Fast Food

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Now, the next topic on our program is fast food. We aren’t just talking about who makes the best burger. We’re looking at the importance of the fast food industry to our economy. With us is economist John Watts, who is a specialist in this area. John, the fast food industry in the USA is big business, isn’t it? It certainly is. It’s been a big factor in America’s economic growth, and today it’s one of the most important forces in the U.S. economy, and in fact, the global economy.

When did this begin? Well, I suppose it was around 1970. The real change was the number of women who started working. Before that, it was more common for women to stay at home. This meant that they had time to shop for food and cook meals. But as more women started to work, they had less time to cook and fast food restaurants started to grow and expand.

The author of the book, Fast Food Nation, says that there were just one thousand McDonald’s restaurants in 1968. But now there are over thirty thousand. He also calculates that one in every eight people who work in the U.S. works or has worked at some time at McDonald’s.

So how did these fast food companies become so successful? One reason was the attention that they paid to advertising. Right from the beginning fast food companies were some of the first companies to advertise directly to children.

Some fast food companies now serve food in school canteens. So school lunch is a hamburger or a pizza from a famous fast food restaurant. Also, U.S. schools need money and some fast food companies help to pay for textbooks.

But the author of Fast Food Nation says that these textbooks often include information which is there to create a good impression about fast food. They also put adverts on a TV channel which is on in almost every classroom in the USA.

So, why is this such a big problem? Firstly, because many feel that advertising to children isn’t fair, because it’s easier to persuade them and to make them believe anything. Also, a lot of people are worried about the health effects of so much junk food, especially on young people. There are different statistics, but some people calculate that 25% of all American children are obese. One in four, imagine.

Have you seen Super Size Me? No. What’s that? It’s a film about an experiment where for one month a man only ate in fast food restaurants for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Three times a day.

And what happened to him? Well, for a start, he became 11 kilos heavier in just one month. At one point, doctors told the man to stop because he was starting to have serious heart problems after just one month. Of course, some people have said that the film isn’t fair because nobody would normally eat only fast food, but it’s still worrying. Has Supersize Me had any effect on the fast food industry? Yes, it has. Many companies are trying to offer healthier types of food. They don’t want bad publicity, and they see that they need to improve their public image. So maybe there’s hope for the future.