Fast Food Nation and Fast Food's Effect on American Society

Fast food restaurants can possibly be seen as the drug pushers of the culinary world, shoving their poison down the throats of suspecting, yet inactive customers. They deal everyday on the corner, yet the community's barely doing anything to stop it, sometimes encouraging them through patronage. Fast food has never been seen as a healthy way to eat, but even with extremely persistent enemies of the industry pumping out Michael Moore-esque propaganda, the rich get richer and the fat get even fatter. The fast food industry doesn't care for the health of its customers; this can be seen through its advertisements geared towards youths and its frequent use of immigrants or inexperienced employees to work for low pay.

A Stanford study, conducted by Dr. Tom Robinson, has proven that food wrapped in McDonalds's wrappers supposedly tasted better to children rather than food by itself. This psychological connection between McDonald's and good food reveals an extremely scary fact-fast food junkies are bred young. A popular marketing technique is to sell toys along side kid's meals, probably to help instill the connections of good memories and bad food, while at a very young age. Parents aren't doing much either; most believe they are merely treating their child to this processed fat. Upon growing up, these children have most likely developed a love for this food, with an attachment on par with "grandma's home cooking"; this love will definitely affect their parental feeding techniques, pushing them to feed their kids' fast food, repeating the vicious cycle. The goal of marketing is to basically establish familiarity, but companies are reaching deep in the bag, using techniques in league with subliminal messaging. This is especially despicable, considering they're running this marketing on youth younger than twelve.

There has been a rise in health concerns in our country; many blame the fast food industry, and they believe that the industry's focus on marketing to children has contributed directly to the worsening health of the nation's youth. For example, a sundry amount of fast food restaurants serve "happy meals," which are meals explicitly for children. The names given to the meals alone make kids want to have them. They have names like "Happy Meals" or "Big Kids Meals." What four year old child wouldn't want to eat something that is called a happy meal; it gives a four year old the impression of if you eat it you will be happy. Do you know a little four year old that doesn't want to be a big kid? By buying a "Big Kid Meal" the child might think they will actually be a big kid. Fast food restaurants promote these meals in commercials by relating it to everyday children. "Each year, children between the ages four and 12 spend $28 billion of their own money..." Fast food restaurants even include toys in the meals to make them more appealing and give incentive to purchase a meal.

It is common today to see a fast food restaurant at the corner of any neighborhood. This is because these franchises are gold mines for any restaurant manager. They do not care how bad the food is to our health and apparently neither do we. People, especially children and teenagers, are constantly attracted to fast food. It is also clear that children are more attracted than the labels than the food itself. It is because of advertisements that we have a constant rise in child and teen obesity in America. The rate of child obesity rose higher after the late '90s because of the increase in the number of fast food restaurants. Fast food contains more fats, sugars, and carbohydrates, and far fewer fruits and non-starchy vegetables. Fast food also adds nearly 200 more daily calories that studies find, which adds six extra pounds each year.

Though many blame the fast food industry for the rising obesity epidemic we are experiencing, are we the consumers the ones to blame? Those who agree with that statement believe we the consumers have the choice to eat fast food or not. Fast food restaurants are merely just promoting their food. They are just giving the consumers the option to buy fast food; they are not forcing anybody to eat it. When it comes to children becoming obese, isn't it the parents who should be watching over them? Children these days consume so much food and many of them don't get the required amount of exercise. But we don't see video game creators getting sued for creating games, which have kids sit on their butts and do nothing for hours at a time. These video games are partly why children don't get enough exercise. Fast food isn't the one making America fat; Americans are making themselves fat. They should know how much food is too much. They should also be aware that in order to stay fit they also need exercise. Is the fast food industry really to blame?

Health is definitely be a lower priority; shorter life spans and bigger waistlines will be a common sight. Obesity is spreading in America, not due to the fast food joint, but due to the parents not being able to teach their children better eating habits. This, in turn, probably being caused by their parents not being able to teach them; the only thing in mind is fast food. Like I mentioned it's a cycle; a cycle easy to propagate, but harder to end. Some have argued that food companies have nutritional information on each item available to the customer; the problem is, the information is simply there, it isn't advertised along with the greasy burger and the king sized soda. The consumers will surely take blame on that end, but how about a push for the health of the buyer? That's the industry's decision.

