Fast Food: Threat or Menace?

High school used to be all about indoctrination, not learning. But things have changed.

Now college too is all about indoctrination, not learning.

If, for example, my students are to write an essay, the topic proposed, regardless of the textbook, is always the problem of pollution. Or it is the effects of TV violence on the young. Or it is the evils of smoking. Or the evils of fast food.

Students groan, at the sameness of it all. Yet they do get the indoctrination, more or less. They all know smoking is bad, and pollution is bad, and TV is bad. Whether it is or not. The essential point that these matters are beyond dispute gets across.

But, here in the Arab world at least, my students are not always as capable of saying why. Recently, for example, we were assigned the task of writing on “the causes and effects of fast food” And they all knew that fast food was bad, and had only bad effects. And they all knew that one of these effects was that it was unhealthy.

However, they were shakier on exactly why it was unhealthy. Most thought it was because they reused oil. Some suggested it was because they used cheap ingredients. Many thought it was dirty, compared to a conventional restaurant. More than a few came right out and asserted that there was poison in the food. One woman insisted that all fast food should be outlawed.

But then again, really, why do people feel fast food is unhealthy? Is it, really? Of course, there is no poison in the food. A fast food franchise is probably cleaner than a regular restaurant. It must pass not just one, but two inspections: that of the health department, and that of the franchising company. And, unlike most sit-down restaurants, the kitchen is visible: you can see and judge the cleanliness for yourself. I can’t think what the health problem would be with re-using oil.

The official reason why fast food is unhealthy, I guess, as stressed in the film “Super-Size Me,” is that it is not a balanced diet, and it is heavy on the fats and oils. So a regular fast-food diet, presumably, makes you fat.

But is even this true? Some fast food is fatty—french fries, surely, and fried chicken. But doesn’t that depend very much on what you order? And I don’t mean just salads. Surely the classic fast food is the hamburger. A Big Mac has—how did the rhyme go?—two all-beef patties, onions, lettuce, tomatoes, mayonnaise, on a sesame-seed bun. I count all the basic food groups, and nothing especially oily there. A Subway sandwich also more or less exudes health. So does the average pizza.

Now, if it all depends on what you order, how can we possibly blame “fast food” per se, as opposed to individual choices? Indeed, if we told those people who choose to order fried chicken with French fries and a shake at a fast food outlet to eat instead at home or at a conventional restaurant, why on earth do we think they would suddenly make better choices? And the fast food business is built on responsiveness to customers’ demands; if we were prepared to choose even healthier alternatives, they would probably show up at fast food outlets very quickly.

So why is it, really, that the college indoctrination process so despises fast food?

I think the answer is that college is designed specifically as an indoctrination into the proper attitudes of the ruling class—to which, if you have a college education, you can begin to aspire. And important among these is contempt for the working class, for the poor. After all, if you do not show the proper contempt for the poor, you may not be reliable in upholding the class interests.

Fast food is, almost above all, cheap food. It is a chance for the poor to eat out. Therefore, it is to be distained. Worse, it is a chance for a small businessman to succeed, even perhaps move up socially—franchises are invariably “Mom and Pop” operations. Just as TV is to be distained, probably exactly because it is free entertainment, and so entertainment for the poor. Just as smoking is to be distained, because cigarettes, unlike more dangerous things like skiing, yachting, or hang gliding, are a pleasure even the poor can afford. And pollution? As long as you blame the big factories, as is commonly done, it too becomes a matter of distain for the poor. That is where they find their employment.

The seal hunt? Wrong, because something done by rednecks, poor fishermen who would otherwise be unemployed. Same for hunting and owning guns—farmers often need guns, and poor farmers need the meat. Farmers are working class.

Choose anything considered beyond the pale by the left, and considered an important part of the indoctrination of college students, and I think you can detect the same theme.