1900s Fast Food

FAST FOOD FAILS

Did you know that 90% of Americans have fast food every day? That means that you have probably had fast food today. Maybe you were driving home, and were very hungry. You were looking for a place to eat. You see a McDonald’s, and get a Big Mac. If you have ever done this, you should know that it is not a good choice because it is not healthy, you and the employees of the companies are being manipulated, and because the fast food industry creates jobs that are low-paying, which causes the workers to have to be supported by the government because they do not make enough money to live.

Fast food is known for being unhealthy. During the 1900s, hamburgers were thought to be unsafe to eat. This belief has changed over time, but

the quality of the hamburger has not. We have simply been led to believe that the hamburger is good by advertising. According to Calorieking.com, “Burger King’s Double Whopper with fries and a cola contains 1,500 calories. This is ⅔ of an adult man's recommended calorie intake.” This shows that when you eat fast food, you take in enough calories for two meals. This is because a single meal is supposed to contain ⅓ of your daily calorie intake. When you eat two other normal meals, you are eating ⅓ more calories than you are supposed to, and not be able to burn it off. This will result in weight gain. Fast food is also known to cause diabetes. Most fast food contains a lot of carbohydrates. When your digestive system breaks down carbohydrates, they get turned into sugar. Your pancreas release insulin, which carries the sugar through your body. However, when you eat too much fast food, there is too much sugar for the insulin to transport, which results in diabetes. Even though fast food might make you full temporarily, it won’t make you less hungry later. Since you don’t have enough nutrients in your body, but are still full, your body will stop functioning properly.

Fast food restaurants also manipulate their employees and customers. The managers fly in helicopters above the city and look at where the schools are and what the traffic patterns are. They use the information to build a restaurant in the ideal location in the city. They build near schools because they want children to come to their restaurant before school. This affects the students profusely. According to Eatthis.com,

“Having a fast food restaurant within 0.1 miles of a school increases the probability of obesity among students by 5.2 percent, according to a joint study conducted by Columbia University and University of California, Berkeley.”

This shows the way in which children are affected by fast food restaurants: obesity.

Fast food restaurants also manipulate children by selling toys with Happy Meals. According to the Huffington Post,

“The Federal Trade Commission has reported that fast-food companies—with McDonald’s by far in the lead—spent $360 million in 2006 on toys to market children’s meals. In the same year, fast food restaurants sold more than 1.2 billion children’s meals with toys to children ages 12 and under, accounting for 20 percent of all child traffic at those restaurants”.

This shows that fast food restaurants are manipulating children by bribing them with toys. Since the children want the toys, they make their parents get the Happy Meal, which is often very unhealthy. Even worse are the collect-them-all toys, where children keep making their parents get them Happy Meals in order to collect all of the

toys.

Fast food restaurants also manipulate their workers. According to “McJobs”, by Eric Schlosser “Fast food chains often put attractive girls behind the counter to deal with customers”. This shows that fast food companies are just seeing the exterior of their employees and not how they are on the inside. They also hire teenage employees, because they are less strong-willed than adults.

Finally, fast food companies create low paying jobs that require the people who fill them to seek government assistance.

Government assistance money is taxpayer money, so every time you order a cheap meal at McDonalds, you are paying extra to keep the employees around. At fast food restaurants, food is made on an assembly line, as if it were a factory. According to “McJobs”, by Eric Schlosser, “The ovens at Domino’s often use conveyor belts”. At Taco Bell, food is assembled, not prepared. The cooking process is simply: just add water. At McDonald’s, an executive named Fred Turner created a manual that detailed exactly how every procedure should be done. This makes working at McDonalds a physical job, not an intellectual job. People who do these kind of jobs are called ‘unskilled laborers’, and are paid minimum wage. The fact that working at McDonald’s does not require skill gives the company a vast amount of power over its employees. The company doesn’t need skilled workers, but people who are willing to do what they are

told.

Since fast food is unhealthy, you and the employees of the companies are being manipulated, and because the fast food industry creates jobs that are low-paying, which causes the workers to have to be supported by the government because they do not make enough money to live, fast food is not a good eating choice. Does that burger look so good now?