Most of my friends know that I have a mostly suppressed but lingering tendency toward conspiratorial thinking. I think of myself also as a pretty rational person, so I try to keep this cogitation at bay and avoid sharing it with others. But, one thing that always gets me going down this pot-hole filled path is thinking about the prepared and fast food industries.
I’ve been working for Greenwood Press as I have on and off for the past couple of years, doing some basic indexing for their very fine database, Pop Culture Universe. Recently, I’ve been reading the The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food and Drink Industries. It’s a reminder: fast food is evil.
The authors and editors of this work, of course, say no such thing outright. The tone is measured, scholarly, and informative, even if a tinge of leftward slant is noticeable. The stories about some of the big companies, Heinz, to take a Pittsburgh example, can be pretty interesting. And I for one, had no idea that peanut butter was pretty much invented by J.H. Kellog, of 19th century cereal and Battle Creek health spa fad fame. But the industrialization of eating freaks me out. McDonald’s, which has more complete histories elsewhere, (esp. Eric Schlosser’s well-known must-read, Fast Food Nation) started it all. I’m reminded of of its status as the perpetrator of industrialized ill-health and corporate manipulation. And they were only the beginning.
In a mere twenty years, McDonald’s went from 7500 ‘restaurants’ to over 30000. It cannot be an accident that these twenty years are the same ones that have seen the growth of the obesity epidemic, especially in children – huh! McDonald’s target market. Though they continue to addict and fatten the world, they now make the majority of their money through rent, not food. Kentucky Fried Chicken now out-sells Mickey D’s worldwide. The two companies buy most of the chicken farmed by the two hugest, most industrialized poultry producers. McDonald’s virtually owns the entire potato production of the state of Idaho (see Schlosser’s book).
Nabisco, purveyor of yummy, unhealthy sweets and crackers, is now a part of multinational conglomerate Kraft Foods, but has been owned by R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris. Big Tobacco and Big Crappy Food Makers together to make billions off your addictions, your obesity, and your consequent early death. So comforting.
Don’t get me started.
