Fast Food Restaurants as Scapegoats

During the first decades of the 20th century, lunch wagons, the predecessors to diners, were so popular that cities often passed regulations limiting their hours of operation. In 1952, three years before Ray Kroc franchised his first McDonald's, one out of four American adults was considered overweight; a New York Times editorial declared that obesity was "our nation's primary health problem." The idea that rootless corporate invaders derailed our healthy native diet may be chicken soup for the tubby trial lawyer's soul, but in reality overeating fatty, salty, sugar-laden food is as American as apple pie.

Nowhere is this truth dramatized more deliciously than in basic-cable fare like the Food Channel's Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives and the Travel Channel's World's Best Places to Pig Out. Watch these shows often enough, and your Trinitron may develop Type 2 diabetes. Big Macs and BK Stackers wouldn't even pass as hors d'oeuvres at these heart attack factories.

Yet unlike fast food chains, which are generally characterized as sterile hegemons that force-feed us like foie gras geese, these independently owned and operated greasy spoons are touted as the very (sclerosed) heart of whatever town they're situated in, the key to the region's unique flavor, and, ultimately, the essence of that great, multicultural melting pot that puts every homogenizing fast food fryolator to shame: America!

Instead of atomizing families and communities, dives and diners bring them together. Instead of tempting us with empty calories at cheap prices, they offer comfort food and honest value. Instead of destroying our health, they serve us greasy authenticity on platters the size of manhole covers.

As the patrons of these temples to cholesterol dig into sandwiches so big they could plug the Lincoln Tunnel, they always say the same thing. They've been coming to these places for years. They started out as kids accompanying their parents, and now they bring their kids with them.

While such scenes play out, you can't help but wonder: Doesn't that obesity lawsuit trailblazer John Banzhaf have cable? Shouldn't he be ejaculating torts out of every orifice upon witnessing such candid testimonies to the addictive power of old-timey diner fare? And more important: Shouldn't we thank our fast food chains for driving so many of these places out of business and thus limiting our exposure to chili burgers buried beneath landfills of onion rings? Were it not for the relative restraint of Big Macs and Quarter Pounders, the jiggling behemoths who bruise the scales on The Biggest Loser each week might instead be our best candidates for America's Next Top Model.

Three years ago, when Supersize Me appeared in theaters and fast food replaced Osama bin Laden as the greatest threat to the American way of life, the industry sought refuge in fruit and yogurt cups and the bland, sensible countenance of Jared the Subway Guy. Today chains are still trying to sell the idea that they offer healthy choices to their customers; see, for example, Burger King's plans to sell apple sticks dolled up in French fry drag. But they're starting to reclaim their boldness too, provoking the wrath of would-be reformers once again.

Last summer, when McDonald's started selling supersized sodas under a wonderfully evocative pseudonym, the Hugo, it earned a prompt tsk-tsking from The New York Times. When Hardee's unveiled its latest affront to sensible eating, a 920-calorie breakfast burrito, the senior nutritionist for the Center for Science in the Public Interest derided it as "another lousy invention by a fast-food company." When San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford saw a TV commercial for Wendy's Baconator, he fulminated like a calorically correct Jerry Falwell: "Have the noxious fast-food titans not yet been forced to stop concocting vile products like this, or at least to dial down the garish marketing of their most ultra-toxic products, given how the vast majority of Americans have now learned (haven't they?) at least a tiny modicum about human health?"

Culinary reformers around the country have been trying to turn such microwaved rhetoric into reality. In New York City, health officials have been attempting to introduce a regulation that will require any restaurant that voluntarily publicizes nutritional information about its fare to post calorie counts on its menus and menu boards. Because most single-unit operations don't provide such information in any form, this requirement will apply mainly to fast food outlets and other chains. When a federal judge ruled against the city's original ordinance, city health officials went back for seconds, revising the proposal to comply with his ruling. If this revised proposal goes into effect, any chain that operates 15 or more restaurants under the same name nationally will have to post nutritional information on the menus and menu boards of the outlets it operates in New York City.

In Los Angeles, City Councilmember Jan Perry has been trying to get her colleagues to support an ordinance that would impose a moratorium on fast food chains in South L.A., where 28 percent of the 700,000 residents live in poverty and 45 percent of the 900 or so restaurants serve fast food. "The people don't want them, but when they don't have any other options, they may gravitate to what's there," Perry told the Los Angeles Times, gravitating toward juicy, flame-broiled delusion. Apparently her constituents are choking down Big Macs only because they've already eaten all the neighborhood cats and figure that lunch at McDonald's might be slightly less painful than starving to death. And how exactly will banning fast food outlets encourage Wolfgang Puck and Whole Foods Markets to set up shop in a part of town they've previously avoided? Is the threat of going head to head with Chicken McNuggets that much of a disincentive?

Suppose reformers like Perry get their wish and fast food chains are regulated out of existence. Would the diners and dives we celebrate on basic cable start serving five-pound veggie burgers with five pounds of kale on the side? Only diet hucksters and true chowhounds would benefit from a world where the local McDonald's gave way to places serving 72-ounce steaks and burgers that reach toward the heavens like Manhattan skyscrapers. The rest of us would be left longing for that bygone era when, on every block, you could pick up something relatively light and healthy, like a Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger from Carl's Jr.

back later...

Scapegoats, all: milkfed tender

bumping this thread up by saying that fast food doesn't have to be crap. There used to be a drive through salad place in Santa Monica. I can imagine some good food being made in quick cook restaurant situations.
There was also a fast food healthy baja type mexican food shop I used to frequent..
I used to love Tomo's Deli, which produced great japanese
fast food..

Summarizing, lots of cuisines have healthy food that can be cooked fresh and fast. The fat/sugar/calorie laden places cloud our view of the range of possibilites for fast food.

Two or three places in town where you can carry out decent chinese fast food with lots of green veggies and fruit etc. Boston Market has numerous healthful entrees including rotisserie chicken, steamed veggies, and similar fare.

But a lot of us, especially if we grew up in the south, grew up on greasy--and I do mean GREASY--hamburgers purchased at the lunch counter at the drug store, corn dogs, fried pies, or huge slabs of homemade pie, crust made with lard, and a big scoop of ice cream on top. Deep fat frying was common in every household including potatoes fried in lots of Crisco.

Okay folks didn't live as long back then as they do now. But it sure did smell and taste good.

And I can't believe it was all that much more healthy than a flame broiled whopper from Burger King.