What We Eat

Mariah Bauer

Casual Dining & What We Eat

What we eat which is published by Reading America talks about the choices that fast food companies make and the truth about their food choices.  It talks about how food is mostly processed and ran by science instead of natural forms.  The article states that “Better living through chemistry” is the way of the new fast food chain world.  It talks about how the food is kept “fresh” through many unnatural processes.  Overall this article states the horrors of the fast food chain and all the things that Schlosser believes is wrong with the way our fast food chains are ran. 

The problem with the casual dining setting today is the amount of money the workers are being paid.  Most people working a fast food job cannot make enough money to support a family.  Many fast food workers have pushed for the fast food companies to up their wages so they are better able to support themselves like every other person.  The problem is most employees want their wages raised to $15 an hour and fast food companies cannot absorb that cost.  Raising all basic workers wage to $15.00 an hour would cause a tremendous burden on the company.  What these workers don’t see is that the cost of what they sell their products for will also have to raise if they raise employee wages.  The higher ups of the McDonalds Corporation believe that they would either have to raise the prices or they would have to decrease the amount of food they provide for the same price.  Either way is not a win-win situation for McDonalds.  A solution that may come into play in years to come is that your orders will be all taken with technology so they will only need people to make the food.  This would allow McDonalds to raise those employees’ wages, but it would also lead to a huge job loss.  No matter what the employees of casual dining fight for there is no winning on either side of the spectrum. 

Another problem with casual dining today is the quality of the food.  There are many problems with additives in the food today as well as other issues related to our health.  Fast food encourages an unhealthy lifestyle which may lead to obesity it also encourages people to eat on the go.  Some of the additives in these foods mess with our body’s system and causes reactions that would not normally occur if this food was not consumed.  Although these foods may not seem like a bad idea to begin with because the basic things you look for on a nutrition label don’t seem too bad for you, you need to dig deeper.  There are many chemicals added to these foods to make them way worse for the consumer than what we are lead to believe.  Take the health risks as you want, just don’t believe all the false advertising that is thrown out to the public about these types of foods.

To conclude there are many issues with what we eat and how the people who prepare our food are treated in the United States.  Is there really anything we can do about it? There always seems to be something in the way just when you have a good idea to help better these particular topics. Liked stated in What We Eat “Science makes the food”.  I think you just have to be thoughtful next time you treat an underpaid employee poorly or you make the choice to put those types of processed foods in your body.

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/pricing-strategy-fastfood-restaurants-23939.html

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/09/higher-fast-food-wages-higher-fast-food-prices

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/07/15/processed-food-secrets.aspx

What We Eat, Rereading America, 9th ed., Edited by Gary Columbo, Robert Cullen, & Bonnie Lisle

published by Bedford/ St Martins, Boston, 2013