I remember the way a flaky, amber exterior coated the soft center of each McNugget with a subtle crunch. Only later did I realize this addictive texture came from the hot oils of a deep fryer. Evenly tender, and white in color, the meaty insides implied a purity of product, although the blob shape of each nugget gave no hint as to what part of the animal it had come from. Despite the sweetness of the bare nugget, I would drown each solidified glob into an even sweeter sauce. Many pairings were available for the choosing: tangy barbeque, honey mustard, sweet ‘n sour; each a shiny corn syrup concoction ready to be absorbed by the crackling surface of freshly fried batter. Greasy, bone-less, uniform, blob-like: this is the twenty-first century idea of chicken.

Whether you eat a ten or a forty-piece order of Chicken McNuggets, you won’t increase the pleasure of your experience: a common case of quantity over quality. Instead, you will have ingested and invested in an imitation food (Pollan 150), processed and manipulated to resemble the raw form of the original animal product. These types of food like substances are efficient in mimicking the qualities of their natural counterparts. Aspects of industrial agriculture and advances in the food industry allow for alterations to the original product to go unquestioned, if not unnoticed. Without respect for the raw characteristics of an animal, there come additions of growth hormones, antibiotics, and other such “unnatural” elements included in production (Petrini 103). As a result, consumers lose their understanding of where food comes from, and are denied the opportunity to experience, and therefore recognize, exceptional food (Pollan 160).

In the presence of imitation foods like the Chicken McNugget, consumers fail to gain an understanding of the physical characteristics of a food before it appears on their plate. They also remain uninformed about the labor that goes into its production, and what the raw version of that food tastes like. Along with the increasing number of imitation foods that continue to fill the shelves of our grocery stores and the cupboards of our kitchens, there is a subsequent decrease in the opportunity for consumers to experience truly exceptional food. Without understanding our food and without tasting its unprocessed form, an abstracted idea of food begins to dominate the relationships we form with what ends up on our plate (Berry 146).

A byproduct of this distanced relationship with food is a loss of pleasure in eating (Petrini 105). Knowledge about food is more likely to lead to the choice of superior food products (good, clean, fair) (Petrini 97-135), and therefore the experience of exceptionally good food. Without access to educational and monetary resources, how does one go about enhancing the pleasure of eating? Is it possible to make the consumption of a Happy Meal a happier experience? If consumers do not care about their food, they are not likely to make changes to their food choices. In order to bring people’s awareness to the sources of their food, we must first bring their attention back to the act of eating. After all, food culture is not just made up of what you eat, but also how you eat it (Pollan 173).

Along this line of thinking, we can take preliminary steps towards happier eating through actions that don’t require a designated amount of money or knowledge. So even though a family may not be able to afford free-range chicken, they can make the choice to take their Happy Meals out of the car and around a table where they can eat their food together. In our efforts to attain widespread sustainable food production and consumption, addressing the faults in our current food system has a vital role. However, observations of how we eat our food are also informative, especially when working to bring better food experiences and better food choices to those who don’t necessarily have the means to spend their whole wallet on a selection of whole foods.