The single most influential culinary trend of our time is fast food. It has spawned an industry that has both changed eating, the most fundamental of human activities, and created a model that works everywhere. There are 240,000 fast-food restaurants in the United States alone and a million outlets worldwide. At the heart of the industry is a score of large multinational corporations, most of which originated in the U.S. Fast-food stores are ubiquitous, located in branded stand-alone structures, urban storefronts, military bases, shopping malls, food courts, strip malls, gas stations, railway stations, airports, department stores, zoos, supermarkets and even schools and hospitals. They offer sufficiently appetizing meals at prices hundreds of millions of diverse people throughout the world can afford. Patrons need only order, gulp and go: no dressing up, no conversation, no preparation, no tipping and no clean-up.
The industry’s huge global success and its high visibility have made multinational fast-food chains easy targets for a multitude of critics who voice thoughtful concerns. Appalled by the enormous effect of fast-food culture on human, animal and environmental health, critics have published scathing exposés, supported boycotts, engaged in demonstrations and lobbied political leaders to force fast-food corporations to reduce the harm they cause.
The main purpose of this book is to examine controversies related to the fast-food industry. These include the issues surrounding the industry’s globalization, the nutritional quality and healthfulness of its food and beverages, its mass marketing targeted at children and adolescents, its effect on the environment and its massive influence on meat production and on the way the industry treats its workers.
Globalization controversies are discussed in Chapter Two. Critics proclaim that fast-food chains represent bloated American lifestyles and the Americanization of the world’s cuisines. They fear for the survival of centuries-old local, regional, national and ethnic cuisines. They decry the decline of traditional restaurants and local family farms. They also note that the fast-food industry has promoted the industrialization of agriculture, with vast factory farms and feedlots now dominating food production in much of the world. Culinary leaders of the Slow Food movement have charged the industry with ‘global culinary homogenization’ and the global destruction of indigenous foodways.
Fast-food chains have come under severe criticism for the poor nutritional quality of their offerings: highly processed foods, many deep-fried, combined with starchy vegetables and sugary beverages. The appeal of this food relies on the lowest common denominators of taste: it’s fatty, sweet and salty. The fat is often highly saturated, the sugars highly refined and the sodium levels in one meal may exceed the recommended daily intake. Fruit and vegetables – other than french fries – are all but absent from the menu, as are whole grains. This adds up to a shortfall in vitamins, minerals and dietary fibre. A steady diet of fast food is associated with serious health problems: obesity, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure and certain cancers. Globally these medical issues have worsened in tandem with the rise of the fast-food industry. Fast food’s contribution to morbidity and mortality has been a topic of concern among medical practitioners, researchers and governmental agencies around the world for three decades. The industry has responded by posting calorie counts on their websites and touting healthier menu options, but the latter seem to have limited appeal when viewed alongside double-bacon burgers and super-sized fries, and to date these lower-calorie options have had minimal impact on their customers’ waistlines. Issues related to health and fast food are examined in Chapter Three.
The fast-food industry could not have achieved its vast global reach without massive marketing campaigns, particularly those targeting children and teenagers; this is the focus of Chapter Four. Hook your customers young, the theory goes, and you’ll be rewarded with lifelong loyalty – and profits. Temptingly packaged kids’ meals, brightly coloured toys and mesmerizing cartoon characters are central to the scheme. In-store giveaways and television advertisements on children’s programmes are further lures; developing extensive in-school and school-related promotions, and opening outlets near schools, are additional snares. Chains have also been criticized for targeting low-income minority areas, resulting in higher obesity rates among children in these neighbourhoods. Fast-food chains have negotiated tie-ins with producers of children’s movies and launched websites and mobile apps for kids and teenagers; the media assault is all but unavoidable. Some countries have taken steps to curtail advertising in schools and on television, but online marketing continues unabated. There’s no doubt that this kind of advertising works: sales of fast food to children have skyrocketed worldwide. According to a recent study, an estimated 33 per cent of American children and adolescents eat fast food every day. The more frequently kids eat fast food, the more likely they are to be overweight or obese.
It’s not just the personal health of fast-food consumers that is at risk. Chapter Five examines controversies related to the fast-food industry’s effects on the environment. For decades environmentalists have charged the industry with producing excessive unrecyclable waste. The suppliers of ingredients used in fast food also come under fire: the rise in large animal feeding operations throughout the world has polluted the air, water and soil, destroyed tropical rainforests and promoted global warming. Despite mitigation measures taken by the industry and its suppliers, the overall environmental harm it has caused, directly and indirectly, continues to mount worldwide.
Animal-rights advocates, vegetarians and vegans have decried the abuse of cattle, pigs and poultry by fast-food suppliers, controversies that are covered in Chapter Six. The use of antibiotics and hormones in food animals is another global issue. The European Union banned the use of these drugs in 2007, but they are still abused in other countries. A series of meat-related scandals has plagued the industry. These include the use of beef flavouring in McDonald’s french fries, ‘pink slime’ in American hamburgers, horsemeat in European hamburgers and ‘stinky beef’ in China. Then there are widespread outbreaks of food poisoning from undercooked minced beef or employees failing to follow proper sanitation procedures. Medical professionals have long argued that we should reduce our consumption of meat, especially red meat. Those engaged in combating world hunger have long protested that the massive quantities of grain used to feed animals for fast food could be employed much more efficiently as a primary food for feeding the world today – and the world of tomorrow, which will have two to three billion more people by 2050.
A major reason for fast food’s financial success has been the low wages paid to restaurant workers, millions of whom are employed at outlets and millions more at the farms and plants that supply the chains. Most fast-food workers receive the minimum wage and have no medical insurance, sick leave, family leave or childcare benefits. Their schedules are subject to the whims of their supervisors. Many workers are injured on the job and fall victim to crime because they work late into the night. In the U.S. alone 52 per cent of fast-food workers receive public assistance, costing American taxpayers an estimated $7 billion annually; ironically much of it is in the form of food assistance. Fast-food workers in the U.S. and elsewhere have begun to protest against their low wages and poor working conditions, but so far, only minimal changes have resulted. The workers employed by fast-food suppliers, such as meat-processing plants, suffer even more with off-the-clock work and on-the-job injuries; many have been maimed, and some killed, because of unsafe working conditions and an unrealistic production pace. These issues are examined in Chapter Seven.
The final chapter looks towards the future, examining the industry’s options and those of its customers, and asks what society as a whole can and should do to ameliorate the major problems generated by the fast-food industry.
Before turning to the controversies, though, we should examine how the fast-food industry became so influential, the topic of Chapter One. Although many fast-food chains emerged in the 1920s, today’s powerful multinational industry was launched in 1948 at one small hamburger stand in San Bernardino, California. It was called McDonald’s.