A fast food job is almost a right of passage in American pop culture; it's the point of independence, for some. Assembly lines and technology have advanced cooking efficiency to a near perfect level, cutting down financial and energy costs for the companies in the process. They've taken it a step further by employing the inexperienced: immigrants, teens, and senior citizens, even the disabled. This cuts down costs for physical capital, since they don't need specially trained chefs or technologically adept engineers to take orders and press buttons. This in turn, creates mediocre food, making for extremely mediocre health. The industry doesn't have to hire any professionally trained cooks to work, but they do have to have someone who's been trained, matured, and able to work.

Fast food franchisers today are not at all about customer service. Franchisers care very little for the consumer. They fight to gain more control of the consumer hopes of netting huge revenues, and to expand their franchises farther than the consumer can conceive. This fact can be seen in that the franchises have huge markups on their product sales, and that they use cheap food products regardless of it quality. This is also seen in that they hire cheap labor in order to keep their expenditures low.

Soda is one of fast food's largest sources of income, more so than the meat and vegetable products. According to Fast Food Nation by Eric Scholsser, McDonalds purchases a gallon of Coca-Cola syrup for about $4.25/ gallon. Medium Cokes sell for about $1.29 but contains about 9 cents worth of syrup. When all math is done, McDonalds makes $60 profit for every gallon of syrup they buy (as opposed to a $46 profit on every gallon of frozen French fries they buy). It must be noted however that the fast food industry just collects products from other industries (i.e. collects potatoes from farming etc.) and sells it as one service to the consumer. Fast food is really driven by the companies that provide the food and beverages. For example:

"Coca-Cola has set itself the goal of raising consumption of its products in the United States by at least 25 percent a year... selling more soda to kids has become one of the easiest ways to meet sales projections."

Obviously they don't care about the health of the kids that purchase these beverages. Shosser states in Fast Food Nation; excessive soda intake can lead to calcium deficiencies. And he later say that at least one-fifth of the nations one and two-year olds now consume soda. French fries are also a large profit source for fast food franchises. At McDonalds, for every $1.50 large fries sold, 2-cents goes to the farmer.

Fast food industries are also notorious for selling food products of low quality. They have sold food that is not fully cooked, food that is rotten and hasn't been properly prepared, etc. The E.Coli scare really forced people to look at the food that they were eating. Ecoli outbreaks in the United States have for the most part been caused by meat, packed at meat packing plants that provide packed meat primarily for fast food franchises. Franchises do recall the meat that they sold if it is found to be infected, but the fact that they must even recall is, shows their lack of interest in testing their meat quality and making sure that it is safe for consumption by the public.

It is shown that fast food franchisers care little about the consumer and more for their profits, who are the employees hired by these franchisers? The fast food industry hires a huge amount of immigrant workers (as well as teenage workers). They often exploit immigrant workers who are looking for jobs and will work overtime to support their struggling families. The fast food industry also pays many of its workers minimum wages. Little more than that is ever earned, in The Economics of the Fast Food Industry, it is stated that the fast food industry pays minimum wage to a higher percentage of its employees than any other industry in the United States. With millions of employees and thousands of restaurants, it amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars pocketed by corporations, mangers, and owners. By targeting minorities, and particularly Hispanic minorities, the industry is able to exploit them because they know that they will rarely meet resistance with them regarding pay raises, etc. They are able to keep the employees longer with no fear of the employees asking for pay raises. By ensuring that the industry pays little money as possible in employment of workers, it can be seen (although indirectly) cares very little for the consumer.

Based on studies, Fast food is the reason for the rise in child and teen obesity in America. There are more fattening foods that are extremely unhealthy if consumed on a daily basis and will show physically. Even though the food is bad to consume, the consumers are choosing to eat the food that is presented in front of them and are paying for bad health in that sense. They are also ignorant about the nutritional facts, therefore becoming obese afterwards. Both parties, seller and consumer, must take blame for the obesity epidemic.

There are many aspects that can be touched upon to reinforce the argument that the industry doesn't care for its customers at all. They don't shove anything down our throats; we have that covered. The problem is they trick us into eating anything out of a McDonald's wrapper while we're still worrying about cooties. Live fast and die young; this saying couldn't be anymore true for this industry.