Back in time, when food factories and fast food chains did not exist, food was produced for individuals and families not for populations. In today’s society the food industry relies heavily on mass production, but is this necessary, or is America just so hard wired to this system that we are unable to change? If societies before us were able to survive on food straight from farms why can’t our society today do the same? The answer is money. The American food system revolves around money. This is causing food companies to feel the need to mass produce food at the cheapest cost in order to sell it in large quantities, thus skewing the American food system towards large food brands making the victim in the system...local farms and small food producers. …show more content…
The restaurant established a system that would produce food quickly thus introducing the world to fast food. Today, there are over 36,000 McDonald’s restaurants in the world, and according to statista.com they have earned 26 billion dollars since 2005, which is more money 88 countries current gpd (nominal). And in case you were wondering...in the United States alone there are 200,000 plus fast food restaurants. And by the way, fast food is not healthy and that should be no secret to us Americans. So if we know that fast food is not good for us then why do we keep eating at these places? The answer is money once again. According to David Barboza’s article “If You Pitch It, They Will Eat”, food brands are “spending more than ever--$15 billion... according to research conducted at Texas A&M University in College Station,” (David Barboza). How are local restaurants supposed to keep up with businesses that spend 100 million dollars plus just on advertisements? It does not make sense that a restaurant that produces healthier, higher quality food gets less business than a restaurant that reheats precooked food. People should not be blamed for this though, they know no better, it is all that we humans are exposed to these days. David Barboza said it correctly, big food corporations “are where the money is,” (David Barboza). Local restaurants have nothing to set themselves apart from other restaurants. …show more content…
Ever notice how almost all products in a supermarket have a registered trademark symbol or a trademark symbol next to their name or logo. It is very common for big businesses, including big food manufacturers, like Kraft or Tyson, to purchase a trademark for their products in order to protect the name of the brand. The number of products in a supermarket with the trademark symbol speaks to the large amount of big food companies there are compared to the amount of small producers. Supermarkets also use something called a planogram, which is a “diagram or model that indicates the placement of retail products on shelves in order to maximise sales” (Graham Kendall, phys.org). A part of a planogram is shelf layout. Products are purposely placed on shelves in order to get a maximum profit. Smaller brands and regional brands are placed on the top shelf. On bottom shelves store and private label brands are placed, along with oversized products, and in the middle shelves, also known as the “bull’s-eye zone”, leading brands and top selling brands are placed here. Ironically, you have to pay in order to get your product on the middle shelf. So even in supermarkets small food producers are like the little brothers to big food suppliers. Many people may say that we need these big food suppliers in order to meet the demands of our population. One thing that has
Moreover, this system of mass farming leads to single crop farms, which are ecologically unsafe, and the unnatural treatment of animals (Kingsolver 14). These facts are presented to force the reader to consider their own actions when purchasing their own food because of the huge economic impact that their purchases can have. Kingsolver demonstrates this impact by stating that “every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we
A counter argument to the conclusion that we should not trust nor buy from our food industries could be the obvious reason that food is cheaper than ever before. When times are hard in America, we can always count on the cheap price of our fast food restaurants and their dollar menus. However, these cheap prices come at a high cost. The reason meat or grains, for example, are so cheap, is due to subsidizing the market. While this may be great for consumers, it is actually incredibly harmful to local farmers. Artificially driving down the prices
The 2009 movie Food Inc. describes the major role that food production plays within many lives. This movie revealed that there is a very small variety of companies that consumers purchase their food from. These few companies actually control what is out on the shelves and what we put into our bodies. These companies have changed food production into a food production business. Many of these companies experiment with ways to create large quantities of food at low production costs to result in an enormous amount of profit for themselves. Some of the production cost cuts also result in less healthy food for the population. Instead of worrying about the health of the population, the companies are worried about what will make them the most money.
What is happening to our economy is that so many people are going to these fast food restaurants because they are basically on just about every corner. So, for adults that makes it easy if they didn’t have anything planned for dinner because they can just pick something up from the local fast food restaurant on their way home from work. Also, it is very cheap. For example, a bundle at McDonald’s can feed up to four people at one time and it only costs about fifteen dollars! So, in the long run, it is just easier to go pick up some fast food rather than wasting your time cooking an actual meal. Lastly, even though fast food is very cheap and on every corner, it is not healthy at all. Studies have proven that a person that ate McDonald’s for his meals for a full month ended up having some serious health changes. In conclusion, even though it is very easy to access and very cheap, fast food has some serious health issues and be very harmful.
Every month, at least ninety percent of Americans visit a fast food restaurant and about forty- five percent of them make it a weekly occurrence. These statistics make it safe to say Americans are obsessed with fast food, but why are Americans addicted to these restaurants? Is it the low prices, quick service or the taste of the food? According to Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side off the All-American Meal, he believes “It’s easy, it's filling, and it's convenient and inexpensive.” Therefore, the consumption of fast food is now directly correlated to the obesity epidemic in America. Consequently, the recent obesity increase in the United States has labeled America the fattest country.
