Respect

Animals are not just the food on our tables. They are lives; they have feelings just like human, so they deserve respect too. However, sometimes people just avoid thinking about it because they don’t want to be guilty when they feel the meat on their table are delicious. In the book Eating Animals, the auther Jonathan Safran Foer wrote a short coversation with his son, His son asked if his dog, George, will be lonely when they leave the house without Geoge, and he said “George doesn’t get lonely”(Foer, 46). Of course dogs feel lonely, and Jouathan knew it; he just refused to admit it. He lied to his son also himself. He didn’t want to upset his son, and he didn’t want to feel guilty, so he lied. When he noticed his dog has similar emothion with himself, he got scared. Like most people. If animals are not just animals; if they have feelings such as happiness, upset, anger, loneliness, does that mean we have to respect their feelings? If we have to, how should we treat them? Should we eat them? Therefore, people avoid thinking about it. People don’t want to feel guilty or give up eating them.

Food

According to dictionary, food is any substance that people or animals eat or drink or plants take in to maintain life and growth.  Different creatures eat different kinds of food. Big fish eats small fish; pandas eat bamboos; herbivores eat grasses and grains; predators eat herbivores and some predators…  This is the way that world gets balance. However, for human beings, food is not only the substances that maintain life and growth. Human eat everything that can be eaten, everything tasted.  For satisfying this purpose, corporations find a way to increase the supply of food. For example, chicken are engineered for different “founctions”. Scientists use special way to raise chicken to make them have big chests because people like to eat chicken chests. However, chicken can’t walk with the huge chests; they even have difficult to stand up. Some chicken’s founctions are making eggs. They are called “layers”. Male layers can’t make eggs, so they are destroyed.more than 250 million chicken are destroyed per year in United States (Jonathan 48). In this situation, chicken are not considered as lives, they are just products; they are just food for human. On the other hand,  ranchers find a way to decrease their costs. For example, ranchers use dead dogs and cats to feed cattle. Cattle don’t suppose to eat meat, they eat grasses and grains. They even eat their own excrement. Just because cattle are assumed to be human’s food already, as long as they can grow fat, their destinies are finished, no one cares about what they eat. Human choose the food they want to eat, but animals don’t have choices because they are the food for human.

Working in the fast food restaurant

Most the workers of fast food restaurant are young in America. Some of them are immigrants. Since assembly line made work easier and less skill, workers only can get the minimum wage. I have a friend who worked in Dounkin Donuts. He is a Chinese. When he just came here, he couldn’t find a job because he was a full time college student. Finally, he found a job in 24 hours Dounkin Donuts store. He worked every day after class. Sometimes he worked a whole night and came school directly from work. Even he worked so hard, he still couldn’t support himself. Now he quit from school and Dounkin Donuts. He told me that he wanted to get rid of this kind of live. He found another job in a Chinese restaurant. Even though he still works in a restaurant, his salary is two times than the salary in Dounkin Donuts. He wants to save some money and go to college again.

The situation of working in the fast food restaurant is different in China. In china, the workers are required at least a high school diploma. People think working in the fast food restaurants such as McDonald’s, is learning the new technology and management skills from foreign countries. I remember, in my hometown, there was a pizza restaurant designed in European style. The whole restaurant looks elegant. People use knives and forks to eat pizza. The prices are expansive; the low income people couldn’t offer it. In America, the major customers of fast food are low income people. I never saw anyone eat fast food with knives and forks. The conditions of workers' are also terrible.     

Pleasure Response

 The word “delicious” is a complex reaction from our brain. It leads the reaction of pleasure. When we see the same food that we feel delicious next time, “cues associated with the pleasure response demand our attention, motivate our behavior, and stimulate the urge.” This means when we satisfy with a kind of food, our brain will send a signal of happiness. When we see this same food next time, we will urge to eat, to get same satisfaction. Thus, we eat again because we know we will get reward. Especially when we feel pressure, the desire will be stronger. I have this experience recently; I feel a lot of pressure. I couldn’t help myself. I just want to eat. When I couldn’t eat any more, I still need a candy in my mouth. As long as I eat, I feel calm and relax. I know I shouldn’t do this, and I do gain several pounds recently. I think this situation is similar with people who use opium. We all know the harm, but we couldn’t refuse the reward of pleasure from our brain.

