FAST FOOD, A HYMN TO CELLULITE

274 CHAPTER 25 FAST FOOD, A HYMN TO CELLULITE One taste worldwide. McDonald’s FAST FOOD MAKES NEWS. In the United States, the Center for Science in the Public Interest periodically exposes the fat and calorie content of fast foods. In 1994 it pointed out, to the consternation of many who thought popcorn was benign, that a large order of this long-time fast food (it became popular during World War II when candy was in short supply), popped movie-style in coconut oil, stuffed its consumer with two days worth of artery-clogging fat – and this before butter was added. With butter, the harm- ful fat was equal to that packed into nine McDonald’s quarter-pounders. 1 And speaking of McDonald’s, a bemused nation recently read that obese adults and youngsters alike were suing the fast food giant for making them fat, and the fast food industry was clamoring for legislation (the so-called “cheeseburger bills”) to obviate more obesity suits. But despite consider- able anti–fast-food fuming fueled by growing waistlines, fast food estab- lishments were routinely muscling their way into military bases, school cafeterias, university student unions, even into major-league hospitals in a wave of nutritional nihilism that seemed unstoppable. Abroad, however, where food phobias can take the form of outright terrorism, there were attempts to stop fast food cold. In 1995, Danish anarchists looted, wrecked, and then (adding insult to injury) burned a McDonald’s restaurant in Copenhagen – beginning a wave of “McBurnings” Fast Food, a Hymn to Cellulite 275 and “McBombings” that stretched in Europe from Belgium and England to Greece, France, and Russia, and in South America from Cali to Rio de Janeiro. 2 Why? One of the reasons is that hamburgers have come to sym- bolize U.S. modernity and effi ciency to many of the young, and a global imperialism to others, including their wary elders. Fortunately, foreign protest is not always violent and, in fact, can be mani- fested as gentle mockery. Look, for example, at the “Slow Food Movement,” an advocacy organization based in Italy that emphasizes local and regional cuisine, rejects food homogeneity, and insists on lengthy cooking times. The movement, which began in 1986 as a protest against the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in Rome, now counts over 65,000 members in close to 50 countries. The current fast food fuss obscures the reality that such foods are ancient. Fried kibbeh, sausages, olives, nuts, small pizzas, and fl at breads have been sold on the streets of Middle Eastern and North African cit- ies for a cycle of centuries; Marco Polo reported barbequed meats, deep- fried delicacies, and even roast lamb for sale in Chinese markets. Specialty shops and stalls featuring noodles, sushi, and tempura were ubiquitous in downtown Edo (now Tokyo) as early as the eighteenth century. In 1762, John Montagu was gambling at London’s Beefsteak Club and did not want to waste time sitting down to a meal; so he slapped bread slices around a hunk of meat (fortunately Montagu was the fourth Earl of Sandwich, otherwise we might be calling this fast food a Montagu). A bit later fi sh and chip shops began opening in London, representing a marriage of still other fast foods – fried fi sh, which had been sold on London streets since the seventeenth century, and chips or French fries, peddled by pushcart vendors in Paris before the middle of the nineteenth-century. 3 Needless to say, the fries proved polygamous by marrying other foods, too, in the fast food revolution that radiated out from America in the century just past. Even the name was changed as the French origin was either obscured or ignored. They became known as “American fries” in many countries – an appropriate name given the potato’s origin – and briefl y “freedom fries” in the United States to express American unhappi- ness with French objections to “regime change” in Iraq. More American, however, is the potato chip invented, according to one story, in Saratoga Springs around the middle of the nineteenth century by a mischievous chef responding to a customer’s complaint that his French fries were too thick. 4 276 A Movable Feast The hamburger, although slower to catch on, proved the most advan- tageous marriage for French fries. Its origin is blurred, with some insisting that rounded patties of meat (rissoles) such as the German Frigadelle can be traced back to the Tartars who tenderized meats by placing them under their saddles, then ate them raw – the original steak tartare. It was in the seaport of Hamburg, however, that fried Frigadelle became popular with sailors during the nineteenth century, hence the name “hamburger” – although in Ham- burg it is known as “American steak.” The fi rst printed restaurant menu in the United States – that of Delmonico’s in 1836 – featured the “hamburger steak” as one of its priciest entrees. 