Fast food and Health

Thesis Statement

Fast food plays an important role among city dwellers.

Introduction

Today, people have to live in a hectic and competitive environment. Some people even have to work around the clock to meet both ends. Time scarcity can be a problem for today's society. This idea is illustrated by Jabs (2006) who claims that time scarcity changes the food consumption patterns. People began to decrease the time for food preparation and increased the frequency in the consumption of fast food. The fast food restaurants have their own unique characteristics to cater to the need of today's society. A fast food restaurant is characterized by speedy supply after ordering. The employee will prepare the food in huge quantities in advance and keep warm before selling to the consumer, which reduces the waiting time for consumers. In this respect, the fast food restaurants cater well with today human needs such as convenience and time restriction.

Analysis

Furthermore, it is easy for a family to get a loan to open an easy food franchise as running a fast food restaurant requires capital from investors. The amount of capital is affordable for middle income families to own a fast food restaurant: For this reason, the numbers of fast food chains grow quickly around the world. According to the fast food guide (www.fastfood.com), there are three hundred forty seven fast food restaurants in Salt Lake City and four thousand fast food restaurants in the Los Angelos. The most notable fast food restaurants are MacDonald, Wendy, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken (Li. DLean, pp 23-282)

First and foremost, aggressive marketing of the fast food restaurants causes people to have unhealthy diet. Fast food advertisement appears in many media, such as radio, newspapers, magazines and television. According to Harrison (2005), fast foods comprised 83% of advertised foods in year 2005 which has the biggest market share in the United States. Television advertisement is most powerful and influential media among others. She also noted that the fast food advertisement has a huge influence on the children who spend a lot of time watching television. This advertisement may change the children's eating pattern for their entire life. With a consistent influence of advertisement, the idea of fast food diet is rooted deeply in their mind (Jabs. Pp 22-181).

Besides the belligerent advertising, the price war among the fast food restaurants has a great impact on consumer's eating habit. When consumer purchases a five dollars value mea in MacDonald, it includes one double cheese hamburger, a 21 oz soda drink and 4 oz French Fries. The consumers can request super size soda drink (32 oz) and French fries (6 oz) for an additional fifty cents. This additional money does not make a big difference for most consumers. People can get more food with little increase in price. In this respect, consumers would usually pay little more to have larger drinks and French fries. The KFC and Burger King also offer one dollar menu to consumers. They can purchase burger, ...