft drinks have a larger proportion of flavor additives than most products.
For the past thirty years, the fast food industry has tried to use only natural flavors in their products. However, the distinction is based more on how the flavor has been made than on what it actually contains. Moreover, a natural flavor is not necessarily healthier than an artificial one and they are both manufactured at the same chemical plant.
An elite group of scientists, called “flavorists” create the flavors of most of the food consumed in the United States and exported overseas. A flavorist creates a flavor by mixing dozens of chemicals in order to produce a taste which will trigger “consumer likeability”.
The chicken McNugget is a fast food item which has not only changed the American diet but also the way poultry is raised and processed. Whereas thirty years ago, most chicken were sold whole, nowadays 90 percent of the chicken sold in the United States are cut into pieces, cutlets or nuggets.
McNuggets are small pieces of reconstituted chicken made from white meat held together with stabilizers, breaded, frozen then reheated. McDonald introduced them in 1983. They became a huge success because they tasted good, they were easy to eat and for that reason they were most popular among young children. However, they contain twice as much fat per ounce as a hamburger.
Incidentally, children’s advertising in the United States exploded in the 1980s. The reason is that a person’s brand loyalty is said to begin as early as the age of two and a taste for fat developed in childhood is difficult to lose as an adult. As the fast food chains moved overseas, the companies also targeted young children. A survey of children’s advertising in the European Union found that 95 percent of the food ads encouraged kids to eat foods high in sugar, salt, and fat. The company running the most ads aimed at children was McDonalds. The growing popularity of fast food is due to globalization yet it seems wherever America’s fast food chains go, waistlines start expanding.
“Future historians, I hope will consider the American fast food industry a relic of the twentieth century, a set of attitudes, systems and beliefs that emerged from postwar southern flourished briefly, and then receded, once its true costs became clear … Whatever replaces the fast food industry should be regional, diverse, authentic, sustainable, profitable and humble … Despite all evidence to the contrary, I remain optimistic,” concludes Eric Schlosser.
Since the book was written, food safety, animal welfare and environmental concerns are gaining momentum among consumers. McDonalds and KFC may see their days of dominance numbered if they don’t start offering healthier and more innovative menu items. More and more, food quality and not just low price is emerging as a deciding factor for consumers in general. People are increasingly willing to go farther out of their way to get a more satisfying experience.
This is not to say that fast food chains are sliding off a cliff but a new trend is showing that independent restaurants are gaining some significant market share. The industry’s growth is coming from so called casual dining chains where customers sit down and enjoy a proper serviced meal.

FAST FOOD NATION
WHAT THE ALL-AMERICAN MEAL IS DOING TO THE WORLD
ERIC SCHLOSSER
PUBLISHED BY PENGUIN BOOKS
PAPERBACK 386 PAGES

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