5 The sandwich part of the hamburger began as a fair food. One claim for its debut is the Outgamie County Fair at Seymour, Wisconsin in 1884, when a concessionaire is said to have made his hamburger steaks porta- ble for wandering fairgoers by stuffi ng them between two slices of bread. Others claim that the innovation came about in Ohio, at the Akron County Fair in 1892, and, although there are no claims of priority for the St. Louis’ 1904 centenary celebration of the Louisiana Purchase, the sandwich, sold by German immigrants, got considerable exposure there. 6 However, at that same exposition, Pure Food Law advocates and the Fair’s Pure Food exhibit were telling the public that much of the nation’s meat contained chemical preservatives (among other things). In the fol- lowing year Upton Sinclair’s best-selling book The Jungle, exposing meat- packing malpractices, was published and the public, tortured for years by an ongoing debate over the safety of the nation’s food supply, now lost its appetite for meat. Meat sales plunged and its sellers were in trouble. Their counterattack often exhibited moments of sheer brilliance. Nathan Handwerker, for example, (who founded Nathan’s Famous Hotdogs in 1916), hired young men in surgeons smocks with stethoscopes dangling from their necks to gather round his cart and eat his sandwiches throughout the day. However, across the nation hot dogs and especially ground beef were regarded as old, tainted, and defi nitely unsafe to eat. It was this image of ground beef that White Castle undertook to change in the 1920s by creating its own atmosphere of purity and cleanliness. 7 Founded in 1921 in Wichita, Kansas at the beginning of the Prohibition Era, White Castle restaurants joined other “quick service” establishments like soda fountains, lunch counters (luncheonettes), cafeterias, automats, and diners to provide cheap alternatives to the now vanished saloon “free lunches” – often occupying the same space as these recently defunct Fast Food, a Hymn to Cellulite 277 establishments. 8 Working men and professionals alike straddled stools for the noon “gobble and git” ceremony. White Castle elected to concentrate almost exclusively on hamburgers, ostentatiously made with government-inspected beef, and by mid-decade had hit on a white enameled exterior and a white porcelain-enamel interior for their duplicate buildings, which numbered 115 by 1931 – the gleaming buildings pledging cleanliness inside and out. Imitators, such as the White Tower, quickly followed with a castle-like structure – and, like the White Castle outlets, their uniform design doubled as advertising signs. 9 Still other chains, such as the Toddle House and Little Tavern, joined these early pioneers, and together they elevated the hamburger to respect- ability in the United States. But because most of these stores were located downtown in the cities, the hamburger did not yet have a mass market, and pork remained the most popular meat in America until after World War II. The turnaround came in the 1950s with the post-war development of an automobile-centered culture. The interstate highway system began spanning the nation, suburbs spilled over from cities, and trend-setting southern California pioneered in new kinds of fast food restaurants, including drive-ins. The McDonald brothers, who had entered the drive- in business in Pasadena just before World War II, began franchising what had become a self-service restaurant in 1948. Six years later the now legendary Ray Kroc (then a milk-shake mixer salesman) persuaded the brothers to let him do the franchising, and his fi rst store opened in 1956 – a store utilizing the cleanliness principles of its predecessors. In 1961, he bought out the McDonald brothers and by 1965 had some 700 outlets. 10 But although he learned from the experience of White Castle and its copycats – most importantly by using uniform struc- tures as signs (the golden arches) – he had some ideas of his own. White Castle-type stores were mostly in the inner cities, close to public transpor- tation, with a workingman clientele. Kroc located McDonald’s restaurants in the suburbs and along interstate highways – tied to the car and targeting kids – the baby boomers. An explosive expansion was accomplished by innovative franchising, but with enough attached strings that the parent corporation retained near absolute control. After 1961, franchisees attended the famous “Ham- burger University” for degrees in “Hamburgerology,” which created a sort of McDonald’s corporate culture. 