With the obesity epidemic in the U.S should fast food restaurants be regulated? Why or why not? Due on September 28th, 2015.
5 points – In your discussion include 5 main ideas with 2 or 3 examples from your experiences and research. You need to include citations if you obtained information from online, in a textbook etc. Failure to do this is regarded as “Plagiarism.” Please see student handbook page 74.
I believe that the fast food restaurants should be regulated to an extent. At the point that we begin to hold other people (or businesses) solely responsible for our own health related actions we cross into a territory of almost denial about the health problems that we have created for ourselves. That being said, there are also some misleading …show more content…
Additionally, fast food restaurants (and all food serving establishments) should take steps to make their preparation, ingredient sourcing, and other information available regarding each of their meal items. There are huge discrepancies in the way that food is prepared and served between each different fast food joint, which can end up contributing to accidental overconsumption of certain things like sodium or fat. A Consumer Reports study took a poll at 25 different fast food restaurants and found that the fat percentages, calories, sugar and sodium content of one meal item could vary by anywhere between 2% higher than reported all the way up to 59% higher than originally reported. Another example of the possibility of discrepancies in preparation procedures comes from the manner in which some food is prepared at the popular fried chick fast food restaurant KFC, which boasts a monstrous breadless sandwich called the “Double Down”. This pseudo sandwich contains bacon, two different kinds of melted cheese, and the restaurant’s ‘secret sauce’ pressed in between two chicken fillets and weighs in at containing 90% of your daily-recommended sodium intake. Despite those original figures, testing done by Consumer Reports found that each sandwich they received at 10 separate KFC locations had more than 110% of your daily recommended sodium intake at each restaurant. Inconsistencies like this can lead to unintended overconsumption of sodium; it needs to be better regulated, or …show more content…
All of that negative commentary about fast food restaurants business decisions aside, they still should not be held accountable for the decisions made by the consumers. Quick, cheap, and universally appealing food sells in volumes but foods like vegetable rich hummus wraps and kale smoothies do not sell to kids and a wide variety of taste pallets like milkshakes in an assortment of sweet flavors and cheeseburgers do; it is a fact. Forcing a company to drastically change what it offers would only cut their profits down and turn consumers to other sources of cheap and quick unhealthy meals (For example, picking up an assortment of equally unhealthy microwavable meals at the grocery store versus stopping at the local Burger King for dinner). Health foods simply do not sell like the traditional decadent fast food items. An excellent example of this comes once again from America’s largest fast food chain, McDonalds, which has offered apple slices as an alternative to French fries in their “Happy Meals” kid combos, has only ever peaked at 11% of the parents picking apple slices over French fries in the orders. You cannot stop people from making their own decisions in what they eat, and you cannot expect fast food restaurants to take the economical hit for people’s personal eating decisions. Instead, we should work towards making people understand why they should have been making better choices all along instead of trying to deprive the public of the bad options
5 points – In your discussion include 5 main ideas with 2 or 3 examples from your experiences and research. You need to include citations if you obtained information from online, in a textbook etc. Failure to do this is regarded as “Plagiarism.” Please see student handbook page 74.
I believe that the fast food restaurants should be regulated to an extent. At the point that we begin to hold other people (or businesses) solely responsible for our own health related actions we cross into a territory of almost denial about the health problems that we have created for ourselves. That being said, there are also some misleading …show more content…
Additionally, fast food restaurants (and all food serving establishments) should take steps to make their preparation, ingredient sourcing, and other information available regarding each of their meal items. There are huge discrepancies in the way that food is prepared and served between each different fast food joint, which can end up contributing to accidental overconsumption of certain things like sodium or fat. A Consumer Reports study took a poll at 25 different fast food restaurants and found that the fat percentages, calories, sugar and sodium content of one meal item could vary by anywhere between 2% higher than reported all the way up to 59% higher than originally reported. Another example of the possibility of discrepancies in preparation procedures comes from the manner in which some food is prepared at the popular fried chick fast food restaurant KFC, which boasts a monstrous breadless sandwich called the “Double Down”. This pseudo sandwich contains bacon, two different kinds of melted cheese, and the restaurant’s ‘secret sauce’ pressed in between two chicken fillets and weighs in at containing 90% of your daily-recommended sodium intake. Despite those original figures, testing done by Consumer Reports found that each sandwich they received at 10 separate KFC locations had more than 110% of your daily recommended sodium intake at each restaurant. Inconsistencies like this can lead to unintended overconsumption of sodium; it needs to be better regulated, or …show more content…
All of that negative commentary about fast food restaurants business decisions aside, they still should not be held accountable for the decisions made by the consumers. Quick, cheap, and universally appealing food sells in volumes but foods like vegetable rich hummus wraps and kale smoothies do not sell to kids and a wide variety of taste pallets like milkshakes in an assortment of sweet flavors and cheeseburgers do; it is a fact. Forcing a company to drastically change what it offers would only cut their profits down and turn consumers to other sources of cheap and quick unhealthy meals (For example, picking up an assortment of equally unhealthy microwavable meals at the grocery store versus stopping at the local Burger King for dinner). Health foods simply do not sell like the traditional decadent fast food items. An excellent example of this comes once again from America’s largest fast food chain, McDonalds, which has offered apple slices as an alternative to French fries in their “Happy Meals” kid combos, has only ever peaked at 11% of the parents picking apple slices over French fries in the orders. You cannot stop people from making their own decisions in what they eat, and you cannot expect fast food restaurants to take the economical hit for people’s personal eating decisions. Instead, we should work towards making people understand why they should have been making better choices all along instead of trying to deprive the public of the bad options