video about fast food

     One of the reasons why fast food is so popular is because it is convenient and cheap. Also because of this reason, a lot of families choose to eat Fast Food, even though they know that it is not good for their health. I watched a video from YouTube in which a family drove a van and bought Fast Food in drive-through restaurant, and then they ate in the van. The mother Maria Andrea Gonzalez said that she knew that fast food would affect their health. In fact, her husband has diabetes already. She said that she felt guilty to let her husband and two daughters eat fast food. However, she doesn’t have time to cook, but because fast food is cheap, and the food is enough to feedthe whole family, so she still buy it. In the video, they show the audience the price of fruit and vegetables is high. Compared to fast food, those healthy foods are more expensive. Oppositely, soda, is much cheaper. The reason that soda is cheap is because its main ingredient, sugar is cheap. Sugar is made out of corn and the government gives subsidy to the corn industry to help them. However, the government’s main income is from tax. That means every tax payer has alredy paid for soda. Just because soda is very cheap, some fast food restaurant offer soda free in meals to make their food more attractive. The situations of families like Maria’s family is very common in America. Maria’s husband has diabetes disease. He needs 200 dollars for his medicine, so his family has to save money to buy his medicine. For those reason, the family has to choose cheaper food such as Fast Food. This situation becomes a vicious circle. Like Schlosser said “the less money you pay, the bigger you are”, and when people get bigger, they are more prone to get diseases. According to the film, “1 in 3 Americans born after 2000 will contract early onset diabetes...Among minorities, the rate will be 1 in 2”. For decades, fast food has already affected the health of generations. If there are no solutions, the hidden dangers of fast food will affect the health of our future generation.

Significant idea connection

There are three ideas that I think significant in the book “Fast Food Nation”, assembly line system, uniformity and feeding animals other animals. Those ideas combine together and indicate a fact that fast food chain decreases their cost as low as possible to increase their profit.  First of all assembly line system make fast food companies increase speed and increase their throughput, also save their money to hire employees because assembly line system makes work easier and less skill, so they don’t have to spend a lot of money and time to train employees. Therefore, assembly line system is the most efficiency way to decrease the cost of fest food industry. Secondly, uniformity is one of the important characters in fast food chain. It means everything that can present the company should be the same. It is leading a limited supplies idea which gives supply companies more power. Because of this, the big meatpacking companies consolidated and drove meat price down to increase their profit.  Also, the freeze potato companies have the same situation as well. This phenomenon leads the potato farmers and ranchers became poorer. Rising land price, loaning money from bank make them miserable. However, fast food companies benefit from it because they get raw materials cheaper and make their burgers bigger to attract customers. The other idea is feeding animals with other animals (202). For cutting the cost, some ranchers feed animals with dead dogs, dead cats. Cattle suppose to eat grain, but grain is expensive, and the cattle’s price is extremely low, so they have to cut their cost. All of this is about cutting cost. As long as they can cut the cost and increase their profit, nothing seems wrong. We may wonder is it right; is it really healthy for the market? I don’t think so. The vicious competition eventually is going to make more ranchers quit from the business. This is also a result of free market lead to. Just because no government regulation, the meatpacking companies control the market, and the price of cattle, chicken and potato are driven so low that farmers and ranchers have to find another way to cutting their cost. Therefore, free market encourages them cutting cost to increase their profit.  

Uniformity

       Uniformity is"overall sameness, homogeneity or regularity"(dictionary). It means something the same such as same quality, same image, or same function. It is a significant part for a franchise company. According to the Eric Schlosser, the author of "Fast Food Nation", uniformity is the key to a successful franchise. "franchises and chain stores strive to offer exactly the same product or service at numerous. Customers are drawn to familiar brands by an instinct to avoid the unknown."(Schlosser 5) ". "Uniformity" as the key of a franchise chain makes sure to offer customer same products. This lead to another question- How to make sure that the products are exactly the same? One of the effective way is to limit suppliers. For example, McDonald's Hamburger, Chicken McNugget, and Fries are all same taste wherever the restaurant is. This is because McDonald's limited its suppliers. The suppliers use the same way to raise cattles to make sure the beef has the same taste, so is the chicken. Also the way they cook are same. They regulate every step and separate them to make it easy to operate. It is called “Assembly line system”. Every worker should follow the rule to cook and make sure every store has the same taste products. For instance, McDonald’s long, crisp and golden brown Fries is come from J.R Simplot Company. After adding chemical flavor and oil with beef flavor, the frozen fries are taste the same in all McDonald’s restaurants. In the mean time, the suppliers are developed biger and biger. For winning other suppliers, they tried their best to drive the potato price down. “The fast food companies purchase frozen fries for about 30 cents a pound, reheat them in oil, then sell them for about $6 a pound.” (Schlosser,117). The potato farmers became the most miserable part in the chain. The same situation happened on cattle rancher. and chicken ranchers. “The growth of the fast food chains has encouraged consolidation in the meatpacking industry”(Schlosser, 136). Also, they secretly fixed price and make the ranchers received the lowest possible price for their cattle. However, the franchise chain won’t be affect. “Uniformity” kind of changed American’s economy.

Throughput

Business historian Alfred D. Chandler has argued that a high rate of “throughput” was the most important aspect of these mass production systems. “Throughput” is the speed and volume of its flow. This idea is important in production systems because a high rate of “throughput” means high efficiency. For example, since assembly line systems adopted by McDonald’s, a small number of employees can produce an enormous amount of foods cheaply. In the mean time, because the assembly line systems makes work simple. For employees, work becomes easier and less skill. The employers save a lot of time and money to train employees. It also means, employees are easy to replace, so usually they got minimum wage. For employers, it makes them easily control the employees. A high rate of “through put” is the key of McDonald’s success.   Thus, the way to increase “throughput” is important to a company.