11 By 1990, there were some 8,000 278 A Movable Feast McDonalds eateries (and 30,000 by 2003) whose employees (male only during the early years) were mostly women, teenagers, and immigrants, cheap labor that – although paid minimum wages with few or no benefi ts and hired and fi red as the market dictated – were not likely to organize. Their tasks were routinized by assembly-line procedures – food Fordism – that ensured the same meal at any McDonald’s restaurant. Identically-sized hamburgers were shipped frozen to the outlets; French fries were made from Russet Burbank potatoes of uniform size and aged the same length of time to guarantee uniform fl avor. 12 This did not, however, completely exclude nods to local tastes and cultures. McLobster sandwiches, for exam- ple, are available in Maine, and the mutton Marharaja Mac is served up in India, where a prohibition on beef consumption is widespread. Kentucky Fried Chicken (founded in 1954) employed similar market- ing methods, along with a host of other hamburger hustlers such as Burger King (1954) and latecomer Wendy’s (1969). All went after the kids with ruthless marketing techniques that included playgrounds, toys, cartoon character watches, contests, and sweepstakes, even ads placed in the schools and (more recently) on the Internet. Also competing for the fast food dollar were the ethnic fast food outlets. Beginning in the 1950s, Italian pizza outlets, spearheaded by Pizza Hut, Little Caesar’s, and Domino’s, radiated across the nation. They utilized the same kinds of marketing and assembly-line techniques as the hamburger chains, as did southern California–born Taco Bell, which blazed a trail in roadside Mexican food. Its tacos, burritos, chalupas, and nachos introduced the nation to the tastes of tortillas, cumin, chilli powder, and pinto beans. Abroad, American fast food found ready acceptance among the young, even becoming ingrained in youth cultures as exemplifi ed by a group of Japanese Boy Scouts who, when visiting the United States, were relieved to fi nd McDonald’s restaurants in Chicago – their anxiety needless since McDonald’s stores are everywhere and McDonald’s is an Illinois-based corporation. 13 But – the young aside - as already noted, there have been violent objections to American fast foods outside of America triggered by a variety of fears, not the least of which is that globalization in general is rolling over the world like a juggernaut. Fast food is not only the most vis- ible manifestation of economic and cultural globalization, it is synonymous with American cultural imperialism – symbolized by Coca-Cola and by the golden arches of McDonald’s that announce over 15,000 restaurants in more than 117 foreign countries. 14 Fast Food, a Hymn to Cellulite 279 In underdeveloped countries, American fast food seems a promise of modernization for many; yet others fi nd not so admirable American traits represented in fast food such as assembly-line production, the use of cheap labor juxtaposed with high-tech equipment, and a dedication to effi ciency and speed to produce quantity instead of quality. Other complaints against American fast food are lodged by environ- mental groups, and these, too, can take the form of anti-Americanism, in no small part because Americans are perceived to be careless, even wasteful of the world’s resources, and their government has appeared to be arrogantly opposed to joining any world accord on environmental matters. In fact, the now-famous “McLibel” trial in London put some of the objections to fast food on the front pages of the world press. In the late 1980s, London Greenpeace (a handful of activists with no connection to Greenpeace International) issued a pamphlet accusing McDonald’s of destroying rainforests; producing meat using hormones, pesticides, and antibiotics in cattle feed; dispensing foods often responsible for food poisoning; exploiting workers; aiming its advertising at children; and for good measure – the torture and murder of animals. 15 The latter, of course, is an animal rights issue, and McDonald’s was hardly the only purchaser of ground beef from cattle raised in rainforests. But at two and a half billion pounds annually it is the world’s largest beef purchaser and there was no question that the forests of Central America and the Amazon were being turned into cattle pastures mostly because of the fast food industry. 