Schlosser brought up a really good point in the intro to his book: “The whole experience of fast food has become so routine, so thoroughly unexceptional and mundane, that it is now take for granted, like brushing your teeth or stopping at a red light.” Fast food is ingrained in pop culture that life is unimaginable without it. When comparing the real food Pollan and other writers beg us to eat to fast food, it makes fast food seem novel. One hundred years ago, getting something to eat like that would take much more time. Furthermore, the individual eating a burger would be much more involved in the process: going to the butcher to get the meat, maybe grinding it themselves, seasoning and forming the patty, and then cooking it.

The thought of getting a “hamburger sandwich” in five minutes or less was preposterous 100 years ago. Today waiting ten minutes is a long time.

 

Clearly Americans have become passive about our food if something that actually takes times to make is just an uneventful part of our daily routines. We don’t think about where the meat came from, who made it, or even what is in our meat. Although the passivity of our food system is changing, it still exists in many places. If you’ve ever made a burger, you know it takes time, and if you want a mouthwatering, to-die-for burger it takes even more time. There are several factors that go into this burger: what cut of meat, should I age the meat, what spices go into the meat, the spices in the patty, what toppings should I include (artisanal ketchup, caramelized onion, sautéed mushroom), and what bread will bring together the other elements of my burger.

 

Cooking takes time, and many Americans just don’t take the time to cook or spend time on their food. Yes, some individuals are crunched for time, but there are plenty of busy individuals who spend a little time planning their meals in order to be able to have better quality food.

 

Food should be so much more than passive because it takes time to grow and prepare food. As Pollan said, “Eating turns food into culture,” which I think is so true. Eating says so much about a person and where they come from. If America just passively eats fast food everyday, that says a lot about us as a population: we are time crunched, and will do anything at any cost (like turning butchering as a skill into a dangerous job) to save time, which translates to more time to be productive. Not that productivity is a bad thing, but it isn’t the only thing in life.

 

Schlosser, Pollan, and McKibben are questioning our current food system and the commodification of food. We should be questioning the five-minute burger, the conventional method of getting honey, and the insane amounts of corn produced in America. We should try and take the time to understand the problems with our food system and challenge our food system by taking the time to purposefully pick out ingredients and cook.