How Fast Food Affects Society
By: Katie Donohue
October 3rd, 2011
Sociology
Fast Food vs. Society
Whenever you go out in your car in today’s world, it
is nearly impossible to go somewhere without passing a fast food
restaurant. Fast food is always the answer for people that are in a
hurry, or for people that don’t feel like cooking. Being just a drive
thru window away, people from three to seventy years old are enjoying
fast food with every opportunity they get. With fast food being
conveniently rapid and inexpensive for most, it is beginning to become
the new menu for all of society. Fast food is affecting our society in
many ways, some more obvious than others. Eating fast food has been
affecting the health, the behavior, and the economy of Americans for
years now.
Although fast food tastes good, it is not
nutritionally balanced, making it bad for people in the long run if
eaten on a regular basis. Fast food is loaded with calories, saturated
fats, and sodium. (http://www.healthfood-guide.com/fastfood.aspx) All three of these things are
essential to staying healthy, but take in too many and you become
heavy-weighted with high cholesterol in no time. If I were to go to
McDonalds I would order a cheeseburger, a medium fry, a small coke, and
cinnamon melts for a tasty desert. As delicious as it is, if I ate this
meal every day, I would be on the road to a heart attack in a matter of
months. McDonalds claims that they have used the same cheeseburger
recipe since 1955: 100% beef and a pinch of salt and pepper. As if the
burger itself wasn’t unhealthy enough, they top it with a slice of
cheese, one pickle, onions, ketchup, and mustard. One regular
cheeseburger is 300 calories alone. The medium “world famous fries”
total up to 380 calories. A small coke: 150 calories. A tiny box of
cinnamon melts: 460 calories. (http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/food.html) One meal of three a
day at McDonalds for me ends up being 1,290 calories total; that is 43%
of my daily necessary calorie intake. Recent scientific studies have
shown that food high in calories, sugars, fats, and salt keeps you
craving more and more. Such foods reconfigure the hormones in your body
making you want it more often. The more often you consume fast food,
the harder it is for you to get away from it. (http://www.healthfood-guide.com/fastfood.aspx) The
effects of fast food go far beyond health, making it that much worse
for people to consume.
Along with the problems fast food has on your heath,
it is also affecting your behavior on how Americans live their every
day life. One way that fast food affects your behavior is that is makes
us feel rushed, even when we don’t need to be. The main idea of fast
food is to satisfy your self as quickly as possible. With this
unconscious time crunch, people are unaware that they are making
themselves eat in a hurried manner. Weather you eat fast food or not,
you are putting yourself under the impression that you need to speed
up. In three recent studies performed in 2010, the sight of fast food
logos made people speed up and make rapid decisions. Even when people
took one glance at a flashcard with the McDonalds logo on it, it
unconsciously made people read faster! The theory behind these studies
is that when society has the slightest exposure to images that relate
to fast food, it reminds their brain that they need to save time and
hurry up, making them act upon that urge. Therefore you eat quickly
because you feel you’re in a
rush.(http://www.opposingviews.com/i/research-seeing-fast-food-signs-can-change-your-behavior)
But where are
you looking to go so quickly? The correct answer should be to the gym
or to work out. I don’t know about you, but after I eat at a fast food
chain, my first instinct afterward is to go lie down. All of the
calories and fats in fast food make you feel so full that you don’t
want to do anything after eating them. If you eat a Dunkin’ Donuts
bagel, or donut, you wouldn’t be as willing to partake in physical
activity, compared to if you didn’t eat them. At Dunkin’ Donuts a plain
bagel and a chocolate frosted donut with sprinkles it would total up to
590 calories.
(http://www.dunkindonuts.com/content/dunkindonuts/en/menu.html) (With
cream cheese or butter
on the bagel the calories would be even greater) To burn all of these
calories off, I would need to jog for sixty minutes at a rate of six
miles per hour. (The rate and time jogging depend on how much I weigh
and how many calories I ate) Therefore, if I do not work out at all,
590 calories would be added to my daily calorie intake, making me gain
weight as time went on.
(http://www.livestrong.com/article/478733-fast-food-vs-exercising/)
Dunkin’ Donuts gets their Arabica coffee
beans from Central and South America. They claim that they clean and
disinfect their beans, but who really knows to what extent of
disinfecting is actually done? Coffee bean crops are sprayed with
pesticides and chemicals of which have been outlawed in the United
States. Dunkin’ Donuts fills their coffee with dangerous amounts of
chemical residues. People are unaware of what goes into their coffee
behind the scenes, but they also contribute to their own poison in a
cup. Not many people drink their coffee black anymore; adding cream and
artificial sweeteners to the mix makes your coffee the venom that
America runs on.
