Despite the spectacular weather of the last several days (including today), I've been busy with work and enable to take much advantage of it. Perhaps tomorrow. Reach the Beach, the 55 mile bike ride, isn't that far off, and I've definitely got to get some ride time in before that sneaks up on me.
I finished the highly enlightening book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser. One can argue that it's hardly an unbiased work, but if it doesn't make you think twice about your next burger and fries then I don't know what will. Schlosser covers a variety of industry ills: sub-living wage salaries for workers, the economic devastation created by lack of anti-trust enforcement, the meat packing industry's horrific safety record (if you've read Upton Sinclair's 1906 book The Jungle you might wonder how come so little has changed), the sad environmental consequences beef production, and the startling health risks associated with eating fast food. It may be a lot of things, but what McDonald's is serving can hardly be considered a happy meal.
I have neither the time or inclination to rehash everything the book says—it's worth reading the work itself not my lame attempt at summary—but I will say that I think I'm done with McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell, KFC, and the like. I'll talk more about that in a moment.
Of the all the fast food chains mentioned only two, Jack in the Box and In-N-Out Burger, garner anything that can be considered praise. For Jack in the Box it's because after the Ecoli deaths in Washington State in the early '90s, they instituted a rigorous beef screening and testing program which most other fast food joints have refused to follow. At this point it's probably safe to say that it is very unlikely that you will get food poisoning from a Jack in the Box burger. That might sound like damning with faint praise, but not if you consider that per day 200,000 people in the United States get some degree of food poisoning, 900 are hospitalized from it, and 14 die.
How bad can this be? An excerpt from page 197:
A nationwide study published by the USDA in 1996 found that 7.5 percent of the ground beef samples taken at processing plants were contaminated with Salmonella, 11.7 percent were contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, 30 percent were contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus, and 53.3 percent were contaminated with Clostridium perfrigens. All of these pathogens can make people sick; food poisoning caused by Listeria generally requires hospitalization and proves fatal in about one out of every five cases...A simple explanation for why eating a hamburger can now make you seriously ill: There is shit in the meat.
In short, this is why the kids died from eating Jack in the Box burgers in Washington State, and though the industry line was that the burgers were insufficiently cooked, cooking had nothing to do with it. The meat was contaminated, and cooking it hotter or longer would not have killed the Ecoli (which is a surprisingly resistant little germ). Today, having learned the correct lesson, Jack in the Box's food safety program sets the industry standard, which is to say that they use microbial testing throughout their process. Of McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell, and KFC, none use microbial testing.
Indeed, if you want to see a really fine joke, check out McDonald's web page on food quality and safety. It's all about awards McDonald's has handed out to their suppliers, which is hardly reassuring. They talk about how their Global Safety & Security Department "provides strategic global leadership"—whatever that means—and how their "safety specialists" ensure compliance with McDonald's standards. They conveniently fail to mention what those standards are. Burger King, Taco Bell, and KFC don't even have food quality/safety pages. Carl's Jr. has a page, but it appears that they are more concerned with food handling at the restaurant-level than microbial testing the meat from the slaughterhouse.
In-N-Out Burger garnered praise on several levels: First, they pay much higher than industry standard wages, and second, they actually cook their own food at each restaurant as opposed to everyone else who simply warms up frozen shipments from the distribution centers. One result is that In-N-Out Burger has been rated "highest in food quality, value, service, atmosphere, and cleanliness. In-N-Out has ranked highest in food quality every year that the chain has been included in the survey. According to the consumers polled by Restaurants and Institutions in 2000, the lowest-quality food of any major hamburger chain was served at McDonald's" (260). I have no idea if In-N-Out Burger uses microbial testing to ensure meat quality, but I've emailed to find out.
Having read what I've read, it's a safe bet that I will never again eat at a fast food restaurant that doesn't use microbial testing, and I honestly don't believe that you should either. If you don't know what you're eating, you should make an effort to find out. You're literally putting your life in the hands of the teenager behind the counter making minimum wage, and without some degree of testing and oversight, that's not a very reassuring thought.
)? How about that I am incredibly lucky to have such a genuine, caring, and honest friend? Yeah, that sums it up pretty well.