Fast foods are convenience foods that can be prepared and served very quickly. On average, one-fifth of the population of the USA (45 million people) eat in a fast-food restaurant each day. Although it is possible to eat nutritious fast foods, menus tend to be stacked with items high on most dietitians' ‘Avoid!’ lists.
Fast foods include salty french fries, beefburgers, fried chicken, and pizzas with a thick cheese covering. These appeal to the Western palate by being fatty, low in fibre and nutrients, but high in salt (one beefburger can contain more than 1000 milligrams of sodium). To make matters worse, they are often served with sugar-laden soft drinks or creamy milkshakes full of empty calories or fat.
Those who regularly eat fast foods should be particularly selective, moderating the intake of unhealthy options and choosing healthy options, such as salads with low-fat dressings, wholegrain buns, and skimmed milk.
Fast food is what one eats in the vast majority of America's restaurants. The term denotes speed in both food preparation and customer service, as well as speed in customer eating habits. The restaurant industry, however, has traditionally preferred the designation "quick service." For hourly wage earners—whether factory hands or store clerks—take-out lunch wagons and sit-down lunch counters appeared at factory gates, streetcar stops, and throughout downtown districts in the late nineteenth century. For travelers, lunch counters also appeared in railroad stations nationwide. Fried food prevailed for its speed of preparation, as did sandwich fare and other fixings that could be held in the hand and rapidly eaten, quite literally, "on the run." Novelty foods, such as hot dogs, hamburgers, french fries, came to dominate, first popularized at various world's fairs and at the nation's resorts. Soft drinks and ice cream desserts also became a mainstay. Thus, "fast food" also came to imply diets high in fat and caloric intake. By the end of the twentieth century, the typical American consumed some three hamburgers and four orders of french fries a week. Roughly a quarter of all Americans bought fast food every day.
The rise of automobile ownership in the United States brought profound change to the restaurant industry, with fast food being offered in a variety of "drive-in" restaurant formats. Mom-and-pop enterprise was harnessed, largely through franchising, in the building of regional and national restaurant chains: Howard Johnson's, Dairy Queen, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, and Taco Tico. Place-product-packaging was brought forcefully to the fore; each restaurant in a chain variously shares the same logo, color scheme, architectural design motif, and point-of-purchase advertising, all configured in attention-getting, signlike buildings. Typically, fast food restaurants were located at the "roadside," complete with driveways, parking lots, and, later, drive-through windows for those who preferred to eat elsewhere, including those who ate in their cars as "dashboard diners." Critical to industry success was the development of paper and plastic containers that kept food hot and facilitated "carry-out." Such packaging, because of the volume of largely nonbiodegradable waste it creates, has become a substantial environmental problem.
In 2000, Mcdonalds—the largest quick-service chain—operated at some 13,755 locations in the United States and Canada. The company's distinctive "golden arches" have spread worldwide, well beyond North America. Abroad, fast food came to stand as an important symbol of American cultural, if not economic, prowess. And, just as it did at home, fast food became, as well, a clear icon of modernity. Historically, fast food merchandising contributed substantially to the quickening pace of American life through standardization. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, it fully embraced mass production and mass marketing techniques, reduced to the scale of a restaurant. Chains of restaurants, in turn, became fully rationalized within standardized purchasing, marketing, and management systems. Such a system depends on a pool of cheap, largely unskilled labor, the quick service restaurant industry being notorious for its low wages and, accordingly, its rapid turnover of personnel.
Origin: 1954
The pace of modern life is fast, and nowhere is it faster than in America. We want fast transportation, fast communication, fast computers, fast photos, fast music, fast repairs, and fast service from the businesses we patronize. It is from the last of these that we got fast food.
At first, it was a matter of fast service. Fountain and Fast Food Service was the title of a trade magazine, which published statements like this from 1951: "The partners have become old hands at spotting the type of conventioneer that will patronize their fast food service." Gradually service disappeared, and in 1954 we find fast food by itself in the title "Fountain and Fa