Progressive Wednesday

I’m not lovin’ it: Stop

April 25th, 2007 by Progressive Wednesday

Stop eating fast food, plain and simple. Okay, plain, but maybe not so simple. We have become a society on the move (at least in our cars) and sometimes a quick meal at KFC is the only thing we seem to have time for. Plus, we’ve grown to like the food, maybe even love it. It’s fast, convenient, tasty, cheap, and deadly. To prove my point, the ever useful numbered list:

1. Chicken served at McDonald’s, Burger King, Chick-fil-A, Outback, Applebee’s, Chili’s and TGI Friday’s was found by the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine to contain PhIPm, a carcinogenic compound. In other words, it causes cancer and they didn’t tell us.
2. To quote Eric Schlosser, author of Fast-Food Nation: “Fast food has become the operating system of today’s retail economy, wiping out small businesses, obliterating regional differences, and spreading identical stores throughout the country like a self-replicating code.” To quote me: “It’s like Wal-Mart that makes you fat.”
3. In the “duh” category, eating fast food regularly greatly increases your chance of becoming obese and developing diabetes. Even, or especially, in children.
4. The 142 billion dollars we spend annually on fast food exceeds the amount we spend on higher education. That would help explain more than just our weight problem.
5. According to the Worldwatch Institute, 12 percent of the national healthcare budget goes toward treating ailments caused by obesity.
6. Animal rights groups have won many lawsuits against every major fast food chain. Conditions have since gotten better, but are still a long ways from good.
7. The production of food by major fast food chains contributes exponentially to soil depletion, water and air pollution, the loss of family farms and rural communities, and even global warming.
8. Every fast food hamburger you eat contains meat from hundreds of cattle. Each burger potentially contains diseases from all of those animals.
9. Because fast food is so highly processed, much of its flavor is destroyed, so the tastes of most fast food are manufactured at a series of special chemical plants in New Jersey.
10. Major fast food companies are frequently involved in civil rights lawsuits for the treatment of workers at their supplier’s farms, from Florida to China.