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I am a bit behind in my reading, but the ‘food issue’ of The New Yorker Magazine, November 2, 2015 issue
has this great article on fast food, and is still available online. I’m sure much of the info will not be ‘new news’
to those of us who visit this site regularly but it is a great / informative read; a revealing look behind the scenes
of the fast food industry.
If you have the time, it is worth the time to read. It is that good. And I rarely recommend reading material.
Just to whet your appetite (no pun intended) . . . and trust me I have no axe to grind on this subject but here
is just a taste (again, not pun intended) . . .
Freedom from Fries . . . Can fast food be good for you?
By Michael Specter
Can Fast Food Get Healthy? - The New Yorker
“Fast food has become a synonym for bad food. Yet, the industrial farm system that has made it possible
for McDonald's and many other chains to sell cheeseburgers for a dollar has also enabled Americans to
spend a smaller percentage of their income on food than people do in any other country. At the start of
the First World War, food purchases consumed half the average paycheck; today the figure is six per cent.
According to federal statistics, an American in 1919 had to work for two and a half hours to earn enough
money to buy a chicken; these days it would take less than fifteen minutes of labor.”
“For years, public health officials and food scientists have noted that, as long as gallons of sugary soda
and vats of French fries are cheap and readily available, poor eating habits will be hard to change.” . . .
"In 2012, companies produced enough regular soda to supply every single person in America, regardless
of age, with nearly thirty gallons"
“People throughout the world are getting fatter. The World Health Organization refers to the epidemic
as "globesity."Yet nowhere is the trend as pronounced as it is in this country. In the United States,
per-capita calorie consumption rose from 2,109 calories a day in 1970 to 2,568 calories in 2010,
according to the Department of Agriculture. That's equivalent to adding two slices of Domino's pizza
to the daily diet of every American. The average man today weighs a hundred and ninety-five pounds,
thirty pounds more than in 1960. Seventy-eight million people were considered obese in 2012, twice
the rate of forty years ago.”
“"The data is so overwhelming the field has to accept it," Nora Volkow, the director of the National
Institute on Drug Abuse, said recently. "We are finding tremendous overlap between drugs in the
brain and food in the brain." . . . "The human body has evolved a sophisticated regulatory system to
protect against weight loss but not against weight gain," Kelly Brownell, dean of the Sanford School
of Public Policy at Duke University and an expert on obesity, told me recently. "Our bodies perceive
a diet as a form of starvation, and your metabolism will slow accordingly." "That made sense in the
Pleistocene Era, when it was essential to find, consume, and store calories for as long as possible,
but it does not make sense in our essentially sedentary society.”
"The single most important problem with food in this country is that it is vastly overproduced, and the
single most important nutritional problem is obesity," Nestle said. "These issues are clearly related,
and cheap food is a factor in both. Food companies compete fiercely for our food dollars and do
everything they can to induce us to eat their products and to eat more food, regardless of the
effects on waistlines and health."
has this great article on fast food, and is still available online. I’m sure much of the info will not be ‘new news’
to those of us who visit this site regularly but it is a great / informative read; a revealing look behind the scenes
of the fast food industry.
If you have the time, it is worth the time to read. It is that good. And I rarely recommend reading material.
Just to whet your appetite (no pun intended) . . . and trust me I have no axe to grind on this subject but here
is just a taste (again, not pun intended) . . .
Freedom from Fries . . . Can fast food be good for you?
By Michael Specter
Can Fast Food Get Healthy? - The New Yorker
“Fast food has become a synonym for bad food. Yet, the industrial farm system that has made it possible
for McDonald's and many other chains to sell cheeseburgers for a dollar has also enabled Americans to
spend a smaller percentage of their income on food than people do in any other country. At the start of
the First World War, food purchases consumed half the average paycheck; today the figure is six per cent.
According to federal statistics, an American in 1919 had to work for two and a half hours to earn enough
money to buy a chicken; these days it would take less than fifteen minutes of labor.”
“For years, public health officials and food scientists have noted that, as long as gallons of sugary soda
and vats of French fries are cheap and readily available, poor eating habits will be hard to change.” . . .
"In 2012, companies produced enough regular soda to supply every single person in America, regardless
of age, with nearly thirty gallons"
“People throughout the world are getting fatter. The World Health Organization refers to the epidemic
as "globesity."Yet nowhere is the trend as pronounced as it is in this country. In the United States,
per-capita calorie consumption rose from 2,109 calories a day in 1970 to 2,568 calories in 2010,
according to the Department of Agriculture. That's equivalent to adding two slices of Domino's pizza
to the daily diet of every American. The average man today weighs a hundred and ninety-five pounds,
thirty pounds more than in 1960. Seventy-eight million people were considered obese in 2012, twice
the rate of forty years ago.”
“"The data is so overwhelming the field has to accept it," Nora Volkow, the director of the National
Institute on Drug Abuse, said recently. "We are finding tremendous overlap between drugs in the
brain and food in the brain." . . . "The human body has evolved a sophisticated regulatory system to
protect against weight loss but not against weight gain," Kelly Brownell, dean of the Sanford School
of Public Policy at Duke University and an expert on obesity, told me recently. "Our bodies perceive
a diet as a form of starvation, and your metabolism will slow accordingly." "That made sense in the
Pleistocene Era, when it was essential to find, consume, and store calories for as long as possible,
but it does not make sense in our essentially sedentary society.”
"The single most important problem with food in this country is that it is vastly overproduced, and the
single most important nutritional problem is obesity," Nestle said. "These issues are clearly related,
and cheap food is a factor in both. Food companies compete fiercely for our food dollars and do
everything they can to induce us to eat their products and to eat more food, regardless of the
effects on waistlines and health."
