Fast+Food+Nation+2

Fast Food Nation

How Big Fast Food Restaurants have Become and How normal they are in everyday life Interesting Facts pg 1- 5 · In 1970 Americans spent about $6 billion on fast food; in 2001, they spent more than 110billion. · Americans now spend more money on fast food than on higher education, personal computers, computer software, or new cars. · What people eat or don’t eat has always been determined by a complex interplay of social, economic, and technological forces · A nation’s diet can be more revealing than it’s art or literature · The McDonald’s Corporation is the largest owner of retail space in the world · McDonalds spends more money on advertising and marketing then any other brand. It has replaced Coca-Cola as the world’s most famous brand. · McDonalds operates more playgrounds than any other private entity in the U.S. It is responsible for nations bestselling line of children’s clothing (McKids). Also largest disturber of toys in the world · The only fictional character more popular than Ronald McDonald is Santa Claus. · The key to a successful franchise, according to many texts on the subject, can be expressed in one word: uniformity. Franchises and chain stores strive to offer exactly the same product a numerous locations  -1 in 8 people have at one time worked a McDonalds

 Carl's Jr. Restaurant- made Anaheim what it is today  I looked out the window and asked how he felt driving through Anaheim today, with its fast food restaurants, subdivisions, and strip malls. "Well, to be frank about it,"he said, " I could not be happier." Thinking he misunderstood the question, I rephrased it, asking if he ever missed the old Anaheim, the ranches and citrus grove. "No" he answered

//FAT BURGER NOTES -_-// <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">//Quote pg 22..// <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">QUOTE PG 170 SLAUGHTER HOUSE
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; margin-top: 0in;">//The first fast food restaurants came from Anaheim California.//
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; margin-top: 0in;">//Started as profitable hot dog stands.//
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; margin-top: 0in;">//Over time consumers shifted to extremely popular drive in restaurants where the customer would drive up to the window, order, and then have someone bring the food to their car, which the workers would deliver food too.//
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; margin-top: 0in;">//After getting frustrated with the Drive-in restaurant business the McDonald’s brothers decided to temporarily shut down their restaurant and then reopened it after configuring it to cook quicker with lower prices and greater amounts of sales.//
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; margin-top: 0in;">//They got rid of almost everything on their old menu and only kept what could be eaten without utensils.//
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; margin-top: 0in;">//They started to sell burgers not on plates and dishes but wrapped in paper and drinks served in paper cups.//
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; margin-top: 0in;">//For the first time the kitchen of McDonald’s was able to copy the production of a factory and implement it into a restaurant.//
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; margin-top: 0in;">//The McDonalds became self-sufficient and “perfect”//
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; margin-top: 0in;">//All food was made the same exact way.//
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; margin-top: 0in;">//Became a quick and easy way for people to come and eat a good, cheap meal with their families (especially for the middle class, which could not afford to eat out much.//
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; margin-top: 0in;">//Quickly became super popular and spread across the nation.//
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; margin-top: 0in;">//Forged what would become one of the largest industries in the country today.//

<span style="display: block; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">//__Fast Food Nation Facts__//

