If fast food is all there is…

It isn’t. Fast food is popular amongst people who can afford more healthful food, people who often eat more healthful food, and people who have the time to prepare their own healthful food.

2010 USA is not gastronomically equivalent, or even similar, to Victorian London. We are not ignorant of healthful food: it is plentiful and cheaply available.

People are happy with the price, taste, and convenience of typical fast food, and not because there’s nothing else. Personally, when I eat fast food, I’m generally making a convenience trade-off, because I can afford a more healthful meal, but I don’t have time to wait for a proper restaurant to take the time to make them for me, and I don’t always have the time to do so myself. Other people may make a similar decision based on price.

There are healthy menu items offered at most fast-food places. These are not popular menu items, and if they were, then the fast food places would expand their healthy menu choices to try to capture the market. They know how to make money.

Tonight I will prepare a meal at home that will be superior to fast food in terms of price and healthfulness, nearly equal to fast food in terms of convenience, (but only because I will be at home – my house is not always a convenient dinner option) but in no way as tasty. I can see the logic in someone spending more money to gain a little convenience and more than a little flavor while sacrificing healthfulness.

For a superb example of the last, consider all the people who purchase a soda with their Taco Bell meal instead of getting the (free!) water.

I’d say you both are. If fast food is all there is, that’s what people will demand, because that’s all they know. But if other options are available, (some) people will try them and appreciate them, and they’ll build up more of a following. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle either way

For example, the restaurant that you mention sounds like it serves food that I would like. But with its limited hours, I would probably never go there (if it were in my town), so I’d never tell my friends about it, and they might never go there, and so on. If they could afford to stay open for longer in the first place, they’d have more customers, and could afford to stay open for even longer.

I don’t think there’s a “conspiracy against healthful foods.” But I don’t think that “People prefer unhealthful food to healthful food” is some kind of immutable fact about the universe either.

Another reason for people ‘choosing’ fast food so often is that it’s mostly all there is.

In your formulation, people choose fast food because no healthful alternatives are available.

In my formulation, no healthful alternatives are available because people prefer fast food.

Which of us is correct? I can only offer you this: There is such a thing as healthy fast food. My town has a fast food joint that offers a variety of creative and healthful foods, with many sandwiches offered on bread that’s made fresh daily by another business, right in the same building. Healthful fast food places are not enormously (or even moderately) successful for lots of reasons, including

1) Health nuts and foodies turn their noses up at the concept of fast food.

2) Non health nuts prefer to pay for something tasty, and healthful food just isn’t as tasty as less healthful foods.

The healthful fast food place I mentioned early has very limited hours, by the way. Not open at all Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday, usually closed by 6pm, and never open before noon. They just don’t draw enough customers to stay open longer.

There’s no conspiracy against healthful foods. I promise you, just as soon as enough people want healthful fast foods enough to make them into popular menu items, you’ll find them showing up at the fast food places that already exist.

Most commuters, where? Here in flyover country, commutes don’t involve trains very often, which cuts a lot of what you’re talking about out. My commute is 15 minutes of driving to work, and 15 minutes back home. I live nine miles from my office, and the only way I could live significantly closer would be to join the army and live on base.

Nationwide estimates of average commute time are around 25 minutes in each direction.

And, Matt, I have a decent 40-hour a week job with virtually no overtime, with great benefits that pays above average in our area. But the better pay doesn’t come in the first few years; you’ve got to put in your time to work your way up the salary schedule.

If you want to argue that ‘buying fast food isnt cheap’ and then order the most expensive thing on the menu to try to convince us… you’re point is invalid. Buy the cheapest thing on the menu, share the soda and shop for value and fast food can be both affordable and convenient.

Thank you! As a 9 year veteran of fast food, I can probably count on one hand how many times I’ve been asked what the healthiest thing on the menu is. People want the biggest or the cheapest. There are usually healthier options, and a lot of people try for them, but by the time you put three packets of blue cheese dressing on your grilled chicken salad to make it a satisfying meal, you might as well have gotten a quarter pound bacon cheeseburger. It has less fat and calories. I wish I was exaggerating about that, or the fact that people do it.

By the way, why the heck does McDonald’s have such a reputation for being cheap? Dollar menu aside, when compared apples to apples to other fast food, it’s the most expensive, at least where I am.

Yes. Look harder.

I have a somewhat cynical view of this all, in that the “the system” is somewhat self-perpetuating. Are there any decent jobs out there that provide health insurance, pay a decent wage, AND require at most a 40-hour/week commitment? From my perspective, you need to put in 50 or 60 hour weeks to have the insurance and decent wage. Add work time to sleep time, and most of us are left with precious little family or even hobby time. So we buy convenience foods and goods so we can take back a little time for ourselves, but keep working to pay for it all.

I get up at 500am to exercise, and I’m out the door to work by 630am. I don’t get home from work until 700pm. Then I get 30 minutes to eat dinner, about 30–45 minutes to play with my daughter and put her to bed, and about the same time with my wife. I’m miserable on less than seven hours of sleep, so I need to be in bed by 945pm at the latest. I work like this so my wife doesn’t have to, and can stay home with our daughter and make home made meals. But if I wasn’t fortunate enough to have the job I do, where we would find time for cooking at home?

I’ve seen lots of “10 minute meal” ideas, here on TSD and everywhere else… but I’ve *never* seen anyone include the “real total” preparation time. That is, getting out pots and pans, pre-heating the oven, cleaning the cookware and kitchen, and doing dishes (or even loading the dishwasher). I’d say that on average, dealing with cooking utensils and cleanup adds 10 minutes to any home made meal. When you get fast food, you buy, eat, and toss the wrappers. Even better if you have convenience foods delivered to your house. Bad for your health and the environment, but IMO tastes great and saves a ton of time. But on the other hand, I feel like it’s a sorry world we live in where we have so little non-work/sleep time that 10 minutes is a big deal.

If more healthy places would provide a playground, I would consider going there.