THE REALITY OF FAST-FOOD

I recently finished reading 'The Fast Food Nation' by Eric Schlosser and it has provided me with a different, although an upsetting perspective on fast food. As with most things in life, where nothing appears to be what it actually is, this book gives an insight into the hidden and little known world of the fast food industry, all the way from production of fast food to its distribution and consumption. But before I go ahead with telling you what I learnt from this interesting read, I must mention that I am not against fast food. On the contrary, I enjoy it once in a while just like everyone else does. My aim of writing down my thoughts on fast food is to promote awareness about what goes into the making of the delicious fast food meal and although fast food may be cheap on the menu, its because of the various other costs which the consumers like you and me are not aware of and are deliberately not told about.

The first thing that crossed my mind while reading this book was the appalling way that the cattle and the poultry is treated from the time of it's birth to the point when it's slaughtered. Any rational and logical person would agree with me when I ask that shouldn't we respect the animals who ultimately will be consumed by us as food, a source of nutrition and growth? It is important to realize that these animals are living things as well...just because they can't express their feelings in words does not mean they can't feel anything. Industrializing the way they are kept and grown, with the only aim of slaughtering them to satisfy our food cravings comes across as blatantly inhumane. But wait a minute...why is important for you to know? Well because treating animals like this affects the health of these animals, causing them stress and making them sick. And if you remember, you are the one who will be consuming this meat in the end after all, therefore it's natural that how these animals are treated up to the point when they are slaughtered should concern you.

If you really don't care about the animals, then at least you might think about the fellow human beings who work in the various slaughterhouses across the country, often under horrible working conditions, with little or no workplace safety, meager wages, often no health insurance at a place where they may suffer work-related injuries from carpel-tunnel syndrome to amputation of a limb. Some of these workers perform jobs that may make you want to throw up, and yes although they are not being forced to do it, it is still our responsibility as consumers to ask the meatpacking industry to provide better and safe working conditions for these workers because they play an integral part of the process where meat is handled by them before it ends up as our fast-food meal.

Perhaps, the working conditions of these workers may not interest you either, and so may I take this opportunity to tell you how fast food can directly affect you and your health. Most of the fast food is rich in salt, fats and sugar...a lethal combination which is certainly not good for us. In fact all that workers at a fast food restaurant do is assemble different parts of a meal together, since most of the stuff is frozen when bought. Event the french fries are bought frozen by most fast-food joints, and all that the employees have to do before they serve them to you is to heat them up. No doubt they taste so good right? Obesity, which is soon going to overtake smoking as the number one cause of death, has already become a huge public health concern. And of course you can't and shouldn't blame fast food entirely for people becoming obese, since individual choice and responsibility should also be accounted for, fast food does contribute significantly to obesity because of it's unhealthy composition and also because it is quite addictive, so people want to have it more and more of it.

So while advertisements on TV will never tell you about these hidden issues related to fast food, they definitely misguide you about how fast-food is healthy and present to you a fallacious world of happiness and ever-lasting joy that you get when you eat it. As consumers, it's our responsibility to be aware of the real costs that go into producing the fast food, because while you may only pay a dollar for a value-priced dollar meal, its only because there are others who are paying the real costs so that you can enjoy that delicious super-size meal of a cheese burger and fries.