16 Since 1960, over a quarter of the Central Ameri- can forests have disappeared, along with a number of plant and animal species. It is also true that the methane and nitrous oxide gasses emanating from the world’s billion and a half cattle contribute to global warming. And fi nally, it is true that McDonald’s does target children in its advertis- ing – indeed the company got its start with the baby boomers and is now feeding (and feeding on) their grandchildren. Nonetheless, McDonald’s sued London Greenpeace for libel, and in the rigid jurisprudence of Great Britain (which makes those accused of libel prove that they did no such thing), won its case. But because the judge did not fi nd libelous the statements that McDonald’s was cruel to animals and exploited children in its advertising, fast food opponents could claim a moral victory. 17 In the United States similar environmental concerns have surfaced, especially over water pollution from factory farms, and there are plenty 280 A Movable Feast of animal rights activists and vegetarians who condemn meat-based diets. Moreover, many are just plain distressed by the development of a fast food culture in the nation. But perhaps the weightiest worries focus on fast food as a major cause of American “overweightness” which brings us back to the obesity epidemic, to fast food, and to the alarm bells proclaiming the United States “the ‘fattest’ country in the world.” 18 Fast food gets much of the blame. Our somewhat slimmer forebears did not have to contend with super-sized fries, nor with the challenge of all-you-can-eat buffets, “family style” restaurants or too many donuts in the morning, whoppers at noon, and pizzas at night. And the current obesity epidemic, fueled by fat, calories, and sugar – the stuff of fast foods – parallels almost exactly the growth of fast foods. It began in the 1950s with the increasing availability of hamburgers, French fries, pizzas, and fried chicken; by 1975 it was estimated that the average American was consuming three-quarters of a pound of fat and sugar each day; 19 and in 2001, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could announce that at least 21 percent of the population, and probably more, was obese and fully two-thirds of Americans were overweight. Fast food proliferation had not only kept pace with consumer plumpness but threatened to push up numbers on the bathroom scale even further by dispensing “super- colossal” portions. 20 A swelling fast food industry has also dramatically pushed up the portion of the food dollar that goes toward meals away from home. In 1970 it was 20 cents, but by 1992 this had almost doubled, climbing to 38 cents. Much of that money buys shortening, cooking oils, and high fat cheeses, along with meat – part of the reason why the Center for Science in the Public Interest found in 1991 that a McDonald’s quarter-pounder bristled with 420 calories (even without cheese), 20 grams of fat, and 8 grams of saturated fat, which totaled 40 percent of the recommended daily limit. 21 Add to that a large coke (it is hard to get anything smaller) at 310 calories and Super Size Fries (for just a few pennies more) 22 totaling 540 calories and the reasons behind the obesity epidemic seem less mysterious – particularly because by the early 1990s Americans were consuming an average of two and a half to three hamburgers each week, more than two-thirds of which were bought at fast food restaurants. In fact, on any given day fully one-quarter of the U.S. population eats at least one meal in a fast food restaurant, polishing off the super-sized portions because people will generally eat all of whatever they are given. 23 Fast Food, a Hymn to Cellulite 281 That the substantial American weight-gain should correlate well with a doubling of the per capita number of fast food restaurants between 1972 and 1997 seems obvious. 24 Our English cousins have the same sort of problem – and one that shows an even more startling correlation between fast food and weight gain. Between 1984 and 1993, the number of fast food establishments in Great Britain almost doubled and during these same years the adult obesity rate also doubled. 25 Unfortunately, the nation’s young are also fast food feeders, piling on the pounds. Indeed, as Eric Schlosser points out, the eating habits of American kids are viewed by Europeans as a good example of what to avoid with their own children – American kids who get around one-quarter of their vegetable servings in the form of French fries or potato chips. 