The major role fast food and convenience plays in our lives today

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Truffle Monster

Truffle Monster

Active member, Cyclist
This is not fast food or convenience store bashing at all.

I worked in the QSR industry for many many years. It plays a part in our economic landscape and our cultural eating habits BUT to what extent?

Last night I rode 42km; 21km from my house and 21km back on a parallel road. On this ride I passed no less than 14 fast food outlets and 10 convenience stores.

On this same trip I passed 3 supermarkets, 0 fruit and veg stores (inside the supermarkets excepted), 3 gyms, 1 bike store and 2 parks.

How did our society create this demand for convenience, at hand food? I firmly believe there is no such thing as bad food; everything in moderation. I personally eat fast food maybe once a week but I limit my intake to sensible levels. In my career in the industry no matter what business, what location I had regular customers who would visit every day and I would stand back and watch the weight gain with no ability to stop it.

Growing up we ate together as a family, home cooked meals, VERY rarely had dessert and survived on simple, hearty, budget friendly meals like “glan” or “corned doggy stuff” as we affectionately called them.

Today we have food delivery companies that will collect food from virtually any take away establishment and deliver it to your door for a small fee. These companies make their money by charging the restaurant 30% and paying the drivers virtually nothing. We have fast food outlets with their own apps, loyalty programs and special deals, we have convenience stores that sell chocolate milk, potato chips, meat pies 24/7 and maybe a banana in the corner. We have more jouvenile serious offenders than ever before, we have more violence and less perceived care factor for our fellow humans, we have a marriage failure rate of 50% with children being bounced from parent to parent and we have an obesity epidemic in many (western at least) countries.

I ask; at what point did we ask for this? At what point did life get too busy to cook a meal for the family? To sit and watch a television program as a family? To go to the park on the weekend or take the kids to a museum?

How have we created this perfect environment for unhealthy life choices?

Again I am not blaming fast food companies for any of this. They are simply filling the demand created by us; the consumer. WE are responsible for this and in my view unless we make a conscious effort to instil strong family values in our children and grow together as the family unit we are setting our children up for failure.
 
I think it's a very complex web of interconnections which has led to the situation you describe, which is, I agree, pretty depressing.
The question is, what can be done about it? Could we, for starters, maybe ask local councils or state governments to insist that fast food places carry a minimum amount of fresh fruit and veg, more than the "banana in the corner"? That places which mostly offer fried food must also offer grilled, at the same price?
Or maybe that there not be trading licences issued to more than three fast food places in any one ordinary suburban shopping street?

Minor point: after some thinking, I figured out QSR, but what exactly is in
Truffle Monster said:
...simple, hearty, budget friendly meals like “glan” or “corned doggy stuff”.
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aiminglow said:
The question is, what can be done about it? Could we, for starters, maybe ask local councils or state governments to insist that fast food places carry a minimum amount of fresh fruit and veg, more than the "banana in the corner"? That places which mostly offer fried food must also offer grilled, at the same price?
Minor point: after some thinking, I figured out QSR, but what exactly is in
Click to expand...

Huge legal can of worms there. At least in my neck of the woods local councils DO have the power to stop businesses opening and do so when it suits them BUT what you need to remember is councils are funded by their rate payers. A profitable business drives up rent for other businesses because the are then becomes more viable. Increased rent increases property value. Increased property value increases rates. Councils also simply give their constituents what they want. Unfortunately this comes back to convenience food.

Restricting what a business can sell or demanding they offer a certain amount of “healthy” foods infringes on their rights to sell a legal product. Their supply of “grillable” fish may be more expensive that their supply of “fryable” fish which will then have the reverse effect of the above ie; council will never go for it.

I’m a firm believer that everyone has the right to buy/sell whatever they like as long as it is legal so personally I don’t necessarily want to stop people having access to these foods. I just find it sad that so many people get hooked on this stuff and rely on it so greatly.

Also Glan is a poor persons casserole. It’s made of sausage meat, potatoes and carrots boiled in water or if you have money that day stock. Corned doggy stuff is corned beef, tinned diced tomatoes, mashed potatoes, cheese sauce layered in that order 2 or 3 times and cooked in a casserole dish. Again it’s a poor persons meal. Those two dishes formed the back bone of my childhood diet.

I’m vegetarian now and have been for 14 years. I’ve never missed meat but I DO miss corned doggy stuff. I wish I could just have it one more time.
 
I'm vegetarian, too. I don't exactly miss meat, but I'd love to be able to eat smoked salmon, or my mother's cabbage rolls (holopchi, we called it - mostly mincemeat, cabbage, tomatoes, onion, and absolutely satisfying.)

The corned doggy stuff sounds very tasty indeed! Was the meat in the glan made into patties?

As for the more serious matter of our society's (western society's generally, and the rest of the world catching up fast) addiction to fast food, I do think some government intervention is possible and reasonable, given the social/health costs, but I'm absolutely not ready with a plan or equipped with the knowledge to make one - for example, I don't know which kinds of fish are and aren't suitable for grilling - so I'll leave that side of it. (Lingering thoughts that no government should allow "fresh food deserts" to develop, though. I'd be very interested in a government/party prepared to address that.)
 
TM makes a good point, I am 66 and in my lifetime I have seen huge growth in the fast food business, quickie marts and McDonald's type places. I grew up in a town of about 20,000 people in Florida, I remember the first fast food place that came to town, a Dog-n-Suds, it was a big deal. Today the town is crawling with them. The same for convenience stores, we had one in our town when I was a kid, now it seems there is one on every corner.

I agree with TM this has been the result of consumer demand, we spend money in these places, they do well and expand.

aiminglow said:
The question is, what can be done about it?

Minor point: after some thinking, I figured out QSR, but what exactly is in
Click to expand...

I think the only thing we can do about is not to spend much time or money on fast food. I don't see how in a free society we can regulate beyond the normal health and safety things. The products they sell are not in and of themselves bad, some of us just use them the wrong way. I have not eaten anything from a "QSR" since going on my diet, so I am doing my part to close them down!

I had to look QSR up to, a new acronym to me, but I am in the US, others may be more familiar with it than I.
 
Unfortunately I don’t see much that government can do really.

QSR - Quick Service Restaurant. It’s I guess an industry term. I still (kinda) work in the industry (sort of) in a very hard to explain detached way.

In terms of grillable or not; it’s usually down to quality more so than species/cut etc. poorer quality gets fried because you don’t see the quality. It’s the same for tomatoes. Poorer quality (usually on their way to mouldy) tomatoes get sold to pasta sauce makers and pizza shops who just purée them anyway so you don’t see it. Also on that note a supplier supplies fruit and veg to a reseller, the reseller can’t use it for quality reasons, the reseller lodges a supplier complaint and receives a credit for the stock value, supplier then owns the stock and can (often do) resell the stock either to a less fussy reseller or a manufacturer of pasta sauce etc SOOOO often when buying premade pasta sauce or any tomato sauce type product you’re actually likely buying poor quality, unsellable produce that may even be second hand.
 
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