Fast Food as new civilization?
Dear Pan & forum friends.
One time, when my kids were teenagers, we had for four and a half years a fast
food restaurant. A little known chain called "Burger Baron". Our food was judged
as a premium product of better quality than McDonalds. The whole concept of the
fast food chains developed over the last 50 years. The original McDonalds Restaurant was in Los Angeles. The Burgers were prepared locally from meat bought at
a butcher shop. With franchising and standardization and the eye on the bottom
line, these fast food restaurants have become an industry. The present hamburgeroffered is undoubtedly far poorer in taste or quality than the original of so many years ago.
If you ask me, the whole concept is a sign of the perversion that is often the
mark of Globalization. Certainly one should think that China could do better
with a home grown noodle house or such. The unfortunate imitation of the American
way of life all over the world by the young is, in my estimation, a passing phaseand certainly not an indication of a new civilization or even of deeper Americancivilization.
Having said all this, I will admit that these places, at least in North America,
fill a need when traveling, especially with children. Most families cannot afford
the better type of restaurant and yet they have to eat. McDonalds and such
provide a relatively cheap meal for somebody in a hurry.
Pan's remarks that the fast food meal left him unsatisfied is telling. Because
it is all mass produced and designed for the taste of the average customer it cannot compete with a meal cooked in a proper kitchen with good ingredients. Lastly
, because in the case of the big burger chains in the U.S.A. the meat comes from
huge slaughterhouses where more than 1,000 animals are killed each day and ground up under sometimes unsanitary conditions, food poisining is a real possibility. That is why Mary and I have a rule, never to eat such food.
May you always find good food at reasonable prices and may God protect you from
the worst of the fast food restaurants and their unhealthy fat loads.
Best wishes, Uncle Ben
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