Letters to the Editor
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Alternatives to McDonalds
In this article, Corby Kummer of the Atlantic Monthly suggests that we should fight fast food with fast food, and describes a fast food joint "that treats workers better and that buys a meaningful percentage of its food from local growers."
In Oregon and Southwest Washington, we have a string of restaurants called Burgerville that goes a long way towards accomplishing at least the latter. They use Oregon Beef for their burgers, local suppliers for buns and frozen yogurt, and a string of fresh salads using local smoked salmon or blue cheese. And their seasonal dishes help us mark the advance of the calendar, whether it's strawberry milkshakes in June (when the berries are actually ripe here) or Walla Walla Onion Rings in the fall. The restaurant is a huge success and has many many fans here in the northwest and I daresay they are holding their own against the national chains.
Disclaimer: I don't work at Burgerville and I don't know anyone who does. I just go there a lot...and my personal recommendation is the turkey burger with Tillamook Cheddar.
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Should be required reading
Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio's books should be required reading for everyone in the post-Industrial West. Whenever I start "coveting" anything, I pick up their book, Material World, which shows what a statistically "average" family owns in thirty different countries. Each family is photographed with all its possessions in front of its home. This new book will be a welcome companion. I've given so many of their books away - I wish I could give one to everyone in the US. I make sure the school library has them - this will be the perfect Christmas gift to give to them. Thank you, Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio, for doing this important work.
Their book, Man Eating Bugs, is swell, too!!!!!!!! =)
Here's their Web site's URL: http://www.menzelphoto.com/gallery/books.htm
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About the alternative to Mc
I don't think 'weaning' people from McD helps. The Burgervilles (I know nought about them, but I don't like chains) and Whole Foods Markets of this world find themselves sloooowly performing a bait and switch: they start out with local healthy stuff, then gradually, inch by inch, switch to less pure ingredients. Watch as WFM started switching from olive oil to canola oil (=machine lubricant) in their salads and dressings. And farmed salmon ("well it's better than NO salmon!", they claim, as if it's the public interest they're serving, rather than their own pocketbooks). I say start small and local, no chains, and then at least the road to corruption and greed takes longer.
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The location of Ambato
While I greatly enjoyed reading this article, it might be worthwhile for the author to note that "the nearby city of Ambato" referenced at the end of the article as the place where Orlando Aymes once tried McDonald's is not in Peru, where the Aymes family had been descirbed as living in the previous paragraph. Rather, it is a city in the mountains of central Ecuador. While these countries are neighbors and have many geographic similarities, I expect that, were the author to describe 'the nearby Italian city of Marseilles,' the error would be glaring enough for a copy-editor to catch. The fact that certain countries, and particularly their smaller cities, are less often on the radar of our collective North American conscious is, of course, not an acceptable excuse for casual misinformation. I believe the source of the error, though, is in stating that the Aymes family lives in "the mountains of Peru," since the caption for the photograph at the lead of the article locates them in Ecuador.
Thank you for reviewing such an unusual and informative book.
All best,
Jen McCreary
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Choice
Of all the circumstances that govern a families' food consumption, the most important is choice. If the fast food is cheaper and tastes better, kids will eat it even to their own detriment. Six gallons of Coca-Cola a week??? Dumbasses. Only education can, over the long term, stop this slide. When consumers worldwide demand better and less processed food, companies will provide it.
Going backward is no solution. There are plenty of people who romanticize what the article describes as "laboring dawn to dusk at the edges of hunger," which is what humans did for most of our history. These people have it all wrong. No one wants to live that way. For some time to come, there will be a middle ground, between peasantry and wealth, where the most affordable foods will unfortunately be those which are mass-produced. Branding and packaging are a necessary part of that.
There is no way to provide a fast or easy transition between subsistence farming and a wealthy society. Ultimately, the solution to getting healthy food will be to push your $150 grocery cart down the aisle of Whole Foods.
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"It's a McWorld after all" correction
Just one tiny, tiny thing -- the Australian slang for McDonalds is "Maccas", not "Mackas". I told you it was tiny. :-)
Chris
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Everyone deserves a better life
This article bothers me for some reason. On the one hand, I do feel saddened that unique, valuable cultural practices are subsummed by the pervasive and powerful force of industrialized Western culture. In this particular case, the methods of food preparation (e.g. toiling for half a day to bake a loaf of bread), which are certainly tied to traditions and unique geography, are lost to new generations. That is a cultural loss.
On the other hand, how many contemporary Americans bemoan the loss of the horse-drawn carriage or the equine-dependent skills that we have obviously forgotten as the result of the development of the internal-combustion engine-driven automobile? My point is- for many of the families referenced in the article, if you don't have to spend half a day baking bread or pounding millet, that time can be better devoted to gaining an education or working to better the future of your children. I think it is arrogant of us as Westerners who have clearly benefitted from the advancements of industrialized production to question whether developing cultures should be allowed the same benefits. That doesn't imply that obesity is not a problem or that overconsumption is not a dire issue for the future sustainability of our energy-hungry culture, but we do need to understand that the rest of the world's cultures are as entitled to a middle class as we are to ours.