fastfood

Fast food

by Bob on July 6, 2007

Fast food. A fact of life in the 21st century, and even before. It has now become international, affecting even traditional Asia, Europe, and almost every continent, if not every major city. Fast food usually implies fast eating and a fast life. Perhaps a life that is made to be too fast for one's own good and well-being.

Fast food is a very efficient factory production line with prefabricated ingredients. It is largely emotionless and soul-less. It is seemingly convenient.

Fast food is supposed to be for occasions when we are in a rush. A terrible rush wherein we cannot get proper food and take the proper time in which to eat it and digest it.

And the service in a fast food establishment (since I dare not use "restaurant" whose base etymological derivation is possibly from the verb "rester": to stay or rest for a while, or more precisely the French "restaurer": to restore or refresh -- which is the opposite of the intention of a such a fast food place) is very impersonal. It might as well be a giant vending machine.

The problem comes in when we use a fast food when we, in fact, do have the time to eat slowly and properly and, as is critical with a good meal, have a rest whilst eating.

But that's not happening. People are rushing when they have no reason to rush. That's a general fact of modern life. And a sad one.

Rushing is predicated on an underlying stress. And one doesn't especially enjoy a meal under stress. One doesn't enjoy a life under constant stress.

Admittedly, one aspect of the original meaning of fast food was that it was prepared quickly, not necessarily that we had to eat it quickly. But that soon followed in the social etiquette of the fast food kingdom and way of life. In fact, it's encouraged because fast food places depend on quantity of customers, not quality of the experience.

There is a difference between "fast food" and "take-out" food. Then there is also delivery of take-out foods to homes.

It used to be that if people didn't prepare meals in their homes, which is a far superior way of living and relating to our families, except for TV and micro-wave fast food in the home, that if we didn't make a meal at home we might go out to a proper restaurant where we would have conversation with our friends and take our time eating for an hour or two. We expected the meals in the restaurants to be better than we could make at home, or at least a cuisine we ddidn't usually prepare. And there was no wide screen TV in the restaurant. We relied on good companions and conversation.

Now, people get home from work, set themselves down in front of a TV or internet connection, and order in food from a delivery person. That's very alienating to say the least.

One can see the progression in urban restaurants, that they now depend on their take-out customers for revenue to the seeming exclusion of their eat-in clientele.

That's a huge societal change and shift.

One hardly has to look for reasons why people are above their normal BMI and why they are so alienated.

There's a proper Chinese restaurant in almost every city or even town or village of the world. That's an amazing fact. And one dish that usually appears on their menu is "Happy Family". Now there's a lesson to be learned.

"Slow down, you move too fast" as Simon and Garfunkel sang in their "59th Street Bridge Song". And the colloquial name for the song is "Feeling Groovy".

No doubt.