C.I.A. FAST FOOD
(5/11, Spain)
Before getting to the “meat” of this essay, I must come clean and admit it could have been written anywhere. It’s been kicking around in my consciousness for quite some time now, and the fact that I am now on my beloved island in the Roman Sea has no bearing on its creation --- although, now that I think of it, there are no fast food restaurants on this island. However, the neighboring island, which has a population of about 80,000 people, does have McDonald’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried. I once asked someone who would know just why this was so and he told me the fast food industry has certain formulas in place as to new locations, and population per restaurant site figures heavily into it. This eliminates my island from consideration, something that makes sense when one considers the small profit margin in play on each item sold, thus making volume the principle factor in profi t. Nothing is ever left to chance in the fast food industry. If I were the politician in charge of my beloved island, or just whoever the heck is in charge, I’d fi nd out exactly what that magic number is and make sure the island’s population always stayed below that threshold --- by hook or by crook. Many years ago, at a time when the digital age was still not a factor, I remember sitting at the beach with a friend who claimed the newspaper “USA Today”, which was still a novelty at the time, was a CIA operation. Considering its content and national scope --- newspapers were always a local concept then --- such a possibility, although unlikely, did not seem preposterous (and really, the more I think about it --- ). I have a similar feeling with regard to the fast food industry. There is something conspiratorial in its nature that goes beyond the accumulation of money, something that is more universally fundamental if today’s form of corporate capitalism is to provide the most gain for those most in charge of it. Although I’ve chosen the CIA as a metaphor for this “conspiracy”, it could be any other important institution of the global economy, be it governmental or private --- the huge investment companies, the International Monetary Fund, the gigantic communications consortiums, the energy behemoths, the World Bank, agencies of the United Nations, or just a coordinated effort by all the threads of real power in the global economic system. But the result is the same: I repeat, fast food serves a purpose beyond just making money for those invested in it. The profi t it provides might even be seen as secondary to another role, a role that might be considered more politically driven than market driven. It goes something like this: one of the great trends of global capitalism in the last 30 to 40 years --- and perhaps this trend got a substantial impetus with the fall of the Soviet Union --- is the ongoing tendency to distribute wealth in a more unbalanced way. More and more wealth is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Of course, the Newtonian corollary to this is that less and less wealth is being distributed to more and more people. This means that vast sweep of humanity which has been referred to throughout history in many different ways --- the masses, the prole, the popular classes, the lumpen, the people, the campesinos, the workers --- are, slowly but surely, getting a dwindling percentage of the global wealth they play an important role in creating. In no moment of post WWII history has the idea of “trickle down” been more applicable, but in a far different way than the market mavens defi ne it. What it now means is a few of “them” getting more and the rest of us getting not a trickle more of what we usually get, but just a “trickle”. This is no lie, you can look it up. It would be hard to believe this is not a conscious effort by those profiting most in the current economic system. It always has been. This is nothing new. The only thing that has ever reined in such abuse, other than a popular uprising here and there, has been a properly regulated market system, a concept that has been taken apart and broken down, beginning with Margaret Thatcher but fi nding its true mojo with Ronald Reagan and the coming of Rupert Murdoch to America. Once these regulatory concepts are swept away, the concentration of more wealth in fewer hands always happens. You can look it up. This is nothing new. Let’s get back to fast food. Most of you out there in essayland are familiar with the “Mutiny on the Bounty” story. I would also assume many of you know what the mission of the HMS Bounty was, but being it was only of minor relevance in the context of the famous story, I’ll repeat it here: the mission was to transport some sprouts of a tree indigenous to the South Pacific to the West Indies. This tree produces a large, starchy fruit, similar to a potato or yucca plant known as a breadfruit. The idea was to provide a cheap, abundant source of food for the slave economy developing in the Antilles. Although the mutiny of the Bounty’s crew aborted this mission, anyone who has ever been to the West Indies will see this mission was eventually accomplished. (Some breadfruit trees inhabit the place