A discourse on fast food

And hopefully a touch on much more

Faith Bugman

Dec 15, 2022

Eat the Earth. Eat eat eat. Eat it up. Eat it.

Yummy! There is so much! Nope! Fight for it!

A mouth cannot eat plastic

Scarcity only exists in post capitalist society

Society scarcity precarity purpose. Shit.

A cold table

It’’ll take you or it’ll take someone you love.

Eat the people! Eat eat eat. Eat it up. Eat it.

There is so much of the taking.

A mouth cannot eat without teeth,

hands or arms free to feed itself.

Eat eat eat, eat the rich.

The wicked. The non-feelers.

In the beginning, food was about survival. It deeply connected peoples to their land – it still does, but perhaps in a fracturing way – and is appreciated; a cultural center of life, a fecal and fawning constantly developing history of everyone and everything. Our food completes our circle, replenishes us as we further our walk by way of the spiral.

With a lot of suspicion, for my own (quite) likely misleading thoughts, but also the corporations dumping the smell of some-sort-of-fried-food, I looked up a simple starting statistic. There are 13,438 McDonalds in the United States. There are 6,093 hospitals. I click a graph, screenshotting McDonalds (or as my friends and I so lovingly call it, McDicks) brand value going from $30 billion in the early 2000s, to $196 billion this year. A subscription button pops up, and I have to sub or move on. Despite COVID, likely because the minimum wage in Pennsylvania was only just recently raised to $15/hour (which is still not a livable wage for someone with no children), McDonalds, and a disappointingly long list of other franchises and monopolies have had profits continuously soar. Going up, up, up, despite their notoriously poor conditions and quality.

I personally find myself in a drive through due to cravings or convenience. An odd sort of want in my mouth (often ignoring it, knowing I won’t be as fulfilled as I hope to be). This American nostalgia can be traced. In 1896, a man from Berlin invented “automats”, or vending machine restaurants. Six years later, two –equally white, equally rich looking– men brought the invention to Philadelphia, and shortly after New York, “Where the future tastes like a five cent piece’a pie!”, then Baltimore. “Homemade meals” were readily available from “Horn & Hardart”, the first reappearing automat. Another meal or cuppa joe ready to pop up in place of whatevers bought, and popularizing drip coffee in America. “The 1950s equivalent of Starbucks” and slowly slipping into the shadows, struggling along to be in the coffee business (which they sourced in unethical ways). An in-trend giant glass box separates the worker working the machine and the consumer playing with it, who will safely and swiftly receive their food from the other side. It did not require any human interaction, and it did not require whoever was on either side to speak the same language (an essential component, I’m sure). These automats were advertised as being robotic, but were entirely run by employees - usually only one (Lev-Tov). The recent – somewhat – collective experience of Coronavirus makes some particularly familiar with this concept. Or perhaps particularly estranged.

Within the next couple of decades, these automats would be replaced by fast food chains. And so there it was. Burgers, pie, and coffee. Shortly after milkshakes. These commodities were now tethered to the American people, perhaps somehow even a component of being American. I remember being little and hearing or reading about the stranded person, the plane survivor who couldn’t wait to eat a burger. Who couldn’t believe how much we have. I wonder what tastes better, that or their favorite childhood dish.

Eventually, fast food companies bulldoze their way into other countries, hoping to increase their revenue further and further, chasing cheaper labor, more loopholes, and inevitably spreading capitalism. There are over 31,000 McDonalds worldwide. Anywhere they can buy the clearances, coerce the consumers. Fast food - whether intentional or not – works to take over street vendors with (sometimes false) presentation of a degree of cleanliness, and cause unfair competition between fast food bullshit and actual people. So do mass franchise grocery stores, but that's a whole other paper, novel, trilogy. Fast food accompanies the mindset and culture of optimization.

How does McDonald’s serve 400,000 pounds of beef a day? 9 million pounds of french fries (Economy, P)? Well they’ve done the impossible! “McDonalds… has one of the most efficient supply chain networks across any industry” according to a Forbes article (which leaves me feeling slightly queasy, like I’m being sold something that might die on me soon). The best taco I have ever eaten was somewhere off the side of a highway in New York at a mysterious looking food truck from a very friendly man. It took at least 20-30 minutes, I have no idea, it was just nice to stretch my legs in the middle of a long journey. I would certainly rather work and eat there than McDicks.

