Fast Food

The Effects of Fast Food Domination

It is six am on a regular day a group of ordinary working people wake up and go to Carl’s Jr., McDonald, and Wendy’s to grab a breakfast combo with coffee. Five or six hours later, another not so very different group of people decide to go to Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken for lunch. Five more hours later, having survived a brutal day at work, the tired parents come home and pick up the phone for fast delivery from Domino’s Pizza. These are some of the world famed fast food restaurant franchises that dominate people’s everyday life. The reason that Americans routinely eat fast food instead of home-made food is that fast food is fast, cheap and convenient. The story of the fast food industry and its effect on the world is well told in “Fast Food Nation” by Eric Schlosser. Schlosser emphasizes that: “During a brief period of time, the fast food industry has helped transform not only the American diet, but also our countryside, economy, workforce, and popular culture” (309). In his work, Schlosser concludes that this transformation has endangered many aspects of American life. The benefit brought by the dominion of the fast food industry over modern society is superficial and bring long term destructive effects.

Fast food chain stores promote “uniformity” as a key to success, but it could also be the downfall of fast food for abandoning individuality. Entrepreneurs are independent thinkers who often form ideas differently from the mainstream opinion. They become successful by bringing positive and revolutionary changes to people’s lives. The fast food industry was built by nonconformist thinkers but has fallen back into the conventional ways of “uniformity”.

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