We have all been there, running around in our busy lives, whether it be to work or a meeting, catching a train or a plane or running late to class. You get pressed for time and on your way to your destination you pull into a fast food restaurant and grab something quickly from the drive through or pick up window. Fast food is quickly and it can taste pretty good if you like burgers, chicken fingers, fries or a sandwich. Fast food restaurants are also so prevalent in the United States that they are easily accessible and readily available. They are located on every street corner in the city, in the suburbs and just about every college campus. Unfortunately, fast food chains have staggering consequences on their customers, employees and on the food industry as a whole. Effects of Fast Food
Fast food restaurants did not become popular until the 1950s but since their creation they have completely altered the food and restaurant industry as a whole. Fast food is unique because each popular restaurant chain has thousands of locations across the country. Wendy’s, Burger King, Chick-Fil-A, KFC, Taco Bell and of course McDonalds are the big players in terms of popular fast food chains.
What makes fast food so different from other restaurants is that fast food chains aim to make all of their products taste exactly the same no matter which location you order from. For example, whether you order a McDonalds Big Mac at a location in San Francisco, California or in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, they will look, taste, and be prepared exactly the same way. These restaurants aim for consistency in their products across the board, leading to a factory-like production of food.
Fast food has greatly contributed to the issues with factory farming that I have focused on in my blog posts. Fast food chains demand such large quantities of meat, and with such rapid turn over that factory farming only grew as a result. Prior to fast food restaurants, factory farming was not as much of an issue because the demand was much lesser. For example, KFC is responsible for the death 23 million chickens each year. A total of 9 billion chickens are killed each year for meat and 23 million of those go to one fast food chain alone. KFC
Additionally, the United States is currently facing an issue with obesity. Fast food restaurants have greatly contributed to the issue of obesity the United States has. Fast food is horrible for the health of people who consume it on a regular basis. Fast food it not only extremely high in calories, but it is high in sodium and sugar which has negative health effects. In 2010, policies were passed that required fast food restaurants to put calorie counts on their menus so costumers were aware of the calories in what they were eating. This is may have made some difference except that a big mac, for example has about 600 calories. This is not an outrageous amount, but it is not the calories in this burger that make it so unhealthy. A big mac has 29 grams of fat, 46 grams of carbs and a staggering 960 grams of sodium. To put this in perspective, the average person should only be eating 2,000 grams of sodium in an entire day. This means that a big mac takes up half that count without counting the fries or drink that many people will have with this meal. 
Overall, the fast food industry has created many problems for people including an increase in obesity and a higher demand in factory farmed products.
2 thoughts on “Fast Food Frenzy”
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Wow! Fast food has always made me a little uncomfortable. After growing up on a farm and working at Dairy Queen, I was pretty perturbed by the idea of fast food. After reading this, I am even more so. The problem with fast food is that sometimes it is too convenient to pass up. I know that after many sports games, the school busses filled with students would stop at a fast food restaurant for similar reasons. Another reason is that fast food is incredibly cheap making it hard to pass up. I hope that one day the push for healthier eating can make alternatives to fast food easier and affordable.
I think the links between the popularity of fast food and the rise in obesity and factory farming is undeniable and only makes sense. The effort to make fast food quickly and uniformly across the country (and, in some cases, across the world) has led to huge amounts of unhealthy ingredients being put in the food; in no one’s mind is 960 grams of sodium in one Big Mac healthy. Though restaurant chains like KFC and McDonald’s use unbelievable amounts of meat and poultry each year, they use so many additives that these foods are virtually unrecognizable when compared to more natural forms of them. While fast food is great when it is healthy and does not promote the maltreatment of animals, it has never really been this way. I would like to see fast food chains voluntarily reform themselves to keep the health of customers and the treatment of animals in mind. However, this seems unlikely, as it would affect their bottom lines, so perhaps the government would have to step in. I know many don’t want the government to tell them what to eat and what to put in their food, but in this case, intervention would be trying to prevent the worsening of an already-terrible public health crisis.