Fast Food Nation and Fast Food's Effect on American Society

Fast food restaurants can possibly be seen as the drug pushers of the culinary world, shoving their poison down the throats of suspecting, yet inactive customers. They deal everyday on the corner, yet the community's barely doing anything to stop it, sometimes encouraging them through patronage. Fast food has never been seen as a healthy way to eat, but even with extremely persistent enemies of the industry pumping out Michael Moore-esque propaganda, the rich get richer and the fat get even fatter. The fast food industry doesn't care for the health of its customers; this can be seen through its advertisements geared towards youths and its frequent use of immigrants or inexperienced employees to work for low pay.

A Stanford study, conducted by Dr. Tom Robinson, has proven that food wrapped in McDonalds's wrappers supposedly tasted better to children rather than food by itself. This psychological connection between McDonald's and good food reveals an extremely scary fact-fast food junkies are bred young. A popular marketing technique is to sell toys along side kid's meals, probably to help instill the connections of good memories and bad food, while at a very young age. Parents aren't doing much either; most believe they are merely treating their child to this processed fat. Upon growing up, these children have most likely developed a love for this food, with an attachment on par with "grandma's home cooking"; this love will definitely affect their parental feeding techniques, pushing them to feed their kids' fast food, repeating the vicious cycle. The goal of marketing is to basically establish familiarity, but companies are reaching deep in the bag, using techniques in league with subliminal messaging. This is especially despicable, considering they're running this marketing on youth younger than twelve.