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">1. In 1970, Americans spent $6 billion on fast food - and $110 billion in 2000. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">2. Every day ¼ of the adult U.S. population visits a fast food restaurant. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">3. In 1968, McDonalds operated 1000 restaurants in the U.S.; today there are 28,000 worldwide - with 5 new stores opening every day (4 of these are outside the U.S.). <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">4. Americans eat 49 lbs of potatoes per year. Of this, 30 lbs are in the form of frozen French fries, 90% from fast food restaurants. We buy an average of 4 orders of fries each week. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">5. A large order of French fries at McDonalds cost $1.50 with 2 cents going to the farmer for the potatoes. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">6. Half of the potato farmers in Idaho have gone out of business in the past 25 years, while land planted to potato has doubled. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">7. McDonalds is the nations largest purchaser of beef, pork and potatoes. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">8. Americans purchase an average of 3 fast food hamburgers each week. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">9. In the past 20 years about half a million cattle ranchers have gone out of business. Today, the remaining 800,000 ranchers are in financial trouble <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">10. Over the past 20 years the portion of the retail price of beef going to the cattle rancher has dropped from 63 cents to 46 cents per dollar. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">11. The suicide rate among farmers and ranchers is 3 times the national average. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">12. The cow excrement from two yards outside of Greeley, CO is greater than human wastes from Boston, St. Louis, Denver and Atlanta combined. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">13. In the 1960’s most meat packers moved from Chicago where unions kept wages and working conditions reasonable to the West, where unions were not allowed and migrant workers were employed to be meat cutters. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">14. The meat packing lines in Chicago handled about 50 cows per hour. This increased to about 175 in the newest plants 20 years ago. Without changes in the plants, today they handle 400 cows/hour and worker injuries are common. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">15. Today 8 chicken manufacturers control 2/3 of the market in the U.S. They control prices and how chickens are raised. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">16. Louisiana State University reported most chicken producers make $12,000 per year managing an average of 3 chicken houses, with 25,000 birds per house/year. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">17. The 3.5 million fast food workers are the largest group of minimum wage workers in the U.S. The only group with lower pay is migrant farm workers. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">18. Two-thirds of the fast food workers in the U.S. are under 20 years old. No talent is needed. Machines and operating systems take care of everything so people are replaceable. Employee turnover rate is 300-400 percent per year. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> 19. Food safety has become a national concern. However, instead of dealing with overcrowding of cows, poor sanitation in the meat packing plants, underpaid and poorly skilled labor, excessive line speeds, poor government oversight, the meat industry wants to employ irradiation to control a preventable problem. They call irradiation “cold pasteurization.” <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> 20. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> McDonalds responds to the market. They eliminated the polystyrene container in the U.S., switched from animal fat to vegetable oil for its fries, allowed minority businesses in cities, and banned genetically engineered potatoes - all because of consumer pressure.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Americans eat about 13 billion hamburgers a year. If you put all those burgers in a straight line, they would circle the earth more than 32 times.

Americans currently spend about $134 billion dollars per year on fast food – more than they spend on college education, computers, software or new cars.

The typical American child sees 20,000 junk food ads a year

One out of every five American toddlers eats French fries every day.

Four major meatpacking firms slaughter nearly 85% of the nation’s cattle, and the majority of the nation’s beef comes from thirteen large slaughterhouses.

Meatpacking is one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States. In 2001, the rate of serious injury was three times higher than that in a typical American factory.

Every year, about 76 million Americans are sickened by something they ate.

At a modern processing plant, a single cow or steer infected with E:coli:O157:H7 can contaminate 32,000 pounds of meat.

A typical fast food hamburger can contain pieces of hundreds, if not thousands of cattle.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Money and Fast Food -
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">In 1970, Americans spent $6 billion on fast food - and $110 billion in 2000.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Americans now spend more money on fast food than what they spend on education, personal computers, computer software, or new cars.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">McDonalds spends more money on advertising and marketing then any other brand.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> Over the past 20 years the portion of the retail price of beef going to the cattle rancher has dropped from 63 cents to 46 cents per dollar.

In 1970 6 billion dollars was spent on the fast food industry in America. 30 years later that number rose to 110 billion. That is almost a 3 and a half billion dollar increase per year. This amount of money spent is more than the amount of money spend on education, computers, or cars. McDonald's spends more money on advertising than any other project in the world. Over the last 20 years the amount of money a cattle rancher made for every dollar of beef sold decreased 17 cents. The profits of the retail companies meanwhile went up.

BURGER FACTS - > in a straight line, they would circle the earth more than 32 times. Th
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Americans purchase an average of 3 fast food hamburgers each week.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">A typical fast food hamburger can contain pieces of hundreds, if not thousands of cattle.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Americans eat about 13 billion hamburgers a year. If you put all those burgers

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">GREASY FRIES FACTOIDS! -
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Americans eat 49 lbs of potatoes per year. Of this, 30 lbs are in the form of frozen French fries, 90% from fast food restaurants.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">We buy an average of 4 orders of fries each week.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">One out of every five American toddlers eats French fries every day.

Random Facts -
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> Every day ¼ of the adult U.S. population visits a fast food restaurant.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">The McDonald’s Corporation is the largest owner of retail space in the world.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">The only fictional character more popular than Ronald McDonald is Santa Claus.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">1 in 8 people have at one time worked a McDonalds.