What's For Dinner

            The ideal scenario of coming home; and walking into the house, and smelling the wonderful aroma of a home cooked meal is becoming a tradition of the past.  Whether it was spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove or a pot roast in the oven, all one could think about was it was sure nice to be home and when was dinner?  To speed this process up you may have even found yourself asking your mother “if there was anything you could do to help.” Home cooked meals are an American tradition that has been forever altered by the innovation of fast food.  In thinking of home cooked meals the tradition does not only apply to the value of what is being cooked, but also the ritual of the process and the memories it can create.  

     With today’s busy life styles and usually both parents working, the modern convenience of fast food is now considered the normal dinner time tradition.  Even if the thought did enter your mind that “yes,” a home cooked meal would be great, the question then becomes where would a person find the time?  In today’s society we are all time poor, so we rely heavily on modern conveniences to try and make up that time.  Now more that ever fast food restaurants are everywhere a consumer looks.  On the way home while fueling up the car, there is the convenience of running into the gas station to pay for gas, and picking up McDonald’s all at the same time.  Off every major interstate exit is a fast food chain of some sort, so no matter which route a person were to travel on their way home from work they would undoubtedly have the option of some version of fast food.  Many of us believe that in the time it takes to prepare a home cooked meal from start to finish; this including the shopping as well as the dishes this time could be spent with family versus in the kitchen.  How we value our time, is a question that needs to be answered.  Teaching future generations the skills and traditions of cooking is just as important as spending quality time doing homework or playing board games.  Without future generations having the skills to prepare a home cooked meal our society’s dependence on fast food will greaten, and future generations will miss out entirely on this wonderful tradition.     

     It has been said that fast food is like a drug addiction, this may be one of the reasons that it’s presence has became so overwhelmingly popular, and has  surpassed the ever diminishing home cooked meal.  It is no surprise that with genetically modifying food that there would not be some risks involved to consumers, one being possible additions to the product.  Christine Rosen  in “You – Only Better” wrote “One way to deny our dependence on nature is to make ourselves masters of nature” (613).  As consumers in our search for the “quick meal’ we have told food manufactures and fast food corporations “heck with what is natural we want quick and easy,” and with that today’s fast food has fulfilled our demand.

     Fast food companies are masters at marketing.  There is no denying that the demand put on us to be great fabulous parents, which at times leaves us feeling as though there is no way we can live up to this expectation, and this is where our guilt starts to flourish.  Fast food companies being masters at marketing know this, and they have seen our weakness as parents and have gone in for the kill.  One major reason fast food is so overwhelmingly the meal of choice is kids love it.  Not only do the fast food companies project their marketing towards children, companies like Disney or the creators of Sponge Bob want these fast food companies to include their toys with the meals that are being served.  So whether it has been a tough day, or heading home from running errands is taken longer than it should have,  or maybe there is just  that plain feeling of guilt, about some parenting inadequacy that society has made parents think they have, this is when it happens. The kids see a fast food restaurant, and the the screams for a happy meal begin. “Parents take their children to McDonald's because they "want the kids to love them. . . . It makes them feel like a good parent." Purchasing something from Disney is the "ultimate" way to make kids happy” (Eric Schlosser 794).  Now there is no possibility of saying no, and once again no home cooked meal, no wonderful heartfelt tradition here being carried out, no, instead just the invasion of fast food America’s number one modern convinence.

     When thinking about home cooked meals and how they have been replaced with fast food, the first think that most people always say in defensive of fast food is that it is cheaper.  In some aspects yes, it can be less expensive to eat fast food versus cook a meal at home.  An example of this might there may be a certain week in which money is tight, and to make the ends meet eating off the dollar menu at a fast food restaurant might help that happen.  In stepping back and looking at this long term, fast food is not necessarily cheaper.  Economics seem to play a big role in society’s belief that it is cheaper to eat fast food then to cook at home.  With the American family budget being tighter than ever, fast food companies have found new ways in which to try and lead us to believe it is cheaper to eat at their restaurants than ever before.  One way in which they have done this is with their “value menus” or "dollar menus.”  Something to consider before deciding if that dollar cheeseburger is really a deal, is the number of health risks associated with eating fast food on a regular basis.  Economics’ really should not dictate to us our priorities and values.  Fast food companies have tried to help us ease that decision by also coming up with new healthier menu options to try and counter the argument of how unhealthy it is to eat fast food, and in doing so they keep us coming back, making us thinking we are making a better choice for our family.

     In our culture there is urgency to be first, to be the best, and to accomplish more than our neighbors.  In doing this time has become our enemy and we have lost time held traditions.  In a generation that is so technology rich that we can genetically alter food but lack the everyday skills to prepare a meal from scratch at home, we have allowed fast food companies to dominate what is for dinner.

Works Cited

Rosen, Christine, Essay, “You – Only Better”, Remix                                                            
Latterell, Catherine G.  Bedford / ST. Martins, New York 2010
Schlosser, Eric.  “The True Cost America’s Diet.”  Rolling Stone Magazine 1998: Issue 794. Print