About 80% of the time I eat at a fast
food restaurant (an average of once a month) I wonder how the
establishment stays in business. A couple weeks ago I was talking
with my dad and said something like, “I wonder if we were to offer
some of the 'food' we gladly eat to a starving person in a developing
country, if they would even be grateful to receive it.” Before I
say the next bit I will say, I am not a healthnut, I eat a lot of
sweets and really enjoy some candy that has nothing but artificial
flavoring; but some of the junk we eat, if you stop to think about
it, isn't really recognizable as food, doesn't taste remotely like
anything occurring in nature (I'm thinking specifically about some
frozen burritos I used to like while in college).
We want our food now, whether it's at a
fast food joint or a sit down restaurant. Think for a moment, have
you ever cooked? Don't most of the best things you prepare take time
and quite a bit of it? If you're making a really good hamburger, is
it done in 5 minutes? If you're making an excellent fajita, is it
done in 10? If you're making a delicious southern meal is it done in
20?
Quality takes time and we have
sacrificed it in the name of convenience. We have demanded food that
is fast, cheap, and still tastes good (at least to some people) and
to accomplish this the food is tinkered with a lot. What else should
we expect?
Being a specialist takes time and a
specific area of expertise but in our demand for convenience we first
created supermarkets (which largely took away people specializing in
baked goods, meat, cheese, etc.) and then went a step further and
created the superstore (which took away people specializing in
hardware, toys, clothing, etc.). Despite this, we criticize the
employees of these establishments, complaining that they don't know
where something is or they don't know something about a product. I
know most people are assigned to a department and mostly work in that
area (or at least I hope that is what happens), but even within that
one department there's a very large variety of stuff (again,
groceries have all sorts and electronics has everything from
cellphones to tvs and dvds).
Within superstores our demand for
convenience and cheap stuff has again done away with quality. I am
not totally sure this is really the case, but someone who used to
work in a John Deere factory told me that there was the line that
made stuff for certain stores and then there was the line that made
stuff for Wal-Mart (and I'm sure other superstores) and the quality
wasn't the same. Also, if you talk to someone who knows jeans,
they'll probably tell you even though you can get a pair of Levi's
jeans at Wal-Mart for cheaper, you may not be getting the same
quality as at some other stores.
About any of this, I can't really
judge. Even though I hate Wal-Mart, I consider it a convenient evil
and shop their anyway because, well, it's convenient and cheap.
I grew up in a home that didn't eat out
much, my mom cooked from scratch almost every night. Yes, some of the
meals were simple, but they were still good. As I've gotten older, I
still don't eat out much and I enjoy cooking largely because I know
I'll like what I make because I can control what goes into it.
Over the years we have learned to
settle for less, we have made demands and they led to what we have
today. So many are willing to settle for less that some things which
are better quality have grown more expensive. A specific example is
bread. Though I eat sliced bread and enjoy it decently for breakfast,
I think it was one of the worst innovations to happen to America.
Much of the rest of the world has really good, fresh bread for fairly
cheap. While I was in Ukraine, one of the Americans I stayed with
paid extra to get American-style sliced (frozen) bread instead of the
fresh uncut bread you could get in every tiny store... and I thought
they were a little insane for that.
I will end this by saying, when you can
afford it buy fresh, buy local, buy from a small specialty store.
Maybe someday our shouts for quality with drown out our demands for
convenience and, in the process, maybe we will get to know our
butcher, our grocer, our garden store owner, and computer specialist.
No comments:
Post a Comment