All this personal bias aside, I began to look further into McDonald’s supply chain, which is also – from my understanding – run by McDonald’s. Everything comes from the same place, explains Marian Gross. This allows for maximum profit for all involved, and they all work together. This change is something that was long and carefully orchestrated. She is, from what I can tell, a lovely woman. She makes space for other women, and appears to be trying to grab the ropes on the expansion of these supply chains; which are essentially a handful of (5) franchisees. Gross recently worked with them to switch over from fresh to frozen beef (Forbes). There were many steps taken before her involvement; a lot of “testing” by both the previous, and a new CEO in 2017. Most of what I come across talk about how they have done all of this because it is what the “customer wants”. I can’t help but think there are other motives. Nonetheless, “this change – as well as… investments in Blockchain technology… represent an appeal to [the consumers] changing need” (McD Supply Chain Challenge).

As I attempt to sort through what appears to be a plethora of fake news, I know one thing for sure; Lopez-dorado Foods is partnered with McDonalds. This is one of the places where (at least in the Americas) they get their beef. They’ve been partnered since 1968, and recently took up a dual partnership with Tyson Foods to provide McDonalds with poultry. Their website has pictures of smiling people, and it has a culture tab that talks about the importance of family, “doing it right the first time”, diversity, and inclusion. They foster this through involvement with multiple charities, and – in 2021 – signed a VPPA to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25%.

Their production is located in Cherokee, Iowa, their headquarters in Oklahoma City (lopezdorado.com). They purchased an “idled northwest Iowa meat processing plant”, and offered help to the 40 employees working on the plant before, but they would not be so kind in the future. I try to find out where their operations existed before this, and find that they were previously known as Anderson Meats (who were also the previous owners of the plant) – briefly, there was a name change to Normac Foods, then permanently to Lopez-dorado Foods, “to reflect its diverse heritage” in 1995. This or these brand(s?) have all been a Wilson Foods subsidiary (which is just Tyson Foods under another name) (Holton, D). Wilson Foods seems to be a big deal in corporate America. Fascinating. They thrived during the 80s, and appear to be thriving today under an array of different names. The great-grandson heir of the company's founder, John Tyson, makes a yummy $1.2 million salary (Entrepreneur).

December 3, 1983, “was the first major case to use bankruptcy law to unilaterally reject collective bargaining agreements with labor unions”(Mills, M). Wilson Foods attempted to drop wages from $10.69 to $6.50. 5,000 workers manned picket lines. $8 an hour was decided on, with, of course, “cuts in vacation, holiday, and health benefits” (Williams, W). The livable wage was somewhere between $8-9. So it begins. The company(s?) went through bankruptcies, buy outs, bankruptcies, more buyouts, name changes, attempts for monopolies to stay afloat because they simply just had that much money to play with, to just try again. Go to court, and try again.

Some of the information is hard to decipher. Wilson Foods seems to be the largest group, but is also synonymous with Tyson Foods, who have (since the turn of the millennium at least) been more interested in meat “retail” rather than its actual production (which seems heavily reminiscent of Blockchain technology and ideologies (Wang, X)). Problematic. Presently, they receive meat from a bunch of smaller family owned farms mostly located in Tennessee or Oklahoma, but also other states and a few countries (ie). There seem to be a multitude of processing plants as well: Gunzburg factory in Germany, whose operation relies on McDonald’s as a customer, Cargill meats located all over North America, and now, in Australia. Lorenzo Meats in Cherokee county, who also rely on their relationship with McDonalds, and “sits in the midst of the richest farmland of North America”. There has been a meat processing plant here for decades. Tyson Foods or Wilson Foods, whichever name they are going by at this moment, has owned a plant in Cherokee since the 60s, always doing something slightly different involving meat, buying out the land when they didn’t have the right business plan. .

