[Tyr Zalo Hawk]: 712.Essays.Reality vs FFF.Fooled Into Fast Food.D2

Statistically speaking, 1 out of every 4 people who read this will eat fast food today. However, if these same statistics are to be believed, then only 0.36 out of those 4 people who eat the fast food will actually know anything about their food besides its price and taste. So why buy food that they know anything about? For the same reasons they get into their cars, interact with other people, and even go to class. They believe that these things are healthy, efficient, fun, safe, or at least safe enough to take part in. They assume a certain confidence in how the products they use are manufactured, shipped, and stored. They trust that things are what they say they are without even bothering to glance at an ingredient list unless they’ve heard a rumor about how a certain dye shrinks their sperm count, or they have food allergies. Instead of taking control of their lives, they assume that the high school students who work at McDonalds for just over minimum wage have prepared their food to a satisfactory level. They have rationalized their fears away, and they will enjoy their hamburgers more for it. But what’s the truth?
The brain functions by interpreting signals given to it by the rest of the body; this causes neurons to fire, and then an appropriate response is sent back to the body in one form or another. This is called perception, and it’s what life is all about. People perceive (“1 a: b: to regard as being such.”) a certain reality (2 b: something that is neither derivative nor dependent but exists necessarily) about everything in their lives, from fast foods to fast cars, and act accordingly upon that reality. Reality is, however, as Einstein did so love to point out, completely subjective. Take sugar pills for example. Placebos are given by doctors to patients who believe enough in the effects of medicine to make these ordinary little capsules of saccharin have the same effect as sleeping pills, pain pills, and even certain psychiatric medications. People taking the placebos think they really are drugs and their minds, fooled by faith, act according to what it is they believe that pill is doing to their bodies. Random clinical testing for depression treatments showed that a placebo worked just as well as actual therapy and powerful drugs in nearly every case (Brown). The placebo effect isn’t limited to the medical field however. The simple act of placing a USDA approved or “Organic” sticker on a piece of food makes people believe that it is safer, healthier, and better for the environment. While not a different pill, per say, if the mere notion of a sticker creating healthier food can pass of as viable, then why worry about what’s in our food at all? Put another way, it seems that that 0.36 is just ruining perfectly tasty-looking food by knowing something about it.
As creatures of habit, humans value consistency. For some, this means that home cooking is the only way to go. For others, it manifests into a desire to hold onto childhood mementos in order to keep a constant in their lives. In America, it took over 200 years and 43 white, middle-aged presidents before a change was finally made. In light of this knowledge the fast food industry has to be careful about how much they let the people know, and, when they do let them know, what information is chosen to be released. When McDonald’s switched from the use of fresh potatoes for French fries to the frozen fries of J.R. Simplot, no one was told. People couldn’t taste the difference. As far as anyone knew, they were getting the same fries, for a better price (Schlosser 115). At one point in their illustrious career, Pepsi decided to fashion a new type of coke called Crystal Pepsi. It was colorless, caffeine-less, and came in a new can. “Some claimed it tasted like lemon-lime soda, even though those flavors were not in the beverage” (Jahnke). Well before then, in the 1970s, a group of dedicated scientists tested and proved that a foods color was a large factor in how people perceived the taste. In their experiment “people were served an oddly tinted meal of steak and French fries that appeared normal beneath colored lights. Everyone thought the meal tasted fine until the lighting was changed… [then] some people became ill” (Schlosser 125). The same slab of blue meat and those moss-colored fries these people had eaten a few moments before under false impressions and enjoyed was suddenly more like a poison just because of a color change. Their minds saw something they didn’t recognize as normal, and everything flipped upside down, which also explains the nausea. Once again, Mr. 0.36 is looking rather foolish for being able to discern facts about his food rather than simply accepting fiction.
Many complex ingredients are used to make our everyday foods. Sodium benzoate, acesulfame potassium, and hundreds of other polysyllabic chemicals can be found in every last one of the food groups. For many, the majority of these ingredients are no more than words with little value in the real world, but 0.36 knows the truth. Each of these substances has a varied effect on the people that consume them. From as basic an effect as causing allergic reactions to boosting immune systems, preserving the food longer, and contributing to taste, odor, and color, it is these longwinded scientific chemicals that, recently, have begun to determine nearly everything about our foods. Fast food manufacturers are well versed in the alchemic practices of food creation. Hamburgers, widely considered to be just ground beef, are flavored almost entirely by these compounds and not the grills they’re cooked on. The companies will admit this, but only if squeezed to do so. They’re not stupid. They know people are more likely to buy if they associate the taste of the meal with the place they purchased it at and not some lab-coated men a thousand miles away. In Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser explores a factory that produces the chemicals used to make a food taste like it does. “All of these aromas are made through the same basic process: the manipulation of volatile chemicals to create a particular aroma” (Schlosser 122). Because our sense of taste is actually 90% smell, a particular aroma, added to anything, could easily make even the most delicious of foods taste horrible, and visa versa. The human mind’s attraction to certain colors and aromas is monopolized in nearly every level of the food chain. For example creamy, rich, popcorn-topping yellow butter is actually white in its most natural state and is metamorphosed with these chemicals because yellow is more appealing to the masses (Jahnke). While perhaps not knowing how to pronounce the entire ingredient list, 0.36’s knowledge of what the things in his food can be useful indeed.
Though some may not be willing to believe it, especially not 0.36, what people perceive about food has, more often than not, an almost incalculably greater effect on them than the truth. This is because it doesn’t really matter if it’s still steak and fries, if they say it’s Pepsi on the can, or if the tributezene pills a doctor prescribed are actually just little sugar filled tablets, because the human mind can trample the truth any time it wishes. Science attempts to describe the reality of what is happening with cold, hard facts. Oftentimes though, the fact of the matter is that the personal reality is whatever the individual thinks it is – “actual” reality be damned.