{"id":3584,"date":"2005-06-30T20:44:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-01T00:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/?p=3584"},"modified":"2020-09-21T08:52:43","modified_gmt":"2020-09-21T12:52:43","slug":"essay-fast-food-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/?p=3584","title":{"rendered":"[Essay] Fast Food Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This was an assignment to get us ready for watching <i>Super Size Me<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><lj-cut>No fast food chain is regarded as more unhealthy, more stomach-churning, or more cheap than Taco Bell.  With nicknames like Toxic Hell, it&#8217;s commonly thought of as having the lowest-grade ingredients and dirtiest environment.<\/lj-cut><\/p>\n<p>And yet, business keeps flowing in.  I arrived at 11:50 AM and 15 minutes later, there is still a full line of customers in the corral.  They&#8217;ve already had to open their second register to deal with the lunch rush, and the &#8220;Now Hiring&#8221; sign seems to have been up for quite some time.<\/p>\n<p>I watched the line of people and the seated customers while I munched on my hard-shell taco and chicken quesadilla.  I thought about packaging and behavior while I sipped on my lemonade (just as much sugar as any of the Pepsi products they carry).  I tried to figure out why, despite all that these people know about the food they&#8217;re purchasing, do they return to the lines and the drive thru queues of these horrible places?<\/p>\n<p>Their convenience is unparalleled.  Even at a slow pace, no sit-down restaurant can deliver food as quickly as a fast food joint.  Meals are pre-arranged and numbered, so you don&#8217;t have to spend time worrying if you&#8217;re getting a &#8220;full meal.&#8221;  The giant pops that come with the meals have cups that are designed to fit in your car&#8217;s cup holder, which is in turn designed for a smaller cup.  ATM and credit cards are now accepted, with no minimum purchase.  Even the location is optimized for your convenience.<\/p>\n<p>We no longer wish to enjoy our food, relish its taste, appreciate the roundness of a good meal, or think about it at all.  We want to eat and get back to the &#8220;real&#8221; living.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This was an assignment to get us ready for watching Super Size Me. No fast food chain is regarded as more unhealthy, more stomach-churning, or more cheap than Taco Bell. With nicknames like Toxic Hell, it&#8217;s commonly thought of as &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/?p=3584\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[34,15],"class_list":["post-3584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-livejournal","tag-writery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paQnES-VO","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3584"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6579,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3584\/revisions\/6579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}