26 According to the Third National Health and Nutrition Examina- tion Survey (1988–1991), about 5 million Americans aged 6 to 17 were already “severely overweight” – more than double the rate that prevailed in the 1960s. Fast food is not completely at fault because the young have followed the lead of their parents in becoming inactive. Television and computer games have gotten much of the blame, but children also walk less, bicycle less, and are chauffeured more, or use public transportation to get around. 27 At the same time, physical education has been substantially reduced in the schools – and this at the same schools that at the begin- ning of the 1990s were serving up lunches with 25 percent more total fat and 50 percent more saturated fat than recommended by the dietary guidelines. The National School Lunch Program, launched in the mid- 1940s to make certain that the young got enough nutriments to be well nourished, was now supplying enough of the wrong kind of nutrients to ensure poor nutrition. 28 Moreover, a growing number of single parents and working women (about 60 percent of all women were in the workforce fulltime by 1999), along with the numerous outside activities of their children, has meant that a dwindling percentage of families eat all that many meals at home. 29 In 1970, youngsters took three meals at home with at least two of these supervised by an adult. Some two decades later many of their offspring were eating some fi ve times a day on a “catch as catch can” basis with no super- vision at all. Left on their own, poor food choices are inevitable – especially when so many of these are readily and temptingly available and practically unavoidable in schools that may or may not have hamburger, or Taco Bell, or Pizza Hut franchises in lieu of cafeterias that also sell cheeseburgers, 282 A Movable Feast fries, and tater tots. Candy and sugar-laden soft drinks are no further away than a vending machine – the soft drink makers spending big dollars for exclusive “pouring rights” in fi nancially-strapped schools (and universities) whose boards are not bashful about accepting such largess. 30 The inclusion of the young in the obesity epidemic is a national tragedy and has become a national scandal. French fries are the favorite vegetable of toddlers who, like adults, take in too much fat and sugar, eat too few fruits and vegetables, and receive many more calories than they should. One incredible result is that children are developing the chronic diseases of adults. Among these are “adult onset” type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and high blood cholesterol, all of which promise soaring rates of coronary artery disease, stroke, even cancer in the future. In fact, the latest estimates from a diabetes epidemiologist at the CDC are that fully one-third of those born in the year 2003 will develop diabetes – and among black and Hispanic children that percentage will be closer to half. 31 No wonder that there has been recent sentiment for slapping a heavy tax on fast foods – as has been done with cigarettes. It seems only fair to shift some of the tax burden because right now taxpayers are paying more than half of the nation’s obesity related medical costs. The young also suffer psychological consequences of fatness – especially the generation of irrational fears (as opposed to understandably rational fears) of being overweight. Among girls and young women in particu- lar bulimia, binge eating, and purging are responses to these fears. So is anorexia nervosa – a condition of self-starvation infl icted by a distorted body image. 32 The disease seems to have increased in frequency as female fi lm stars and fashion models became impossibly thin and advertising, the media, and fashion – the dominant culture – has projected the notion that thinness connotes success. 33 Unfortunately, the illness is not only diffi cult to treat but can prove deadly, as Americans learned during the last decades of the twentieth century. 34 But fast food can be deadly, period, as the 1993 Seattle “Jack in the Box” episode made clear, when hamburgers tainted with Escherichia coli bacteria sickened seven hundred individuals (mostly children) in a four state area and killed four of them. Nor, apparently, was this the fi rst such outbreak. Although McDonald’s denied it, its restaurants in Michigan and Oregon may have caused the fi rst hamburger-chain epidemic of E. coli back in 1982. Since the Jack in the Box outbreak it has been estimated that approximately one-half million individuals (again mostly children) have Fast Food, a Hymn to Cellulite 283 fallen victim to the disease. Thousands went to the hospital and hundreds have died. 35 Unhappily, although the disease seems to be on the increase, it cannot be easily eradicated given current livestock feeding practices, which involve the production of cattle feed using ground up dead animals, poul- try manure, even cattle manure, and blood. This feeding practice is not dissimilar from that which has been blamed for mad-cow disease (Bovine Spongiiform Encephalopathy) in Great Britain, Canada, and (apparently) in the United States, and it is one that creates ideal conditions for E. coli proliferation. 