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Fast Food and its influence on the world Thad Lewis In 1919 a small A&W was opened for business.1 This restaurant was known back then as a quick service restaurant and would later be known as Fast Food. Such a seemingly small event would ripple across the globe with health differences and customs of how our food is packaged and processed. Fast Food would soon become a customary feature in most countries around the world, no matter the economic condition of that nation. Fast Food has reinvented the way the modern world can access food and what we think of eating in general. Sadly all this exponential growth has a fair amount of downsides that span across the world. In the decades following the creation of Fast Food, the world was quickly swamped with this American style of eating. It significantly sped up the production of food and made it incredibly more accessible to the public. The down side to this was that the quality and health benefits of the food plummeted. The word “obesity” spread rapidly shortly after the spreading of Fast Food. Obesity is not just a problem in the United States by any means, this has to spread into other nations very quickly. Another major downfall of this rapidly growing industry is the downgraded food safety and quality. The way we process our food is almost considered normal in todays society. around the world, the way we process and package our food has been changed negatively for the consumer, but positively for the producer. While profit margins grow, food safety and quality keep declining. To fully understand how this all started, we need to look at the first few decades of fast food’s existence and see why it was such a success. The goal of the first Fast Food restaurant chain (White Castle) was to change the publics view of hamburgers. Until White Castle came into the market, hamburgers were generally known from fairs, lunch carts, and circuses. They were known from those events to be really low quality. White Castle glorified the hamburger and helped make it quite the popular consumer product.2 After the success of the hamburger sales from White Castle, other players like In­n­out who introduced the drive­through 3 and McDonalds came into the space. McDonalds brought a very key aspect to the fast food industry. In 1948 the McDonalds brothers introduced their “speedy service system” which was the most efficient for both consumer and producer, and most importantly was easily franchisable on a large scale.4 1
"Fast Food Restaurant." Wikipedia. Accessed April 22, 2015. Wilson, Tracy. HowStuffWorks. Accessed April 22, 2015. 3
"Fast Food History." Fast Food History. Accessed April 24, 2015. 4
"Fast Food Nation." Fast Food Nation. Accessed April 24, 2015. 2
After this, the whole United States became overcome with fast food. Players like Burger King, Wendy’s, Subway and many others joined the market.5 After all these companies swamped the united states, they started to take the globe. Fig. 1 The spread of Fast Food around the country started to deteriorate the nations health. Up until recently, there wasn’t much question about fast food which allowed fast food to grow to the point where it is nothing less than a national custom. This recent research exposed the negatives of eating fast food. By that point it was far too late. Fast food had became integrated fully with our country. Studies about things like the excess trans fats in fast food. Researchers exposed that eating too much fast food gives high cholesterol, weight gain, high blood pressure, higher chances of acne, more chances for asthma, higher chance of depression, poor dental health, and even interfering with the bodies use of insulin.6 By 1999 in the U.S., one in every five people is legally obese(footnote 3). This created a lot of controversy and has explained for the massive health market that has emerged in just the last ten years. A good example of one of the controversies caused from fast food was when fast food restaurants were starting to be found in hospitals. An article released in 1987 shows physicians being outraged by the restaurants showing up in their hospital. "Some Physicians are outraged by the trend, saying hospitals should not condone foods of questionable nutritional value. But hospital administrators say the restaurants are economically necessary, adding tens of thousands of dollars each year to the hospitals 5
Cosman, Ben. "A Brief History of Fast Food's Greatest Innovations." Accessed April 24, 2015. Krucik, George. "13 Effects of Fast Food on the Body." Healthline. October 22, 2014. Accessed April 24, 2015. 6
revenue."7 This is a perfect showing of how businesses, even though they know it isn’t beneficial to people, will put what sells to the public. Which explains why fast food is still very prevalent even with all this negative press around it. To think that the United States is the only country affected is very wrong because there are many countries that are catching up to us. From bordering nations like Mexico to far away nations like Qatar, obesity is on the rise almost exponentially. {As a result of things like North American Free Trade Agreement, places like Mexico’s imports of high­fructose corn syrup from the United States are up one thousand two hundred percent from 1996 to 2012. Mexico is now the highest consumer of soda in the world and the obesity rate is soaring due to things like this. Another perfect example of U.S. influence on a nations health with fast­food is Qatar. Things like fast­food have replaced home cooked meals helping result in forty five percent of Qatari adults being obese and forty percent of school children are obese as well. “The newly released United Nations report on global nutrition does not make for very appetizing reading: Amid an already floundering global economy, the reality of a fattening planet is dragging down world productivity rates while increasing health insurance costs to the tune of $3.5 trillion dollars per year ­ or 5 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP).”