In the book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser talks about the working conditions of fast food meat slaughterhouses. In the chapter “The Most Dangerous Job,” one of the workers, who despised his job, gave Schlosser an opportunity to walk through a slaughterhouse. As the author was progressed backwards through the slaughterhouse, he noticed how all the workers were sitting very close to each other with steel protective vests and knives. The workers were mainly young Latina women, who worked swiftly, accurately, while trying not to fall behind. Eric Schlosser explains how working in the slaughterhouses is the most dangerous profession – these poor working conditions and horrible treatment of employees in the plants are beyond comprehension to what we see in modern everyday jobs, a lifestyle most of us take for granted.
In the book Fast Food Nation: The Darks Side of the All-American Meal, Eric Schlosser claims that fast food impacts more than our eating habits, it impacts “…our economy, our culture, and our values”(3) . At the heart of Schlosser’s argument is that the entrepreneurial spirit —defined by hard work, innovation, and taking extraordinary risks— has nothing to do with the rise of the fast food empire and all its subsidiaries. In reality, the success of a fast food restaurant is contingent upon obtaining taxpayer money, avoiding government restraints, and indoctrinating its target audience from as young as possible. The resulting affordable, good-tasting, nostalgic, and addictive foods make it difficult to be reasonable about food choices, specifically in a fast food industry chiefly built by greedy executives.
Our current system of corporate-dominated, industrial-style farming might not resemble the old-fashioned farms of yore, but the modern method of raising food has been a surprisingly long time in the making. That's one of the astonishing revelations found in Christopher D. Cook's "Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis" (2004, 2006, The New Press), which explores in great detail the often unappealing, yet largely unseen, underbelly of today's food production and processing machine. While some of the material will be familiar to those who've read Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" or Eric Schlosser's "Fast-Food Nation," Cook's work provides many new insights for anyone who's concerned about how and what we eat,
America’s food source has altered drastically in the last century and so has the health of many. Americans used to thrive on natural foods for nutritional value, now Americans thrive on processed and manufactured food for just for convenience. Food companies have changed the very way we view nutrition. They have taken chemistry to a whole new level and added what they want it to what we now call food even if that harms our bodies in the long run. Food companies have also caused many hard working farmers to lose their jobs. These food companies have lost insight as to what is truly important in a food product and don’t care if that means taking someone else’s job.
Food is traditionally considered as a simple means of subsistence but has developed to become filled with cultural, psychological, religious, and emotional significance. Consequently, food is currently used as a means of defining shared identities and symbolizes religious and group customs. In the early 17th and 18th centuries, this mere means of subsistence was considered as a class maker but developed to become a symbol of national identity in the 19th centuries. In the United States, food has been influenced by various cultures such as Native American, Latin America, and Asian cultures. Consequently, Americans have constantly Americanized the foods of different cultures to become American foods. The process on how Americans have Americanized different cultures’ foods and reasons for the Americanization is an important topic of discussion.
Fast food has changed the face of the world. Major chains like McDonalds span all over the world. Fast food chains are continuing to grow despite numerous facts of their unhealthiness. Fast food has been proven to be a dangerous food source, yet people continue to purchase it. The more people buy fast food the more it allows the big corporations to grow. People continue to eat fast food because there are no other convenient options.
The way that our society has been able to produce food has changed in the last fifty years that the several thousand years beforehand. Robert Kenner addresses problems of our society’s food system and how there is only a handful of large corporations that have basically taken over the food system in the United States in the film Food, Inc. Large businesses have been able to significantly produce vast amounts of food and set low prices for consumers, usually because of government subsidies, which results in enormous profit and greater control of the food supply sources. This leads to negative health, safety, and economic consequences. This documentary examines the exercises of the few large food corporations from the start of production
Have you ever wondered how the business empire of McDonalds was started? With over ninety nine billion served, it was started in 1940 in San Bernardino, California. It was started off as just a Bar-B-Q that served just twenty items. Its first mascot was named “Speedee” They eventually realized that by setting up their kitchen like an assembly line that they could be much more productive and get their food done faster, with every employee doing a specified job; the restaurants production rate became much higher. A milkshake machine vendor came into their small restaurant one day, his name was Ray Kroc. He saw how much potential the restaurant has, so he bought it out and opened one of the first franchises. Within the first year of Ray Kroc buying it, there were one hundred and two locations all around the world. McDonalds currently is one of the largest fast food restaurants in the world and currently has served over sixty four million customers through one of their thirty two thousand sites. It has almost become a way of life for America. Though, McDonalds started off as a small business between two brothers, it grew into one of the largest restaurant franchises in the world and greatly affects our society and how we eat our food.
And, because food now comes at a low cost, it has become cheaper in quality and therefore potentially dangerous to the consumer’s health. These problems surrounding the ethics and the procedures of the instantaneous food system are left unchanged due to the obliviousness of the consumers and the dollar signs in the eyes of the government and big business. The problem begins with the mistreatment and exploitation of farmers. Farmers are essentially the backbone of the entire food system. Large-scale family farms account for 10% of all farms, but 75% of overall food production (CSS statistics).
The fast food industry in America has many drawbacks at the cost of supplying food to the American population. Since many people are ignorant of the process their food goes through in order to become the edible meal they consume, American companies easily take advantage of them. In class, we discussed a “Food Bill of Rights”. I believe that this is necessary in order to keep the food industry safe for the American public and environment. The main focus of my “Food Bill of Rights” is to ensure the fast food industry has the American population’s best interest in mind when producing their food.