36 So the only real defense is to make certain that beef is cooked to at least 155 degrees in the restaurants. However, at the risk of repetition, this defense is manned by unskilled, underpaid, and generally unmotivated workers. 37 Yet, cheap labor without benefi ts and job security is what makes fast food cheap and profi ts high, with the industry benefi ting from the recent phenomenon of a dwindling permanent workforce and a growing reser- voir of part-time and temporary workers. Nor is this confi ned to America. Worker exploitation was another of the accusations leveled at McDonald’s in London’s McLibel trial. In Canada, Indonesia, and throughout Europe McDonald’s has regularly (and fi ercely) battled attempts to unionize its employees. Indeed, because McDonald’s is known internationally as impla- cably anti-union, it is somewhat ironic that it spearheaded the advance of American capitalism into Russia, Yugoslavia, and Hungary – all parts of the former Soviet Union that had denounced the company as an “exploiter of child labor.” 38 Recent events, however, have helped to soften McDonald’s hard- nosed reputation as the company has fallen on some hard times. At the end of 2002, fast food opponents may have taken some satisfaction in McDonald’s announcement that its forty-seven year streak of post- ing quarterly gains had come to an end. The reasons were several. A two-year price war with Burger King had not produced the hoped-for results. The U.S. fast food market was crowded, and sales abroad had been hurt by concerns over mad-cow disease. A class action consumer lawsuit that blamed McDonalds for the onset of chronic adult diseases in kids had been dismissed, but obesity epidemic worries had not been dismissed by the public and, as a consequence, the company announced that it would be closing under- performing restaurants and pulling out of several countries. [...]... McDonald’s had promised no more super-sized fries and soft drinks and also announced a policy of lowering the trans-fatty acids and saturated fats in its cooking oils Burger King recently trotted out a BK Veggie Burger, and salads are once more featured at fast food restaurants For those counting “carbs,” burgers can wrapped in lettuce instead of buns ConAgra and Aramark have developed low fat and low... died of a heart attack, and only sixteen days later his replacement underwent surgery for cancer – this just as the McDonalds-bashing documentary Super Size Me came out The “star” of that film, Morgan Spurlock, ate solely at McDonalds three times a day for a month and he supersized portions whenever an employee suggested it The trio of doctors that accompanied him saw his mental and physical health deteriorate,... low fat and low sodium pizzas for the schools, others are sending baked French fries and yogurt drinks to that same market The McLean burger of a few years ago, which was 91 percent fat free because it incorporated seaweed, was a spectacular failure, but maybe, just maybe, fast food reform will be a silver lining within the black cloud of the obesity epidemic 284 A Movable Feast ... Kraft foods, for example, sued because of the trans-fat sludge in its Oreo cookies, has now publicly committed to fighting obesity McDonald’s has insisted since 2001 that its beef suppliers abide by FDA feed guidelines, and that the company regularly inspects them to make certain they comply Burger King and Wendy’s have followed suit Even before the Super Size Me documentary was made public, McDonald’s... deteriorate, and his weight increase at an alarming rate When he began to develop some potentially serious liver and kidney problems, they advised him, unsuccessfully, to quit Confronted with this kind of publicity, slumping sales, and the prospect of more obesity suits, not to mention more government regulation, the fast food industry is on the defensive – with part of that defense a posture of corporate . nods to local tastes and cultures. McLobster sandwiches, for exam- ple, are available in Maine, and the mutton Marharaja Mac is served up in India, where a. burritos, chalupas, and nachos introduced the nation to the tastes of tortillas, cumin, chilli powder, and pinto beans. Abroad, American fast food found ready