by Joyce Marcel
McDonald's is under attack these days, but for all the wrong reasons.
Yes, the fast food industry sells unhealthy food. Yes, it induces
people
to overeat for profit. Yes, ranchers cut down rain forests to supply it
with cattle. Yes, that reduces the world's oxygen supply.
But the real crime of McDonald's - supposedly the ****ning symbol of
American capitalism - is that it is truly and deeply anti-American.
The fast food industry stands against the personal values that made
this
country great: rugged individualism, originality, creativity, a sense
of
adventure, non-conformity, and above all, all-around fearlessness.
In an effort to standardize products and maximize profits, the fast
food
industry has infected America with an insidious creeping fascism that
was never political in itself, but which has had deeply political
consequences.
Sit in a McDonald's for a half hour with a critical eye. The lights are
glaring; there's no relaxation or goodwill to go along with the food.
The chairs and tables are bolted to the ground. You can't draw up a
chair to another table, for example, or join a larger group. Even if
you're uncomfortably close to the table, there is nothing you can do
except accept the discomfort. It's like a prison cafeteria; shut up and
eat.
The foliage, furniture, plates, utensils and cups are plastic. You are
completely disconnected from the natural world. All the decoration is
advertisement. It's no wonder so many people wear cor****ate logos on
their clothes and think it's right to put advertisements in schools;
they're completely desensitized; life doesn't exist outside of
commercials.
Fast food restaurants create a false sense of abundance. They offer
access to a ready supply of condiments, sugar packets, straws, napkins
and coffee cream - things that cost the restaurant almost nothing and
have no real value.
They also offer a false sense of control. You appear to have many
choices - a Big Mac, a cheeseburger, a quarter pounder, a double
quarter
pounder or a "Big 'N' Tasty" - but they're all pre-packaged, frozen,
pre-cooked hamburger. If you want to be radical, have fried chicken,
fried fish pieces, even flatbread sandwiches.
But you have no control over ****tion size, or the way your meal is
cooked.
One of the ways we learn who we are is by the choices we make. Being
given free reign to make meaningless choices translates directly into
the political arena, where we are asked to make empty choices between
multi-millionaires and the almost identical political parties which own
them.
The overworked and over-managed young food zombies in fast food
restaurants are being trained to accept a lifetime of deadening and
unfulfilling jobs. They learn early that making suggestions and demands
will get you fired.
Fear plays a large part in this kind of work; I once took out a
notebook in McDonald's and the young manager looked panic-stricken. He
was probably afraid of his own managers.
In order to navigate the world intelligently, we need our language to
be
clear and well-grounded. McDonald's corrupts language. What on earth is
a "McSalad"? A "Happy Meal?" A "Mighty Kids Meal?"
Many books have been written about the frighteningly poor quality of
fast food. Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the
All-American Meal" is a revelation. A new book by Greg Critser, "Fat
Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World," reveals
how
the fast food industry discovered that Americans are so ashamed of
appearing gluttonous that they won't order two orders of fries. In
response, the industry created "supersized" ****tions and along with it,
a nation of supersized people.
Once you have accepted standardization in fast food restaurants, you
may
be unquestioning about it in other places. In my supermarket, all the
****k is now pre-packaged by a company called Smithfield.
The packaging offers a list of ingredients: ****k broth, potassium
lactate, salt, sodium phosphates, and natural flavorings; shouldn't the
only ingredient in a ****k roast be ****k?
The fast food industry is now under attack from many sides. McDonald's
stock has lost half its market value in the last two years; it has
closed more than 100 restaurants and fired its CEO. Its arch enemy,
Burger King, was on the market for two years without finding a taker;
it
recently sold at a discounted price that dropped from $2.3 billion to
$1.5 billion in just six months.
Obese people are suing fast food restaurants here, while abroad, they
are being attack for cor****ate imperialism. McDonald's, with 23,000
restaurants in about 121 countries, has been attacked in China,
Denmark,
France, Bangalore, Colombia, Russia, Argentina, Belgium, South Africa
and Great Britain.
My own private rebellion against fast food restaurants dates back 30
years, as I watched juicy fresh hamburgers and fried chicken disappear
all across the country, along with the small, quirky family-owned
restaurants that served them.
Why, I wondered, as Americans grew wealthier, did they also grow so
timid? Why did they reject the adventure of discovery, of making
choices, of exploring the world?
Why were they willing to sacrifice flavor, freshness, variety and a
strong connection to the natural world for safe, predictable, boring
and
homogenized food? I can't blame the fast food industry for being so
eager to oblige them.
I may be leaving myself open to a charge of elitism here, but no, I
don't want to become a vegetarian, and no, I don't think that wanting
restaurants to serve the kind of fresh, tasty, wholesome and
inexpensive
food that I remember from my childhood makes me a snob.
By unquestionably accepting the corruption of their food, Americans
have
come to accept the corruption of just about everything else - low pay,
out-of-reach health care, cor****ate corruption, irrational wars, tax
breaks for the rich, and McPresidents of the United States.
Today there are thousands of fast food restaurants and millions of
people who actually believe this is the way food should be. Is it such
a
great step to thinking that Americans will also accept a degraded form
of something as complex, difficult and demanding as real democracy?
Joyce Marcel is a free-lance journalist who lives in Dummerston, Vt.
and
writes about culture, politics, economics and travel.
E-Mail: joyr...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
|
