Like most Americans, I've been to just about every fast food chain our great country has to offer, to various degrees of success and regularity.
McDonald's, predictably, has the honor of receiving the vast majority of my visits. During my broke college years, Taco Bell ("fifty-nine cents for a taco!") and Pizza Hut ($5 pepperoni pizza Wednesdays) gave Ronald a run for his money. But, that was before the huge error of deciding to create Taco Bell/Pizza Hut hybrids. As great as grease is, you shouldn't mix them. Each kind of grease pulls the human body in different directions. Entering a Taco Bell/Pizza Hut hybrid makes me feel like I'm sinking into schizophrenia. Not as fun a ride as I would've imagined.
Regardless of your preference, there are several irrefutable facts that come with frequenting the American past time of fast food restaurants.
First, some fast food chains are simply far better than others; Five Guys Burgers and Fries over Jack in the Box, for example. As fun as Jack's advertising may be, they simply have too many cooks in the kitchen. Burgers, tacos, breakfast burritos, coos coos. Pick a demographic and stick with it, Jack. I'm begging you. Whereas, Five Guys simply does burgers and dogs. And they do them damn well.
Second, no matter what their advertising may say, every fast food chain has the same basic goal; make mostly edible, unhealthy food quickly for families and single men. (There are exceptions, of course, Subway being the most prominent. I'm not sure if I should even count Subway because they don't serve fries, which should be a mandatory characteristic of any fast food joint. That and the fact that they don't have a drive thru forces them from this piece.)
But honestly, the goal of fast food restaurants is to make money by cooking cheap food of varying degrees of taste, while following lax rules given by the FDA.
As Americans, we know and understand these facts. Which is why many of us laugh when these kinds of places try to be sneaky with succumbing to the new laws of informing the consumer of the calories in each item of food sold. Until recently, McDonald's had their calorie information on the backs of the paper tray liners. Who looks there? That kind of following the letter-of-the-law thinking really isn't necessary. (I see enough of that on a daily basis teaching middle school.) Seriously, we know we're eating cheap food, no matter how edible or not it may be, which usually lands in the zip code of a thousand calories. We know. We understand. We're still here. Just give us our food. And don't forget the damn straw. Lather, rinse, and repeat.
I don't even think the calorie numbers should be there. They should go with small icons instead. Lord knows we're used to those from our smart phone apps. The low calorie, "healthy component" foods should have a silhouette of Richard Simmons or Jillian Michaels. Each level to follow would have another famous shadow get bigger and bigger until the Big Mac has the form of Alfred Hitchcock, or perhaps a coffin, next to it.
I really don't understand why the government wastes its time on such things. If you're going to target fast food chains, fine. But, do it for a worthy cause. For example, requiring all individual ketchup containers be proper size for dipping. Why is this so difficult? One one hand, Burger King is brilliant by giving the customer the option of fries, sweet potato fries, or onion rings with every value meal. But, their ketchup container is the size of a quarter, which means you can't dip the onion ring into the ketchup unless you're an expert on fried batter origami. Unacceptable.
Another rule. No fast food chain can advertise the fact that they use recycled materials in their napkins, food containers, etc when they have NO recycling containers in the restaurant. What's the point? "All of our paper products are made from recycled materials." Now, throw it all away. As far as I know, Burgerville and Taco Time are the only chains of any size that consistently has recycling containers. Inexcusable.
Next, stop trying to pretend like your healthy food is actually healthy. Salad. Makes sense, until you have a packet of dressing that could embalm a buffalo and a packet of croutons and baco bits. I'm for all those things, of course, but who are you kidding calling it healthy? It's like calling a garbage man a "sanitation engineer". An important job for sure, but I don't think engineering is what most of us think about in regards to that position.
Lastly, stupid toys in the kids' meals. Stop it. Now. I get the fact that the parent companies involved between the movie studios and the fast food joints come up with these deals. Whenever a huge (assumed) blockbuster movie is about to be released, they join forces with McD's or Burger King or whoever. There are cups and fry containers with the movie title and sometimes a game is involved where you can be the one person in the country who actually goes on-line to type in a seventeen character code to see if you've won a Ford Mustang or an X-Box.
I must step aside for a moment. This on-line prize thing has gone too far. McDonald's teamed up with the Olympics this past summer. Okay, fine. It's ironic that if an athlete ever spent any extended time at a McD's the only Olympic sport they could qualify for would be sumo wrestling, but that's not important.
During the Summer Olympics, to find out if you won anything after visiting McDonald's you had to go on-line and type in a code to find out what Olympic event you were rooting for and then wait and find out if an American athlete medaled to see if you won. Seriously? I'm supposed to have time for this? They couldn't just have the name behind a scratch box and then we can go on-line if our lives become any more boring than they already are? Besides, as Americans, we love those scratch boxes. It's one reason why the lottery is so popular. Very limited physical movement, with the chance of being rich. It's instant gratification. Or it's instant disappointment and we buy a scone and a vanilla latte. No matter what, we win. Instantly. See the theme? It should go hand in hand with fast food, shouldn't it?
Back to the toys. I have four daughters, or fifteen, depending on their behavior on any given day. Regardless, we've bought many a fast food kids' meal. They have toys inside the bag. Dumb, cheap, pathetic toys. Why? Is it really so hard to come up with something somewhat interesting and well made?
Recently, McDonald's kids' meals were teamed with Power Rangers. For some mysterious reason, my girls love that show. (At the moment, my two middle daughters are engaged to the Red and Blue rangers. My wife and I are very proud.) The official Power Rangers toy was a small plastic POS with three small disks that shot about twelve inches, but not in a straight line. I figure I'll be peeing like that once I hit sixty. I don't need extra reminders of that now.
Not surprisingly, the kids forget about the damn toy before we even pull into the garage. Do we really need to be wasting that much plastic for those things? Last night, the girls got a book in their bag from Arby's. Kudos there. That makes sense. It was about a curly fry finding out why he was special. Not the most fascinating story line, mind you, but it had a stronger plot and message than any tween show on the Disney Channel. And it was a book. You know, those things that have pages with words on them? Our seven-year-old actually wanted to read it to us in the car. That is far more valuable than getting hit upside the head by a paper disc shot by a piece of plastic that will be in a landfill by next week, or next month depending on when we clean out the car.
Here in America, we have numerous choices for everything. (Except, of course, electing a presidential candidate who's not a Democrat or Republican. But, I digress.) There's rarely a street in this country where there's only one fast food restaurant. They're like car dealerships. There's never one by itself. Perhaps, if we start being a bit more picky about what place we eat out at, particularly one(s) that start following these new rules, maybe the others would follow. Together, we can make a difference.
Or, we could actually eat at home more often.
