Gluttony earned sinners a dreary afterlife of “rain, eternal, cursed, cold and falling heavy” in Dante’s “Inferno.” Yet with a Big Mac and Super Size fries together pushing 1,100 calories and 59 grams of fat, fast food outlets across America probably won’t start pushing good culinary behavior anytime soon.
Even if those numbers are bad, America is asking for it. According to Eric Schlosser’s Upton Sinclair-esque exposé “Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal,” fast food sales in America topped $107 billion in 2000. That’s $384 per person, up from $133 in 1970, adjusting for inflation. If America needs a defining vice, fast food is a better candidate than ever before.
Posters and leaflets at the restaurants detail the usually sub-par and often detrimental nutritive value of everything from Grande Meals down to ketchup packets. What about their love affair with the Golden Arches and the Home of the Whopper, then, is compelling enough to eclipse Americans’ sense of long-term self-preservation?
Answers vary, but sophomore Taco Bell patron Roy Hobbs knows a few.
“I know it’s not healthy, but it tastes good,” Hobbs said. “You spend a relatively low amount of money.”
Budget constraints and convenience can make fast food especially appealing to the collegiate wallet.
“I’m just as poor as the next kid,” Lane Community College freshman Devin Whitaker said. “It’s mostly cost.”
It’s not all economics for Whitaker, though. He said he’s “a sucker for Whoppers,” and Burger King’s reintroduction of the 99-cent Whopper definitely improved his fast food experience.
Harvey & Price Co. employee Jason Harvey, who visits the Franklin Boulevard Burger King at least once a day, said it’s about getting a quick, convenient meal.
Fast food is probably most convenient for those who work in the industry and can eat on-site, and often apply employee discounts to already cheap eats. LCC freshman Michelle McCarthy, who works at the EMU Subway, is one of America’s 3.5 million fast food workers. She eats at Subway every day she works.
“I don’t really enjoy eating it on my off days,” she said.
Fast food — even at Subway, which advertises some healthier fare than many other chains — can “definitely be a vice” for some people, McCarthy said.
Junior Nathan Roholt credits culinary engineering for some of the appeal.
“It’s designed to have that kind of rich, fatty taste to it — the food equivalent of nicotine,” Roholt
explained.
McCarthy said that fast food can be “comfort food,” drawing on psychological associations forged
in childhood.
“McDonald’s was kind of like that for me: ‘You were good, so we’re going to McDonald’s,’ or ‘You weren’t good, so we’re not going to McDonald’s,’” she said.
Whatever the reasons, the dietary value — or lack thereof — doesn’t diminish fast food’s popularity. And if the numbers are any indication, its place in America’s patchwork of vices will be secure for a long time, no matter how bad it is.
“The ‘Stupid American’ philosophy is that we have to be addicted to something,” Whitaker said. “Some people like the Backstreet Boys, some people like to smoke cigarettes, some prefer the crack cocaine — other people prefer the Whopper.”