At Wendy’s, you can get the Four for Four for $4. McDonald’s rivals them with the $1 McChicken. Burger King offers an entire Whopper meal for just $5. Of course, like most good things, it is too good to be true. Fast food is just that — fast and cheap, at the expense of quality, taste and health. It has fundamentally changed the health of millions for the worse.
Fast food franchises, since their inception, have operated under a capitalist system that profits off of people who lack resources to afford nutritional foods. People starved of both food and wealth are forced to resort to fast food as their primary source for nutrition.
While society often blames the overweight, fast-food-eating person for their poor choice of eating high-calorie, low-quality food through a window, the issue goes well beyond choice. For many, in particular minorities, cheap food is the only option.
A 1939 U.S. Department of Agriculture survey found that during the summer, Black Americans’ diets contained more vitamins, minerals and proteins than white households that spent the same money on food.
Twenty-six years later the trend remained the same: In 1965, Black Americans were still consuming the recommended quantities of fat, fiber, fruits and vegetables at twice the rate of white people.
However, according to the National Restaurant Association, by 1966, annual restaurant volume, driven larger by lower-priced chain restaurants, had grown to $20 billion, an increase that has disproportionately impacted impoverished communities.
Food was cheap, and communities of color could only afford cheap food.
A similar trend can be observed in Indigenous communities. Following years of displacement and being forced into reservations, traditional foodways were rendered more and more inaccessible. The U.S. government began offering rations to impoverished communities that consisted of culturally unfamiliar foods. By the 1960s, more than half of people living on reservations lived on foods including canned and packaged items high in fat, sugar and sodium. Then, there was the increasing presence of fast food across the nation.
The impact of such expansion was a silent killer in both communities: diabetes. In 2018 Black Americans were 60% more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes than their white peers. According to the Indian Health Service from 2019, Indigenous peoples are three times more likely to die from Type 2 diabetes than non-Indigenous peoples.
On a national scale, chronic diseases are the leading causes of death for all americans. Furthermore, diabetes, heart issues and cancers can all be attributed to the overconsumption of fast food.
Accompanying the physical impacts, shame has only fed into the cycle of nutritional oppression.
“Feeling guilty and ashamed and feeling bad about yourself is not going to promote health either,” said professor of Nutrition Katherine Burt at Lehman University. “You’re just going to add to your stress. You’re gonna feel like you can’t feed your kids the way you want to.”
With that being said, solutions are closer than one might think. There are 13 local, community-run gardens in the Orlando area alone. They are free to grow crops in and even offer courses on how to begin to grow sustainably in your community. There are multiple volunteering opportunities at each of them accessible to all students.
Our local government has a role as well. Tax breaks can be offered to encourage the construction of grocery stores in food deserts. For farms initiatives are needed to subsidize the cost of growing organic.
“There’s an incentive system that doesn’t work to transition to more organic growing styles, so you need something else to encourage these transitions,” Guthman said.
Investing in public transportation, especially in a state like Florida, would go a long way in expanding access to produce and grocery stores. Without a robust or accessible public transportation system people have no choice but to turn to convenient, albeit unhealthy, food. Making our government aware of what they need to do begins with something as simple as a petition or letter to a representative.
Finally, The simplest solution is to just be in communities and listen to what people have to say.
“I’m trying to learn about how somebody else lives and so they deserve my time, my attention and they are an expert in their own lives,” said Burt. “So if I’m really going to understand the issues, then I need to be open and humble to all of the things that I do not know.”
None of this is to shame or chastise those who enjoy fast food. For many of us, fast food is a guilty pleasure, not a source of nutrition. As a result, we should see the health problems in poorer communities for what they are — a lack of access to healthier options, not the sign of a consumer who chooses to eat nutritionally inadequate food through a convenient window
