Do you need this or any other assignment done for you from scratch?
We have qualified writers to help you.
We assure you a quality paper that is 100% free from plagiarism and AI.
You can choose either format of your choice ( Apa, Mla, Havard, Chicago, or any other)
NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.
NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.
Do we live to eat or do we eat to live? Have you ever thought of it before another sandwich enters your mouth? The truth is that if Americans were more concerned with what they eat the nation would look and feel significantly healthier than it does now.
If we look back at generation ago tendencies in American eating habits and traditions we will see that three-quarters of the meals consumed in the United States were made at home. Nowadays, there is a drastic change in meals preparation: most of the meals that Americans eat today are prepared outside the home; fast-food restaurants prevail among possible ways not only to have a bite, but to have a substantial meal, as well.
The rise of fast food industry is obvious in contemporary American society: about half of the money used to buy food is spent in fast food restaurants. If in 1968, McDonald’s had 1,000 restaurants, today the corporation counts about 30, 000 and 2,000 new ones each year (Schlosser, 2001, 123). The current situation is that “Americans now spend more money on fast food than they do on higher education, personal computers, software or new cars. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos and recorded music – combined.” (Schlosser, 1998, 23)
At first sight, this fact does not render any negative features of American eating habits; moreover, fast food can taste pretty good.
“But what they [Americans] may not know about is the cocktail of chemicals that gives the French fry its taste – nor the grisly events in the slaughterhouses that can put something nasty in the burger along with the beef.” (Schlosser, 2001, 234)
The meals that Americans eat are made at every step, from the farm to the ovens in a commercial kitchen. And not every consumer thinks of the way this or that meal is produced and of the drastic consequences that this production will have for his or her health.
“Aside from the salad greens, tomatoes and some toppings, most fast food arrives at the restaurant frozen, canned, dehydrated or freeze-dried. A fast-food kitchen is merely the final stage in a vast system of mass production. America’s favorite foods, like its automobiles and television sets, are now manufactured by computerized, highly automated machines.” (Schlosser, 2001, 345)
Can mass production take care of a particular customer’s health? Isn’t it the customer’s own concern to select the food not only by the way it tastes, but by the way it impacts his or her health?
The result of Americans’ neglect of what they eat, or, to be more exact, neglect of the impact that fast food has on their health is that The United States is now characterized by the highest obesity rate of any industrialized nation in the world. More than half of all American adults and about one-quarter of all American children are now obese or overweight. The tendency is a direct consequence of the rise of the fast food consumption during the last few decades (Schlosser, 2001, 256).
So, do we eat hamburgers or do they eat us? Being a rather rhetoric, this question needs urgent answering. Otherwise, next time the problem of what we are eating will be discussed by huge machines the existence of which is impossible without Coca-Cola and French fry – human Americans will not exist any longer.
Works Cited
Schlosser, Eric. “Fast-Food Nation: The True Cost Of America’s Diet.” Rolling Stone magazine. 1998: 19.
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Houghton Mifflin Books, 2001.
Siclair, Upton. The Jungle: The Uncensored Original Edition. See Sharp Press, 2003.
Do you need this or any other assignment done for you from scratch?
We have qualified writers to help you.
We assure you a quality paper that is 100% free from plagiarism and AI.
You can choose either format of your choice ( Apa, Mla, Havard, Chicago, or any other)
NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.
NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.