The desire for fast food is an illusion. It is not cheap anymore and it is often not really fast either. As far as financial efficiency, the days of the dollar menu are long gone. In the wake of rising consumer debt (the single most heavily marketed product in the country, no coincidence) and credit cards in almost every American wallet, we don’t feel the expense so the prices have risen and yet we keep on consuming under the illusion we’re getting good bang for the buck.
For years and years, fast food really was cheap, but the fast food industry was merely playing the long game. Fast food chain restaurants dolled out irresistible deals on menu items and sandwiches and proceeded to ingeniously get people hooked on the food, only to raise the prices once people were literally in invisible chains resulting from sugar addiction as well as the trifecta of food containing high fat, high refined sugar and high sodium content, which literally hits the brain like a super-drug, far more addictive and insidious than street drugs on their best days.
There is virtually no nutritional value in these foods and the result is they leave us never feeling full, with high sugar content causing a quick rise, crash and then insidious withdrawal symptoms that drive us to consume more sugar to alleviate our self-induced suffering. The lack of nutritional content furthers our drive to eat more because hunger cues persist when our bodies are starved of micronutrients. Also, as I mentioned above, the trifecta of high sugar, fat and sodium in a single product is quite addictive, chemical and unnatural. If you look at whole foods, almost across the board, foods that have high sugar content are fat free and foods that have high fat content usually contain low or no sugar. These macronutrients were never meant to coexist the way the fast food industry has tied them together.
The last element that gets us is in the name, “fast food.” In a world where we are busier than ever, looking for constant improvement in efficiency, more and more multitasking, and yet trying to comfort ourselves with “care” needed from the exhaustion imposed by always being on the go, “fast food” tempts us and tricks us. We desire so much to save time, our most precious non-renewable resource, that we fall for the illusion. In reality, fast food restaurants often are not even really fast anymore, keeping us waiting in lines, unknowing because we are distracted by our smart phones, giving us a hit of dopamine because we think we are accomplishing more by multitasking since we are simultaneously getting food and accomplishing tasks on our phones. Ugh.
The reality is that, neurologically speaking, multitasking is not even possible. Switching between tasks slows us down. Even worse though, we’re falling for an illogical ruse that fast food is more efficient than food from home when the reality is there is no way “going out for food” to an additional place can be more efficient timewise than grabbing or throwing something together from our own refrigerator or pantry. It is just not possible. If you are about to argue, “well, I was going out anyway…” I could point out that “going out” means you were at home already, so even if you were, you had access to food at home. If you don’t grocery shop enough or get the right things, that is something that can be adjusted and still be more efficient because at some point, you are guaranteed to be at the grocery store anyway. So saving time is just not an argument that holds water.
What bothers me most is that when we fall for the fallacies of fast food, be it cheap, fast, easy, or delicious, we consume ultra processed food that physiologically causes addiction. It causes real physical withdrawal symptoms that drive us to the next drive thru. The more we succumb to the temptation for a quick trip to a fast food place, the more we become hooked and brainwashed by the fast food industry. Fast food freedom is zero physiological attraction, zero withdrawal symptoms, reducing the number one source of sugar crashes, and completely removing the lifetime of insidious brainwashing that led me to fall for the lies that fast food is cheap, fast, or delicious. The result is feeling healthier in my body, having more peace of mind, and more time to go to the grocery store to get the food that truly nourishes me. That is life fast food free. Truth is the vehicle. Freedom is the destination.
