Fast Food? Not So Fast!

(the truth about the “American hamburger”) By Kylee Leland (a 17 year-old from Iowa )

Fast Food— as American as…poptarts?!

Think about the food you've consumed in the past week. Perhaps you've had some fruits and vegetables, some of mom's cooking, poptarts, candy bars, and probably some form of fast food. So you ask, what's wrong with fast food—it's a quick, convenient and inevitable part of life, right? It may be the American way, but is it really the environmental way?

You've probably heard that fast food is bad for your health, and have seen the books and documentaries about fast food. I'm not here to tell you how bad fast food is for you (which it is)—I want to make you more aware of what's behind the fast food that you eat.

The deeper meaning of food…

Food is used in many ways in American society. It's used as entertainment, good ol' family dinners, holidays, and it can even be used as a source of comfort when you're feeling down. But if we get down to the root of it, food should be used to sustain our bodies and the environment. Now that doesn't mean you can't have occasional treats once in a while, but with fast food, not only are you constantly giving yourself an excess of comfort, you're also wasting many food resources.

Burger Wars: Veggie vs. “Ham”
(what's with “ham”burger anyway?!)

For example, let's compare a hamburger at a fast food restaurant vs. a veggie burger bought at a grocery store.

hamburger	veggie burger

Looks the same, right? Sometimes even tastes pretty much the same, but besides the difference in nutritional content (meat-based diets are generally bad for you), the similarities end right there.

Water and Grain Inputs Maybe you've never heard of these terms before, but water and grain "inputs" are the necessary amounts of products used to produce a certain substance. For example, to make a hamburger, land is needed to graze cattle and to grow grains to feed cattle (56 million acres are utilized to grow hay for cattle in the US ), and water is needed for the cattle to drink. And then there are antibiotics and other additives (like the fertilizer on the grain). All these are inputs to fatten the cow up until it is butchered for meat. For veggie burgers, all that is needed to make that burger is vegetables, soybeans, and extracts. So you can see that the production of meat is far more costly in terms of resources than veggie burgers.

Now back to water and grain inputs. One pound of hamburger takes 16 pounds of grain and 2,500 gallons of water (the water is for raising the grain to feed the cattle and for the cattle to drink). Veggie burgers need 7 times less water than meat to produce. Also, the grain ratio is 1 to 1 (rather than 16 to 1) because there is direct consumption of grains by humans rather than first feeding it to cows and then later we eat the meat. So if you think about that, you can do this little math problem with me.

The Shower Logic

Let's say you take a shower everyday (gotta keep clean from all those sports and not to mention hygiene, right?). If you shower for 7 minutes every single day, at 2 gallons of water per minute coming out of your showerhead, that equals 100 gallons a week, and 5,200 gallons a year . Now let's compare these statistics. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to make 1 pound of hamburger - or around 600 gallons for a regular hamburger - right? And you use 5,200 gallons of water to shower for 1 year - or 100 gallons a week. Essentially, that means that you would save more water by not showering for 6 whole weeks , than eating a hamburger at a fast food place.

Producing the beef for a single hamburger requires the same amount of water as you use in six weeks of taking showers.

And did we mention... "The Rainforest"
or the "kitchen theory"of rainforest destruction

As long as we're on the subject of water, we might as well talk about the rainforest. Yes, eating meat here in the U.S. does affect those beautiful rainforests in Central and South America . How? Well, let's think about where your meat comes from. Some of McDonald's meat does come from the U.S. ; but since the demand for meat is high and land is getting scarce in the U.S. , rainforests are cut down in other countries to make grazing land for cattle.

Here is the Kitchen Theory: For every rainforest beef hamburger (which is found in your typical fast food restaurant), 55 square feet of land is destroyed to produce that one hamburger. By the way, 55 square feet is about the size of a small kitchen, thus the reason for my "kitchen theory"

"The number one factor in elimination of Latin America 's tropical rainforest is cattle grazing... [we are seeing] the 'hamburgerization' of the forests."

• Norman Meyers, Author of The Primary Source: Tropical Rainforest and our Future

To top that off, that hamburger that you thought was pure beef from one cow, is actually made from up to pieces of 1,000 cattle from up to five different countries. It turns out, the food you thought you were eating is only a figment of your imagination. The truth is, fast food places have food that is fried, processed, and ground up, coming from places you didn't even know. Thus the name for fast food - you never knew what hit you!

