HW 3 - Food - Fast Food Insights and Green Market Realizations

There are 354 McDonald’s in New York City alone and it seems like regardless of the one you go to all of them have a gloomy and depressing atmosphere. Many people who suffer depression confide in food to cope… is this to say that McDonald's’s purposely sets up all of there restaurants in a certain way to help there customers depression switch turn on? In the movie Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock kept mentioning as the movie progressed that he felt exhausted and depressed from the amount of McDonald's he was consuming. I guess the formula used to create the fake taste in McDonald's food has more side affects than people bargain for...

While we were in McDonald's I overheard Andy’s conversation with one of the managers... Al said he ate at McDonald’s a lot and thought the food was getting healthier. Not only are the costumers eating the food the workers are as well. Meaning that the addiction of this food circulates back and forth, from the people giving the money to those taking the money. I noticed that all of the breakfast meals had from about 400 to 1000 calories. People that dine here are already fulfilling about half their daily calories by 10 am. All of the food that was being sold consisted of the same three colors, brown, yellow and white, the only thing on the menu that stood out were the smoothies, which had less than 300 calories in them.

Moments after we left McDonald's we stepped into a completely different atmosphere... The Green Market was booming with laughter and colors, all of the fresh food was displayed right before our eyes. I decided to talk to one of the people working at the New York Beef stand. He explained that not only did he sell the meat he also worked on the farm with the cows. He said that New York Beef was not a certified organic farm but that they were in fact organic. He explained that he had only been working at New York Beef for 6 months and that he used to be there best customer. However when the previous man who had his job was getting married and moving, they asked him to take over. He said he loved his job and he definitely was being very honest.

I asked him what the difference was between the beef he sold and the beef McDonald's sold, he responded with " My food is raw", then laughed to himself. He then went on to say, " McDonald's cows are dairy cows being fed corn antibiotics, so essentially all you are eating is a corn burger. The cows are also genetically modified and exposed to pesticides... They are kept like sardines so they don't have the opportunity to move around and because of this are very fat. My cows eat grass and are free to roam fields all day. They are fit and are not fed any kind of antibiotics." I am pretty sure that if we asked a worker at McDonald's the same question they would have no answer.

Essentially I think this all goes right back to the depressing atmosphere in McDonald's, not only is it within the restaurant it's in the food. If the burgers being sold to the customers are filled with antibiotics, who knows what's in those antibiotics. If you ever see a drug commercial practically the entire thing is the side effects of it. If their cows aren't happy why would the people eating them be happy? It seems like a domino effect to me and some hidden drugs that don't have a positive effect on the cows or the people.