where I live. They tend to be large, robust trees, with a lovely, distinctive green leaf, similar in shape to a chicken’s foot. The ripe breadfruit is a darker green, about as big as a softball, abundant, and an imposing site on the trees). Fast food serves a similar function in the modern form of global corporate capitalism. It accomplishes its goal not through the botanical introduction of a new food source or livestock strain, but through the use of a huge industrial process that is forever refi ning itself in an attempt to cut costs (though it does mess with its livestock in some horribly perverse genetic ways). In spite of the gigantic proportions of this process, every step of the way is minutely managed. The goose stepping uniformity of any fast food outlet speaks loudly of this. You can go into a McDonald’s in Kuala Lumpur and the experience will be no different from that lived in Des Moines, Iowa --- the lighting, the signage, the service, the furnishings, the military-like banter on the microphones, the uniforms of the employees, etc. I distinctly remember when the Checkers outlet came to the town where I live. They never really built the place, it just kind of appeared one day, as if it had been dropped from the sky. The building it would be, which kind of has the look of a Buick from the 1950’s, was delivered on trucks in pre-fabricated pieces and put together like a big puzzle. Voila! This was not just fast food; it was “fast business site”. And then there is the --- well --- it’s diffi cult for me to call this food. I’d rather refer to it as “caloric intake” and the industrial process perhaps reaches its most sublime levels in its fabrication. The raw material, be it animal, vegetable, mineral or chemical, is taken to certain places (I read an article in National Geographic that put Orlando, Fla. in the eye of this kind of work) where the “caloric intake” is manufactured, that is, textured, colored, flavored, dosified, packaged and shipped out to a multitude of outlets. This is far more a chemical process than a culinary process. It is far more a laboratory experiment than work in the kitchen. One of the things I’ve noticed about the food at McDonald’s is that no matter what you order, it all smells the same. Perhaps they’ve added an addictive substance to their whole line of food? Don’t laugh! Didn’t Coca Cola have cocaine in it? People at the top of any socio-political power structure don’t necessarily have to keep the mass of humanity that does the essential work of life happy, but they must fi nd a way to at least keep them pacifi ed. For some of the more greedy practitioners of power, this can be a high wire act. You might get away with sub-standard housing, educational and intellectual neglect, and denial of other varied accoutrements of “la dolce vita”. But you cannot neglect to feed them. There is nothing that will more rile up the mob than being hungry. The Newtonian corollary to this is that nothing will keep them more in line than a full stomach. The science of fast food is doing this at a cost that has never been so low. When you can sell a concoction with some parentage to beef, fowl or fi sh for 99 cents, you’ve performed an act of alchemy. Sure, through a process of endless scientific experimentation (and advertising), you’ve made it appetizing to the mob, but a cost the customer can afford is the prime incentive here. The less they must spend on “caloric intake”, the less you have to pay them for whatever work they do, the more you can keep for yourself. When nobody is hungry, nobody is angry enough to challenge a global system that is giving them less while the very few get more. Let them eat breadfruit. As if this were not enough, for those at the top of the economic pyramid there is a bonus effect in fast food that can be cashed in later on. I’m not going to get into any detailed discussion of proper dietary habits and its effects on good health and longevity, but there does seem to be a broad consensus amongst health professionals that fast food is not a healthy choice. I suggest a trip to a local Wal-Mart, which is retail’s demographic brother to fast food, in order to see the nation’s obesity problems live and in color. One of the great ironies of modern capitalism is that the lower stratas of its population are the most over weight. In the end, this works out just fine for those profi ting the most. The caloric intake of fast food is quite suffi cient in getting those who work through their most productive years, and then, when this physical productivity is beginning to wane, the ill effects of a life of fast food begin to kick in. Being that the global economy is a crass and insensitive organism, I’ll be crass and insensitive in saying it won’t be long before they are dead. This means the societal burden of old age pensions and medical care, a cost that must be assumed to some extent by the system’s most wealthy segment, will be avoided. The timing is almost perfect. So yes, one way or another, there is something conspiratorial about fast food.
Jerome Grapel
Author of the book of essays, “Because You Never Asked”
Phone: (305) 766-9576 • Email: JerryG@postcman.info • www.postcman.info
