My Experience as a Fast Food Consumer

I am originally from Singapore and only came to New York in June last year. The culture from my country is mainly about food, meaning that people in our country love to eat and we take food, as in quality of food, very seriously. People in Singapore are willing to travel miles, wait in line for sometimes over an hour just to buy a plate of “chicken rice”. For those who do not know what “chicken rice” is, it is just chicken with fragrant white rice (just mentioning it makes me hungry). Although the ingredient sounds simple but to be able to cook it till perfection is a challenge for many.

Back home, we associate fast food as “special treats” for the family especially with my nieces and nephews and after the construction of play lands in Macdonald’s, our visits to the restaurants were a little more frequent, about twice a month at the most. I briefly remember my husband insist that I watch the film Fast Food Nation, which was on one of the television channels when I first arrive in new York last year, I did but did not take the contents of it seriously, after all it was just a film. And since the day he watched that film, we only shop at “Whole Foods” supermarket, organic meat and produce to me then was just food. But today, after reading the book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser and my lessons from Eng101, I truly understand the importance why we should all only eat organic produce. The reality of the fast food industry from the people working in restaurants and factories to how the animals are kept and raised and how big corporations are able to manipulate the laws arevery disturbing and unbelievable. To continue to visit fast food restaurants and purchasing food from huge corporations, we are indirectly supporting their acts of inhumanity, at the same time, we are putting our health at stake.