Boycott Fast Food! Part 1

After writing about obesity, something really sparked inside of me. A feeling stronger than I normally get: disgust. I am disgusted with fast food. However, I am not just disgusted with the food itself, but everything. I have a problem with almost all things “fast food.” So I say “BOYCOTT!”

Do not worry, I will back all of this stuff up, I am not going to just stop with no reasons for my boycott, but stick with me.

First, we start with the food. All fast food has something in common: to much sugar, fat and salt. The worst of all of the fast food places to go is McDonald’s

For example, McDonald's spends over two billion dollars each year on advertising its junk food - high in fat, sugar and salt, and low in fibre and vitamins. A diet of this type is linked with a greater risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other diseases. Their food also contains many chemical additives, some of which may cause ill-health, and hyperactivity in children. (Boycott Bush)

Not only does it contain to much sugar, fat, and salt, it is unclean. We need to boycott it because of the unfair and unhealthy standards of the meatpacking industry.

Eric Schlosser, writer of Fast Food Nation roughly states that the USDA has no real power over anything slaughterhouses, ranchers, meatpackers, renderers, or distributors do. The meat industry enjoys being the only industry in America that does not have to answer to government regulations, especially when it comes to recalling meat for whatever reason. Whether there is glass in the hamburger, E. coli or Salmonella the USDA cannot force a company to recall its meat and therefore has to wait for a company to make the decision to issue a recall.

Fast Food Nation also addressed the issues of E. coli O157:H7 and briefly mentions bovine spongiform encephalopathy (also known as BSE or Mad Cow). It states how researchers have known since the early eighties about the dangers of both E. coli and Creutzfeldt-Jakob, or the human form of BSE (also known as vCJD), and still did nothing to stop common practices that spread both of these diseases.

This seems to me to be reason enough to stop eating fast food. But there are more reasons to come in Part 2.