The small rural town relies on Tyson & Wilson for work, as do others, typically of a couple thousand people. This group of people owns many plants. At least 120. These processing plants get their beef from over 11,000 different rural farmers throughout the states (Tyson Foods). All of these meat processors accept meat from wherever they can find it, local farmers, “the open market”, partners who depend on their pay. These factories grind the beef together and sell to their next “buyer”, partner; McDonalds. There, the meat will be sold one last time to the customer.

This is considered an efficient supply chain, and the levels of business are intense and extensively different. Most of this – the factories and the farms – are conveniently located in rural America. Here the land can be exploited, and the big business man can come hold a town’s “economic potential ‘hostage’” (Hardy, K). In Cherokee this is what happened when the meat plant closed in 2014. It left a town of around 5,000 with 450 suddenly unemployed people. Tyson then refused to sell and bought out the land to buy out more time, withholding resources people depend on, an area full of machines and land ready for making these people their living. Directly interfering with the town’s families ability to afford necessities. People of the town were upset. Issues like this are not uncommon (see issues with Nestle). Every part of the chain is strategically placed. Manipulated. Maneuvered. Into the place that will most benefit Tyson. The man; if I may be so cliche. From family farms to family franchises.

Cattle were originally from Ox domesticated in Turkey and Pakistan about 10,000 years ago, spreading through the Middle East and Africa where they’d be raised in herds. In North and East Africa this is still practiced, and much different, more dangerous, due to land privatization (Ryan, K). Spreading further, cows were brought to the New World by the Spanish in 1400 (McTavish, E). Before then, for 15,000 years, Native cultures thrived on this continent, and others. People everywhere participated in farming. It was a necessity. There was also something more than this. There was an understanding that people are part of land and vice versa. Everything is a part of one another. Mutualism. Land provides and people protect it; learn how to better fit into their landscape (“From Caves to Cosmos”). There were no buyouts, and there was a much different kind of efficiency.

Now, agriculture works entirely differently as most of our lives are dictated by consumption and the structures reliant on it. In turn, most of us have also become reliant. The degrees of separation between us and what we put in our bodies continues to tick upwards. 2% of United States families have farms. 1% have chickens. Less have any other form of meat. Farming is no longer popular, though homesteading and sustainable living are “coming back” (or at least appearing to). The zeitgeist can’t stop talking about the assured doom of climate change. I begin to question if America is as “free” as it claims.

The “Indian Removal Act” of 1830 resulted in the continued and attentive genocide of Native peoples, a silencing of a culture, and a way of life. A way of living. Within the first 100 years of Europeans arriving in North America establishments murdered 85% of the indigenous population (National Archives). There was mass taking of the land as we and other European countries exploited wherever possible within the world. We massacred the buffalo, and replaced their foods with European domesticated breeds. Stomped out the land and built what we wanted over it. Placed what we wanted where. Demanding capitalism. Labor. And land. Sucking everything dry, and then blaming it on the people under attack. Creating the conditions in order to demand what is desired. America.

We will be led there.

Perhaps America’s obsession with optimization explains our population's growing tendency towards fast food. After all, who doesn’t love a McDonalds run? Or whatever place you go to at 12 or 2. There is nothing more convenient than grabbing a sandwich, a bag of chips, and a warm meal. Just about any craving is immediately disposable. Even pickles if you can find a Wawa (my east coast favorite), or some other advanced corner store. When I first got my drivers license, I used to save a little money from working to “treat myself” once a week. I still do this, but now I find myself saving up to have the freedom to make my own food, or try a new type of food. I notice cultural cuisines showing the blueprints of connection, between people and therefore between the land, and its gifts. The story of history. I wonder why my taste for fast food seems to be faltering, if since I’ve grown out of my childhood invincibility, my body is trying to tell me something. At college, I miss my father holding his hand out, telling me to at least try some new flavor, and I, wanting to please him, always ready to quickly oblige. I miss my mom's home cooked food, chicken and dumplings, hamburgers from scratch, mac and cheese that destroys my stomach but fulfills me deeply, billowing up into my heart, making the unique part of my brain buzz.

Yummy

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