Would You Put That in Your Mouth if You Knew What Was in It?
Examining the Paradox of American Fast Food
You're on a road trip, you’ve been driving all day long, the kids are slapping each other and screaming in the back seat, and everybody’s hungry and grumpy. Are we there yet? He looked at me! She breathed on me! The kids are going crazy. You can feel yourself getting hangry, you haven’t eaten since breakfast and you don’t have many options for dinner. What are you gonna do?
If you’re like 83% of American families, there’s a good possibility that you’re going to be getting some kind of fast food. According to barbequelab.com, most Americans eat fast food 1-3 times per week. With regular fast food consumption going up 2.2% every year, I would say there’s more than a good chance that you’re going to be eating fast food sometime soon.
Fast food can be quick and convenient, but notice I didn’t say cheap. In the greater Seattle area, a Big Mac™ combo meal will run you about $12.00 Dollars. With the price of fast food as well as everything else getting higher and higher don’t we deserve to know exactly what’s in these calories of convenience? I think the answer to that question is a resounding yes.
One thing that we can say for certain about fast food is that it is chock full of salt, sugar, saturated and trans fats, as well as processed preservatives and other unnatural ingredients. This is the primary reason that fast food can be so unhealthy to consume on a regular basis. In my mind questions still remain like, where does the meat come from, how are the buns made, and the question that everybody has been asking since the beginning of fast food time, what the hell is in that sauce?
McDonalds™ states that their burgers are 100% beef with just a pinch of salt, no fillers or additives such as pink slime or TVP (textured vegetable protein). This may be true, after all, they have an entire page on their website dedicated to letting the customer know that their burgers are 100% beef and nothing else. I have no reason not to believe them, it seems like they have made attempts to improve food quality in the past decade, which could be an acknowledgment on their part that they could have been doing better. If nothing else, they tried, they made an effort.
Fast food tends to be high in calories but low on nutrition, it will fill you up, but won’t keep you going, this is the paradox of American fast food. It’s calorically abundant but nutritionally insufficient, leaving the consumer feeling hungry. Aside from being high in calories and low in nutrients, fast food can also contain chemical additives such as propylene glycol to prevent ingredients from sticking together, sodium nitrate as a preservative, and synthetic food dyes. But if we are honest we can find these chemicals in a good percentage of food in our home right now.
The truth is that we don’t have a clue about what’s in fast food or any of the foods that we buy at the store, and unless we make everything that we eat from scratch in our home with our two hands we won’t. The American palate has gotten used to pre-packaged, processed convenience foods. Just about everyone has some kind of guilty pleasure when it comes to junk food.
Our perception of what is healthy seems to have changed as well as we have been told contradictory information in regard to what is a healthy diet. We were told that juice was healthier than soda but came to realize that juice was just liquid sugar with a few more nutrients. We were told low-fat high protein, but now some push the keto concept of good quality high fat and very low carb. If we sit back and think about it, we know what’s good for us and what’s not.
Does it really matter if we know what is in fast food or not? We should know by now that fast food is not what we should build our diet around, we know it contains unhealthy additives even if the beef is 100% real. It is the junk food industry's job to keep producing tasty crap and trying to market it to us. That’s how they make a living and this is America and I can’t begrudge them for that, but we can make better decisions.
If it’s the fast food industry's job to sell us quick, easy, tasty products that are potentially harmful, then it is our job to regulate ourselves. When my son was a baby I looked at him and thought, “I am never going to feed you fast food”. Well when his first word was “fries” what the hell was I going to do, but now at age 9 he too is starting to question, “Is this good for me”? It’s our job to look after of ourselves. That responsibility falls on us, not the fast food industry. Take care of yourself.
I grew up on fast foods. After wrestling in high school, we'd go to the taco bell, and I'd drink like 7 Mountain Dews (free refills!) and eat maybe a six-pack of tacos. Those were some of the best tasting meals of my life.
I broke the habit in my 20s and never looked back. Now, I splurge maybe once a week or month (weekly if you count pizza delivery; monthly if you don't). It's a real treat to eat some low-quality garbage on the road, though (and I'm not being facetious- it is super duper fun).
So true.