I have been suffering from a pretty terrible cold the last several days. Nasal congestion, fever, bad cough…you know how it goes. Anyways, from my experience, the only way to really get over a cold properly is to recline on the couch, drink lots of tea and whiskey, and of course - watch films.

Among the many titles I have recently watched is Fast Food Nation. I know that I may be coming a little late on this one, but regardless, it’s a must see. For those that have never heard of the movie, it is loosely based off of journalist Eric Schlosser’s 2001 book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal.

Rather than using a traditional documentary format, the film shows what life is like for workers in a beef processing plant that produces hamburger patties for a major fast food retail chain using a fictional story line. Warning! Watching this film may leave you horrified, disgusted and forever turned off of eating beef. Intrigued by the below the surface insights of the film, we decided to do some in-depth research on the United States beef and fast food industry. Check out what we found:

So what really is the deal with fast food?

The average fast food meal consists of a beef hamburger, french fries and a cola. Fast food is the most rapidly rising component of the American diet. With consumption steadily on the rise since the the 1970’s, the number of fast food outlets has increased by 366% (or from approximately 30,000 locations in the early 70’s to around 222,000 locations at the beginning of this decade). With the typical American youth consuming fast food on average twice per week, it’s no surprise that the industry is worth about $127 billion in sales per year. In the US, over 100,000 cows are slaughtered for domestic consumption every 24 hours.

Fast food on health

The standard fast food meal gives you on average more than 100% of the recommended daily intake of cholesterol, sugar, salt and saturated fats . With the enormous number of fast food restaurants in America, it’s no surprise that approximately 65% of the country’s adults are overweight - or worse - morbidly obese! Mass scale obesity claims over 300,000 lives per year and costs over $120 billion in health care costs. Numerous studies have confirmed that consumption of red meat is a proven contributor to the development of breast and colon cancer as well as heart disease and strokes.

Beef’s toll on the environment

Approximately 33% or one third of the world’s grain is used to feed beef livestock. In America, 70 to 80% of all grain produced is used to feed cows. This also affects both gasoline and water consumption: one gallon of gasoline is required to produce a single pound of grain fed beef, and 50% of all fresh water in America is used to grow grain for cattle feed.

The environmental impacts of fast food has environmental groups from around the world extremely concerned. With the demand for Big Extras steadily rising, forests are destroyed in order to create grazing land. This leads to the damaging and erosion of soil and the contamination of water and countless other natural resources. To put this in perspective: producing one pound of beef destroys five pounds of topsoil. With grazing land in the US rapidly depleting, fast food chains have had to expand their land use to other locations around the globe. Thousands and thousands of acres of rainforest in countries like Brazil, Costa Rica, and Guatemala have all been eradicated to create cattle raising pastures. The burning of all this rain-forest has produced thousands of metric tons of carbon dioxide - directly contributing to global warming.

Let’s not forget that cows themselves pollute just by living. All the cows in the world combined burp 360 million litres of methane gas every day. Methane is a greenhouse gas that’s more damaging to the environment than carbon dioxide.

Fast food and global hunger

North America’s addiction to Big Macs, Momma and Poppa burgers and Wendy’s epic four patty monsters have created a global hunger crisis. Instead of feeding the over 1 billion starving people from around the globe, we use precious grains to feed cattle instead. If America gave up fast food, the grain used to feed beef could prevent the 40 to 60 million starvation related deaths per year. Most of these deaths are children.

Effect on Cows

Cows are fed growth hormones so that they grow big and juicy for slaughter. During their lifetime, they are raised in cramped unnatural conditions - far from how the animal is naturally intended to live. They are slaughtered with a single bullet to the head then hung upside down to drain the blood by a slit to the throat. Once the blood is drained, skin ripped off, and internal organs are removed, the tissue is stripped from the bones, mashed up and turned into ground beef for hamburger patties. In order to optimize profits, very little of the animal is actually wasted. Parts and aspects of the animal that are undesirable to eat are included in the mincing process - but nothing a little seasoning and “edible chemicals” can’t fix.

Random Fast Food Facts

China is now home to over 800 KFC’s.

Coke and Pepsi are some of the worlds largest advertisers with a combined spending of over 2.4 billion in advertising per year. Even in the most remote corners of the earth, Pepsi and Coke are easier to find than fresh produce.

McDonald’s operates in 119 countries around the world with over 30,000 locations. The restaurant serves well over 47 million consumers daily.

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