And don't forget that at the fast food place, you'll on average be given 7 pieces of non-recycled paper with your order - not to mention other plastic stuff and a handful of non-recyclable ketchup thingys.

Since we already talked about hamburgers' affect our environment, let's talk about the perfect complement to that juicy burger.... French fries. They're so famous, McDonald's is even nicknamed the Golden Arches! So you might be thinking, I know meat affects out environment, but French fries? They're just potatoes fried in oil, and they are a vegetable anyway, right? You could not be further from the truth. Those crispy, golden fries affect us in more ways that we think, which is why it deals with economics, the cost of producing a product. Now how exactly do French fries tie in with economics?

This is called the Car Cycle (it'll help you better understand economics).

The Car Cycle

Let's say that you and your friends are hungry, and you're definitely craving some fries at a fast food place. So you and your friends hop into your car and drive about 5 miles to get to McDonald's. Once you get there, you shell out your hard earned money to buy some fries, which only cost 99 cents on the value meal. You eat your fries while your friends chow down on Big Macs and McFlurries, all agreeing that this definitely satisfies your craving. You all hop back in the car and drive back to your house to chill out.

The price of 2.6 oz. of small fries: direct cost: 99 cents; your share of the cost of car: $1.33 (10 miles divided among you and your two friends, since the IRS says it costs 40 cents per mile to drive your car). So the total cost of a serving of fries is around $2.32.

In another scenario, you and your friends could have satisfied that same craving if you had gone to the grocery store (5 miles), and bought a bag of 5 pound potatoes (25 times as much) for 99 cents. Then you could have come home and made your own French fries - or hash browns or double-bakeds - for your friends for the same price - and had some left over. Now which would be the better buy, 2.6 oz. of fries for $2.32, or 5 lbs of homemade fries for $.99? I think you can be the judge of that.

And did we mention global warming? Turns out your average cow belches 640 quarts of methane a day - a potent global warming gas. And the gas you burn getting to the French fries? A pound of CO2 for every mile you drive.

Justice
Now you know how eating even one fast food meal can contribute to the waste of the environment. It takes 55 square feet of rainforest, 4 pounds of grain, 600 gallons of water, and 7 pieces of paper and plastic to make a hamburger and French fries at a fast food restaurant.

55 square feet of rainforest + 4 lbs of grain + 600 gallons of water + 7 pieces of paper and plastic + the cost of the trip and the meal =

1 hamburger, small fries, and the nonrenewable destruction of the rainforest.

But, it's time to talk about how this relates to the bigger world.... in terms of justice.

Justice is a pretty powerful word. It means the equality of people in many different ways, without basis of race, religion, or gender.

How fair is it that we in the U.S go out to eat on an average of 2-3 times a week, when people in poorer countries don't even have enough food for their next meal? How fair is it that more than a billion people here on earth have malnutrition when one country (us) spends billions of dollars a year on fast food and wasting of water and grain that could be used to feed the malnourished people?

56% of children in Bangladesh are so underfed and underweight, that their health is diminished.

55% of adults in the U.S. are so overfed and overweight , that their health is diminished.

Ironic, isn't it? Is this what justice really is? If so, you and I both need to drastically change our way of thinking.

You've learned about the effects of food, now it's time for YOU to make a difference. I'm not saying to never eat meat again, or ban fast food from your life. I'm saying that it's time to think about how your actions have consequences, in ways bigger than you ever imagined. At the very least, you could eat lower on the food chain (chicken or pork) and use them sparingly. But think about it, is a quarter pound of hamburger worth half a ton of Brazil 's rainforests? Is 55 square feet of rainforest really worth the price of one hamburger?

These questions are not asked enough, and before long, it will be too late to even ask. It took nature thousands of years to form the rainforest, but it's taken humans only 25 years to destroy much of it. And when the rainforest is gone, there's no turning back... it's gone f o r e v e r .

As a teenager in this highly technologized, fast food world, how do you make a difference? By knowing that eating isn't a choice, but a necessity. But you do have the right, and the responsibility, to choose how your food is produced. Taking that responsibility could be one way to change you, by heightening your power and deepening your insights, which is needed to get to the root of our society's problems.

Changing the way you eat will not change the world , but it may begin to change you , and you can be apart of changing the world .

Sources:

The Food Revolution by John Robbins
Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe
State of the World by World Watch Institute
www.vegsource.com