Cheaper, bigger, faster — but not always better

In 1940, the first McDonald’s fast food restaurant opened and introduced the world to cheap, fast, filling food that was much more efficient than a homemade dinner.

No one could possibly deny the efficiency of this fast food chain and the capitalist system of America rewarded it. The restaurant spread around the United States first and then began to infiltrate all corners of the world. Today there are more than 31,000 McDonald’s restaurants internationally.

In the wake of the success of McDonald’s, several other fast food restaurants began to bloom in the new food market. KFC, Pizza Hut and many other restaurants that serve cheap food quickly have achieved similar success to McDonald’s, and today these fast food markets control an enormous portion of our food market.

A huge demand for the fast, inexpensive and relatively good food that fast food chains provide has empowered them to dictate the food produced by our farmers. McDonald’s is the largest purchaser of ground beef and potatoes in the United States, and one of the largest purchasers of pork, chicken, tomatoes and lettuce. McDonald’s demand for such a huge amount of these products every day has enabled the corporation to dictate the way they are produced.

In the past 50 years, the production of food in America has moved from being farm-based to factory-based. Chickens can be raised and slaughtered in half the time farmers were able to 50 years ago, and with antibiotics added to their feed, chickens can also grow to twice the size they were able to in the past. Tomatoes are picked when they are green and exposed to ethylene gas that induces the fruit to ripen. Cows have been switched to corn-fed diets instead of their natural grass diet, which enables farmers to produce fatter cows faster, but also induces the production of E. coli within the cow’s stomach that can infect the cow’s meat.

This way of producing food has provided a highly economical way to provide consumers with the foods they want daily, regardless of seasons. It has made food cheaper and more accessible to the average consumer in the United States and in many areas of the world.

American consumers must decide now just how important the price of their food is to them. Numerically, our factory-based food options are clearly the best product for consumers, but ethically and nutritionally they are not. Our increased demand for seasonal foods year round has morphed the food in our market from plants cultivated for our tastes to products made specifically for our demands. The new products in our supermarkets and on our menus are certainly cheaper, bigger and more available, but are they necessarily the correct choice for our culture and society to make?

Briana Murphy is a senior at Colony High School.