The Unofficial National Meal

(adapted from Fast Food Nation, the Dark Side of the All-American Meal By Eric Schlosser Perennial, HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., New York USA, 2004 and Eating: An anthropological Perspective - By Robin Fox http://www.sirc.org/publik/food_and_eating_1.html. Photos from http://www.whats- cookingamerica.net)

In the early years of the 20-th century hamburger had a bad reputation. It was considered “a food for the poor” and people looked down at it. Restaurants seldom served hamburgers. One could buy them from a lunch cart near a factory, a circus or a state fair. In the 1920s the first American hamburger chain White Castle did the utmost to improve the reputation of hamburgers, but it didn’t manage to attract a broad range of people.

Turning the hamburger into a national dish happened in the 1950s with the development of drive-ins and fast food restaurants in California when Ray Kroc decided to promote McDonald’s as a restaurant chain for families. Operating playgrounds, giving away simple toys with children’s meals and different discounts made fast food restaurants gathering places for families with children.

These restaurants have a profound impact on the nation’s eating habits. A generation ago three-quarters of the family food budget of Americans was spent on preparing meals at home. Today about half of the “food money” is spent at restaurants, mainly fast food restaurants. The whole experience of buying fast food has become so routine that it is taken for granted. It is now as American as apple pie. It gave birth to fast food mentality and has been exported to every corner of the globe as an element of popular culture alongside with Hollywood movies, pop music, and blue jeans.

What makes fast food so popular? Though for many adults fast food will always remain outside the normal rules of nutrition and moderation, it often remains a kind of “comfort food” reminding you of Sunday family outings as part of a nostalgia for childhood: the time when today’s adults were allowed “treats”: hot dogs with mustard, ketchup, and relish, or giant ice cream sundaes with five different scoops of ice cream, pecans, chocolate sauce, and whipped cream; sloppy joes with French fries and gravy; malted milk shakes and root beer floats. What else makes fast food a product of mass consumption? Most of it tastes pretty good (it is kept at the set standard), it is inexpensive (franchise outlets offer a good value for the customer’s money), it is convenient (because of fast service and availability, cleanliness and cheerful hospitality of the employees). Besides, as a result of the attempts to introduce healthy dishes into fast food restaurant menu there are many decent choices a person can make when eating on the fly.

Fast food began with a handful of hot dog and hamburger stands of self-made men, the men inspired by the spirit of American West: dreams of freedom without limits, self-reliance, and wide-open frontier. It ended by a fast food empire of giant corporations that transformed not only the American diet, but its landscape, economy, workforce and popular culture. The leading fast food chains spread nationwide perfected the art of selling inexpensive, mass-produced, highly-industrialized foods.

The remarkable growth of the fast food as industryhas been driven by fundamental changes in American society: the fastening pace of life, the growth of city population, women entering the workforce in record numbers, the democratization of eating out, technological advances hidden behind an ordinary-looking café of the fast food restaurant, the possibilities television and the Internet offer to promote the fast food chains and create positive feelings about fast food.

When the fast food industry grew very competitive in the USA, the major chains started opening restaurants overseas. The first German McDonald’s, for example, opened in 1971 and now there 1,000 of them. Today McDonald’s has more than 17,000 restaurants in more than 120 countries.

On the one hand, American fast food chains abroad were received favorably and often treated as totems of Western economic development. In Beijing (China) thousands of people waited for hours to eat in the first McDonald’s. It sold so many burgers so fast that the cash registers burned out. The line of cars waiting at the first drive-through window that McDonald’s opened in Kuwait was seven miles long. In Mecca (Saudi Arabia) a Kentucky Fried Chicken broke the sales records earning $200,000 in a week. Kentucky Fried Chicken has now opened in Beijing, and has become a popular place to eat in Berlin.

On the other hand, many times and in many countries fast food restaurants became targets of protest. The reasons are different: disadvantages of fast food; its threatening a fundamental aspect of national identity: where and what people choose to eat; campaigns against perceived Americanization of the world.

But the popularity of fast food in the world is not the “fault” of Americans. It is only one of many cultural changes brought about by globalization. Fast food has taken the world by storm in one of the greatest eating revolutions since the discovery of the potato. In a curious twist, two local foods of the East – Japanese raw-fish sushi, and the Chinese dim sum (small items bought by the plate) – are rapidly turning into the fast food specials. Examples of national fast foods that are popular today can be found in nearly every culture: the transport café with its huge portions of bacon and eggs and fish-and-chip warehouses in Britain; the French bistro, with its wonderful casseroles and bifstekpommefrit (steak with French fries); the Italian trattoria with its cheap seafood, the beer-and-sausage halls of Germany; the open-air food markets in all the warm countries.