(http://naturalbias.com/america-runs-on-dunkin-do-you/) Gaining weight
can also change the way that
you feel, not only physically, but mentally as well. For example, in
the movie “Super Size Me” Morgan Spurlock ate McDonald’s for all three
of his meals for thirty days. He can have nothing, not even water,
unless it is from McDonalds. By the middle of the month while being on
his fast food diet, he claims to have been suffering from major
headaches, and that he has never been so depressed in his life. In
addition, his energy level was extremely low. The saying “you are what
you eat” truly plays a huge roll in our lives. Whether you are
extremely tired after a huge meal at McDonalds, or ready to take on
your day after a breakfast fruit smoothie, the way that you eat affects
the way that you act. The effects that fast food has on your behavior
can vary depending on how much fast food you eat, but how much fast
food does society eat as a whole?
As we are all aware, our economy has been falling
for years now. Although this is happening, majority of the people have
all been going about their lives as if nothing is happening. We act as
if the terrible economy cannot affect us, when in reality we know it
can. So no matter the circumstance, society is still wasting their
money on fast food. A number of studies have found that a healthier
diet choice is much more costly than a diet that isn’t as nutritional
to you. Americans will spend around one hundred and ten billion dollars
more on fast food this year, than they will on books, clothes, and
other items. (http://www.ncpad.org/nutrition/fact_sheet.php?sheet=670) In my opinion I feel this is a huge waste of
money, and my boss agrees with me. When I sat down to interview my boss
on October 7th, 2011 we had a long discussion on how she feels that
people waste their money on fast food. From working at Dunkin’ Donuts,
my boss and I both feel that the amount that is spent there in a day is
out of control. When working a seven-hour shift on a Saturday and
Sunday the lines at both the drive-thru and the front counter do not
stop. There is not one second that the line isn’t out the door. When my
boss sits down to do the inventory from the day before, she often finds
that people spend between 3,000 to 4,000 dollars a day in credit card
sales alone! There is about 2,000 to 3,000 dollars spent in cash per
day as well. That totals to about 6,000 dollars a day at the least at
Dunkin’ Donuts, and that’s just one small town! If my little town is
capable of ranking up 6,000 dollars worth of sales at Dunkin’ Donuts in
one day, imagine what the whole world could do? My boss and I both
agree that the amount that people spend on fast food is absolutely
ridiculous. She always tells me to save the money I make on my
paychecks so I have money there when I need it. Spending the money you
make on fast food is a waste. Although it is cheap, you are slowly
digging yourself into a deeper hole the more and more you purchase it.
If you use your credit card to purchase your fast food, you are losing
your money even faster because it’s “invisible”! The more and more fast
food you buy, the more and more addicting it gets. Therefore when you
become addicted you buy it more often, and you waste your money more
than you need to. The economy cannot handle the amount of money that
society is wasting, and in reality if you live in America, your wallet
can’t handle it either.
Next time you go for a drive, or even for a walk and
you pass a fast food restaurant, think to yourself about all the
terrible things that it can do to you. No matter if you are in a hurry,
or don’t feel like cooking, your stomach can wait until later. When
given the opportunity always chose a healthy home cooked meal over fast
food. Not only will your stomach thank you for satisfying your hunger,
you will also soon realize that you made the right decision. Eating
fast food has been affecting your health, your behavior, and your
economy for years now weather you knew it or not. Don’t let fast food
become your go to menu when you need to make time for a quick meal.
Grab a quick healthy snack and eat it on the go. Fast food is affecting
society, and not in a good way. Make a change to your diet and you will
soon see it rubbing off on others! Let’s take over fast food chains,
don’t let fast food take over you.
Bibliography
http://www.healthfood-guide.com/fastfood.aspx
http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/food.html
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/research-seeing-fast-food-signs-can-change-your-behavior
http://www.dunkindonuts.com/content/dunkindonuts/en/menu.html
http://www.livestrong.com/article/478733-fast-food-vs-exercising/
http://naturalbias.com/america-runs-on-dunkin-do-you/
http://www.ncpad.org/nutrition/fact_sheet.php?sheet=670
Primary Source
Interview with my boss (Dunkin’ Donuts Income)
Orginizations Dealing With Fast Food Problems
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/seniorshealth.html
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/womenshealth.html
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