}8 The whole world is being affected by our fast food business. The rising obesity around the world is a direct correlation with the amount of international restaurants for these chains. For example McDonalds now has eighteen thousand seven hundred and ten international restaurants. 9 There is almost no argument for what the U.S. fast food companies have done to the world regarding health. Fig. 2 ​
Lisa Belkin, "Fast Food in Hospitals Spur Debate on Health." ​
The New York Times, ​
December 26, 1987, 8. "Globesity': US Junk Food Industry Tips Global Scales." ­ RT USA. September 8, 2013. Accessed April 24, 2015. 9
“Top 10 Global Fast­Food Chains.” Forbes. Accessed April 24, 2015. 7
8
Another way the world has been affected by fast food is the food safety and processing of our edible goods. As far as food safety is concerned, holding these fast food chains to a high standard of cleanliness and quality has become very hard to do for food inspectors. {Dateline NBC did a nationwide story and survey on one hundred restaurants for every company in the top ten fast food chains. One thousand restaurants in all. They found out that there is very little inspectors can do other than giving things called critical violations to these companies. Critical violations means that it is a violation that can contaminate the food or make customers sick. in total for the thousand restaurants monitored, there was an overwhelming one thousand seven hundred and fifty five critical violations. None of the restaurants were shut down or seriously finned.}10 Food safety has obviously declined with the new customs of fast food in our world. A shocking quote from the book ​
Chew on this: Everything you Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food​
stated “The government can’t even fine companies that knowingly sell bad meat…. the USDA also stated “we cannot fine companies that violate food­safety standards.” The ability of meat packing companies to avoid strict food­safety standards has been made possible by their close ties to members of congress.”11 This is a clear representation of why these massive companies are able to get away with so many critical violations in the NBC study. Fig.3 10
"Dirty Dining?" Msnbc.com. December 12, 2003. Accessed April 24, 2015. Schlosser, Eric, and Charles Wilson. Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know about Fast Food. Boston [Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 11
In conclusion, it is very obvious and clear what fast food has done to our nation and our world. The health standards for the areas that fast food is prevalent has absolutely plummeted. Also the world has changed its regulation power of food safety because these companies are getting away with despicable amounts of low quality and poor handling of the food they serve. This U.S. born trend could be almost considered an epidemic on how the world views and trusts its food. I think all the evidence that has been provided is quite clear on how the fast food industry is changing the world. There is not much in common among most countries around the world but there is one thing you could safely assume about almost every county on this planet, and that is the fact that fast food has probably not only exploited that nation, but has started to change that countries health and food safety standards. Bibliography: Primary Sources: Lisa Belkin, "Fast Food in Hospitals Spur Debate on Health." ​
The New York Times, December 26, 1987, 8. Douglas McGill, "Top Credit Card Companies Explore Fast­Food Tie­Ins." ​
New York Times​
, May 1, 1989, D1. Secondary Sources: Wilson, Tracy. HowStuffWorks. Accessed April 22, 2015. Cosman, Ben. "A Brief History of Fast Food's Greatest Innovations." Accessed April 24, 2015. Krucik, George. "13 Effects of Fast Food on the Body." Healthline. October 22, 2014. Accessed April 24, 2015. "Globesity': US Junk Food Industry Tips Global Scales." ­ RT USA. September 8, 2013. Accessed April 24, 2015. Dirty Dining?" Msnbc.com. December 12, 2003. Accessed April 24, 2015. Schlosser, Eric, and Charles Wilson. Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know about Fast Food. Boston [Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Top 10 Global Fast­Food Chains.” Forbes. Accessed April 24, 2015. "Fast Food History." Fast Food History. Accessed April 9, 2015. "Fast Food Nation." SUNY Oswego. Accessed April 9, 2015. Mattke, Soeren, and Hangsheng Liu. ​
The Role of Health Care Transformation for the Chinese Dream: Powering Economic Growth, Promoting a Harmonious Society​
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40 Years of Evolution: Darwin's Finches on Daphne Major Island​
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Harvesting the Biosphere What We Have Taken from Nature​
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: 168­83. Tanne, J. H. "Lies with Everything." ​
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, 2007, 958. Binkley, James K. "Calorie and Gram Differences between Meals at Fast Food and Table Service Restaurants." ​
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: 750­63. Pictures have links attached.