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Fast Food Versus Slow Food: Are You Dancing As Fast As You Can?
by Marjorie Dorfman
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Convenience is the key word here. After all, who goes out for a candle-lit dinner complemented by the finest French wine and spends a fortune on the meal because it is convenient? We have all lost track of the joy of dining, even if we are alone. (Perhaps the comfort of swallowing as well). I love to go out to eat; it’s one of my favorite things to do with family and friends. I also enjoy cooking and can appreciate a home-cooked meal just as easily as the next person. We are a generation lost somewhere in the space of translation between fast versus slow food.
Apart from the rush of it all, have you ever thought about exactly what it is that you are consuming? Where do those lumpy, odd-looking hamburgers really come from? Sometimes I would swear the meat is almost moving on my plate and the cheese and onions are there to smother its cries for help. Perhaps they are also accomplices in transporting whatever might have lost at the racetrack yesterday? As a horse lover, I certainly hope not, but who can say for sure? Still, I can’t help but wonder why everything on the plate looks as if it is struggling to give me some sort of message. Maybe that’s why in fast food places most people don’t even look at their food. They read the paper, look out the window or watch the ketchup and mustard congeal on the plates of the people sitting next to them.
 I try my best not to concentrate on things while indulging in fast foods, but I can’t help it. Sometimes I think about the fact that my caloric intake for this meal alone, whatever it is, will far exceed my weekly and perhaps even monthly allotment. I try to swallow quickly in the hopes that out of sight will soon be out of mind and off the thighs, but I know better. In fact, there should be a way to invent something that will put this food directly onto our thighs. Might as well be. That’s where it’s going anyway, give or take a few stops along the way! I am happy to see that some fast food places have responded to the consumer’s need to be more health conscious. Here I will mention some names. Arby’s Light Roast Chicken Sandwich has 276 calories and only 7 grams of fat, Burger King’s Chunky Chicken Salad has 142 calories and boasts 4 grams of fat. MacDonald’s Vanilla Shake is right up there with them, with 310 calories and 5 grams of fat. Last but not least, is Wendy’s Chili. It claims 210 calories and 7 grams of fat.
Wherever it goes and wherever it’s been, fast food is here to stay. Yes, my friends, the Rockies may crumble and Gibraltar may tumble, but Whoppers, Big Macs, Pizza, Taco Belles and Fried Chicken have become permanently ingrained in the American food psyche. I guess we will all have to learn to live with them in a kind of fattening, poly-unsaturated brotherhood. If this means ignoring the food sometimes, then so be it. More likely, however, it means we will eat these foods sometimes too. So when in Rome, do as The Romans do. (After all, togas are not form fitting, you know.) Consider that even if we do have more than one life to live, how many more of them can be as fattening as this one? So as the old song says, ‘live, love, laugh and be happy." But just remember every time you see someone else buy one of those lumpy burgers that there but for the grace of carbohydrates go us all. Here’s to a size 10, unless you want to be a size 8, and to size 20 or even 30, as long as you are happy with the fast food truth that talks back to us all in the mirror.
Did you know . . .
Check these reviews by Marjorie of interesting kitchen gadgets:
Good morning, transfats and high cholesterol. Sit down.
Deep Fryer Set
For those extravagant, high choesterol afternoons...
French Fry Cutter
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 "Our lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks."
Lin Yutang
The Importance of Living, 1937
"Talk of Joy: there may be things better than beef stew and baked potatoes and home-made bread
. . . there may be."
David Grayson
Adventures in Contentment, 1907
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