2. Américanisation en France : les fast-foods
a) Fast-food : definition
A fast food is a quickly service system making people saving time when they want to
pick up their meal or to eat it on spot. The sold products are only sandwishes
like hamburgers or cheeseburgers with lower prices than in a traditional
restaurant. You can forget everything that can be eaten with a knife, spoon or
a fork ! Dishes and glassware are replaced by paper cups, paper bags and
paper plates. For example a typical menu is an hamburger with french fries and
a soda.
The food preparation is divided into separate tasks
performed by different workers. To fill a typical order, each worker has a
special task. There are different steps to elaborate the menu like grilling the
hamburger, dressing and wrapping it, then setting the beverage and cooking the
french fries. The person who works at the counter has to be careful and has to
make everything to satisfy the customer.
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| Famous brands of fast-food |
b) Fast food and the American society
According to an American author, Eric Schlosser, and his
book Fast Food Nation : The dark
Side of The All American Meal fast food have infiltrated American society
for the last three decades. Fast food is now served at every corner of the
nation : we can find it in restaurants and drive throughts, at stadiums,
airports, zoos, high schools, elementary schlools and universities, on cruise
ships, trains, shopping centers, gas stations or hospital cafeterias. Americans
spend more money on fast food than on other activities (movies, books,
education, hobbies, etc.)
Nowadays, the fast food industry has helped to transform
not only the American diet but also the American landscape, economy, workforce
and popular culture. Fast food and its consequences have become inescapable.
c) Junk Food
Junk food is an informal term
applied to some foods which are perceived to have no nutritional value and
which also have ingredients considered unhealthy when regulary eaten, or to
those considered unhealthy to consume at all. The term was coined by Mickael
Jacobson, director of the Center of Science in the Public Interest in 1972.
Junk food is unhealthy because
it has no nutritional value : it is bad and too fat as it contains to many
calories, too much salt and sugar. We can find this food in fast-food
restaurants such as McDonald’s or Burger King. Junk food is usually called
« Industrial food » because it isn’t home-made.
A hamburger is a sandwich consisting of a cooked ground
meat patty, usually beef, placed in a sliced bun or between pieces of bread or
toast. Hamburgers are often served with various condiments, such as ketchup,
mustard, mayonnaise, dressing, etc. as well a letuce, tomato, onion, pickles
and cheese.
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| a typical menu |
d) McDonald’s story
McDonald's is the largest chain
of hamburger fast food restaurants in the world, serving in 119 countries
around 64 million customers daily. It was created by Dick and Mac McDonald in
1940. At the beginning, it was a barbecue restaurant in California, and it
became a hamburger stand in 1948 which sold very cheaper hamburgers, potato
chips, soft drinks, milk, coffee, ... and it was very useful for drivers to get
food very quickly.
In 1955, the businessman Ray
Kroc joined the company as a franchise agent. Then, he purchased the chain from
the McDonald brothers and he oversaw its worldwide growth.
A propos de McDonal’s en France
McDonald's, implanté en France
depuis 1979, compte aujourd'hui 1 134 restaurants dont 276 franchises répartis
dans 840 communes. Plus d'un million de consommateurs français par jour mangent
dans un restaurant McDonald's, ce qui représente 450 millions clients par an.
Mais McDonald’s va tenter
d’assainir son image et ainsi de rendre ses menus plus sains, notamment avec le
lancement du menu salade en 2004, et ensuite les fruits frais, les eaux
minérales, etc. Ils vont également commencer à afficher le nombre de calories
par menu afin d’avertir les clients.
McDonald’s sait comment attirer
les enfants notamment avec les aires de jeux situées dans leurs
restaurants, les jouet dans les menus pour les enfants, les « Happy
meal », le fameux clown représentatif de la chaîne : Ronald McDonald,
etc.
e)
Consequences
Super size me is a perfect example to show the consequences of junk
food :
Super Size Me is a documentary film released in 2004 directed by
and starring Morgan Spurlock, an American documentary filmmaker, humorist,
television producer, screenwriter, and journalist.
This movie presents the obesity
in the USA and how important it is there. It deals with a man, Morgan Spurlock,
who wants to realize an experience with fast foods: he eats every day in a fast
food, Mc Donald’s, during one month in order to explore the consequences on his
health.
To realize this experience, he
has to make medical examinations before starting. His goal is to eat 3 times a
time in Mc Donald’s during 1 month, without practising any exercice.
After one month, Morgan finally
took 11 kg because of the fast food.
