The Values of Fast Food

Fast food plays a huge role in everyones lives. Wether you’d like to admit it or not, you probably get fast food at least two or three times a week. Whenever I get the chance, wether it’s by myself, or with friends or family, I’m always eating out. My parents cooking just can’t compete with the superior taste of a McDonalds quarter pounder. Recently, I’ve tried to stay away from the unhealthy fast food options and just eat whatever my parents make for me. But theres one problem with that. Most nights, my parents are so tired from slaving away at work all day that they would rather just go and get their kids Mickey D’s instead of cooking for us. Some nights my brother will ask, “can we go to Chick-fil-A?” And my parents respond with, “No, lets go somewhere healthy”. Then, I ask myself, what fast food restaurants are really that healthy? Roti, Subway, and Panera are a few go-to healthy options, but you really wouldn’t be able to live off of these places like some people do.  I’ve started to notice that some of my friends are the same way. One of my friends parents also have the handicap of not knowing how to cook, burning everything that they come in touch with. Most nights, when I come over, theres always a bag of five guys laying on the kitchen table or about seven pizza boxes laying in the trash can. I, fortunately, got lucky, with both my parents knowing how to cook pretty well, but still, This made me start to realize how important fast food is to our society. As people are focusing more and more on their careers and living their lives, the art of learning how to cook is being lost in many homes. Now that women are starting to have a different role in society, the stereotype that all women should know how to work in a kitchen and cook can die off because many are too focused on their own lives and careers. And with people not knowing how to cook meals for themselves, where does that leave them to turn to? Fast food. A quick, easy, and relatively cheap way to quench your hunger. This option is so popular, the CDC says that on any given day, 1 in 3 (or 84.4 Million) Americans eat at fast food restaurants. The only problem is, most of these restaurants aren’t healthy at all. This is where the fast food corporations play the biggest role of all. Matt Birk, a former center for the Minnesota Vikings says he never broke a bone in his body,  “You can’t do that unless you put good things in your body. You’ll have a lot of energy. You’ll run around faster. You can concentrate at school. You’ll be nicer to people because you’re not crabby”. Eating all that unhealthy food makes you sluggish, unmotivated, and crabby. If restaurants could just make their options a little more healthy and an actually viable option for a good healthy meal, society as a whole would see more motivation and more happiness. People will be able to focus more easily in schools, raising average grades in the process. With just a small change of opening up more healthy restaurants or changing menus of current restaurants to being more fresh and organic, our society could become a more productive and joyful place to live in.

Matt Birk - Eating Healthy

CNN - # Americans eating fast food