Do you know the feeling of eating in a fast food restaurant, the smell of greasy fries in your nose and being surrounded by exhausted employees preparing burgers and serving customers? You probably immediately had an association and a memory when you read that it is about fast food. There is probably almost nobody who has never eaten at a fast food chain. But what is an exception for many people is everyday life for others. Especially in the USA there are more and more food deserts, places where it is hard to get any fresh food. Food deserts rarely offer fruits and vegetables, fresh juices or smoothies, no fancy salads with chickpeas and avocado.

Adrian J. Rivera, a Yale graduate who now lives in New York, in his New York Times article provides many examples about his experience with processed and fresh foods. He grew up in an area that he describes as a food desert. He explains, "The Tex-Mex dishes characteristic of the Rio Grande Valley, where I grew up, and these processed foods, distinctly American, constituted my diet through the end of high school“ (1). But why are their areas in the USA where only processed and unhealthy food is offered? Is it really the high prices of fresh food that people from these areas can’t afford, or is it more the taste and preservatives in processed foods that are addictive that makes people eat the same unhealthy foods day in and day out as Rivera reports: “Almost all the people I knew ate this way, didn’t mind eating this way, enjoyed eating this way, even though they knew it was unhealthy”(1). Supply follow demand. If people would buy fresh fruits and vegetables, there would be supermarkets offering them. But fresh food often has a higher price and people living in food deserts mostly have a low household income. So, the advantage of fast food is not only the quick and easy availability, it is also the low price.    ....

You can see that people who come from a wealthy home often have a different relationship with food than people like Rivera.These children grow up with freshly prepared and high-quality meals and not with cheap fast food and are therefore not accustomed to the taste of it. But how could wealthy parents keep their kids from going to McDonald's, Chick Filet or KFC? Are these kids more enlightened and not as likely to fall for the fast food industry's colorful billboards? Or are there no fast food chains in the areas where these children grew up and they simply never had the opportunity to eat in one? (are there fast food deserts?)

Food has a high social value. Going out to eat with friends is a popular leisure activity. And there you can see social differences very quickly. It is understandable that someone who can afford to eat in a five-star restaurant with personal friendly service prefers to go there rather than to some fast food chain where you are just a number that has to be worked off. When Rivera went to Yale University he mixed with people who grew up in wealthy homes. He observes about this time: “I understood then I was an alien, that processed food was the food of the other America - or what most Americans just call America. I already knew that I wasn’t part of the 1 percent, but this moment underscored that where I came from and what I liked were more foreign than I could have imagined” (2). As he reflects, Rivera has never eaten this way until he came to Yale. Presumably, no one in his former environment did either. But what do people who are part of the 1 percent do differently? Can you really say that these people are better informed about the disadvantages of an unhealthy diet? Perhaps they are not necessarily better informed but have a natural understanding of it because they were accustomed to healthy, fresh and quality food in their childhood and the taste of processed food is foreign to them….. There seems to be a lack of knowledge about healthy food and those who know seem to be so accustomed to the taste of processed food that the desire for it is greater than reason. 

But is the time savings, low price and high availability really worth the health risks of relying on fast food? What Rivera unfortunately did not mention in his article is the economic factor of our eating behavior. Despite all preferences and tastes we should keep in mind that with almost all our food that is available to us also comes suffering, suffering for which no one really wants to take responsibility. Animals which are cruelly kept and finally killed in factory farming, as well as farmers and landowners who are exploited and paid far too little and people from the western world who carelessly waste these raw materials (break up or add to create a sentence). People’s ignorance about the brutality of our food suppy raises the question of why so many people still support fast food, even though its consumption does not meet ethical and moral standards.  Why do some people put their own needs above those of others? Or perhaps they don't even know how food is produced, the differences in production, and the disadvantages of unhealthy foods? It is probably a mixture of these questions and an additional lack of interest in the subject for most people.

But why is fast food still so highly advertised despite all the disadvantages? Wouldn’t it be the job of the government, the president and influential people to educate more about food?  But instead, so-called influencers are promoting candy and fast food chains, and even Donald Trump preferred the taste of McDonalds instead of the freshly cooked food of his private chef. Is serving McDonald’s in the White House a scandal, or is it as Donald Trump himself said “Great American Food” (Rivera 2) and is part of the American food culture. Shouldn’t it be the task of the government to educate people more about the disadvantages of fast food for the individual as well as for the environment? Or does the responsibility to pay attention to sustainability lie with the consumer? It's understandable that making the switch from fast food to fresh and healthy food in a hectic workday isn't easy, and the relapse to convenience foods is usually gradual or, as in Rivera's case, even deliberate. Thus he writes: “I wanted to recapture that magic, the excitement at the prospect of satisfaction and pleasure. So I ate McDonald's and Little Caesars and Hamburger Helper, trying to achieve what the food writer M.F.K Fisher describes as that “warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied” (2). Why, despite his new knowledge of food and his positive experiences with homemade food, did Rivera still crave fast food? Perhaps the move to New York, leaving friends and ultimately starting work overwhelmed him and he needed something familiar from his childhood, something with which he associated positive feelings, home and security. 

Unfortunately for Rivera, he did not get that feeling back. He describes his negative experience of switching again from healthy food to fast food as follows, “The old comfort, however, was nowhere to be found. It felt as if I were sitting at a slot machine, pulling the lever over and over, waiting for this order, this pizza, this French fry to make me fell I'd hit the jackpot. But the food just made me feel sick. My skin would itch, my stomach would turn. I’d get a headache” (3). The food we grew up eating has a powerful impact on our eating habits later in life. People who grew up with fresh, unprocessed food as a child usually find it easier to continue with it in adulthood. Rivera, who has already experienced both sides, had a bad experience with his fast food re-eating. He noticed that his health suffered from the highly processed foods.

Cannot American Food be healthy and delicious at the same time? It can! Even if that means that we have to say goodbye to our usual taste and comfort. Fresher, homemade food takes more time and care to make. It requires both, ethical sense and the willingness to do something good for your body. What we eat, which products we allow in our food and which production methods we allow for our food says a lot about us as people, our status and our ethical and moral sense. As Rivera concludes: “I have come to accept that the kinds of food we eat and appreciate signal to the world and to ourselves something about who we are, about who we were, about who we have become” (3). We cannot ask people to change their eating habits overnight and to only buy healthy and fairly produced food, in the end that would probably not be possible either. However, one could work on educating people, listing the benefits of healthy eating, which would have health benefits as well as economic ones, and ultimately trying to spread more awareness in dealing with food.

Work Cited 

Adrian J. Rivera, “I Am Mourning the Loss of Something I Loved: Mc Nuggets”, The New York Times, 28 Feb. 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/28/opinion/processed-food-social-class-america-html