Thursday, January 24, 2013

Where is the fast food?

"You can almost tell someone's background by their weight." --Anne Soubry,  junior health minister 
Photo from The Daily Telegraph (24 Jan 2013)
I just stumbled across that quote while reading the morning paper (The Daily Telegraph).  Coincidentally, I was just thinking yesterday about fast food restaurants and the fact that there are no McDonald's (or equivalent) restaurants within the vicinity of our house.  Fast food options do exist for sure, but not at the same level of mass production as a burger chain.  There are a couple family-owned chip shops but no chain restaurants.  You can get sandwiches or Costa Coffee on the run, and Tesco and the Village Shop have a selection of sausage rolls and cornish pasties, and the small Dominos in town will deliver pizza.

The nearest McD's that I can think of is about a 25 minute drive from Heswall.  In State College, there is a Burger King around the corner from our house and three McDonald's within a 10 minute drive.  If you live in a bigger town or city like Ellesmere Port or Chester or Liverpool here in the UK, I'm sure it would be the same.  But our village, and the well-heeled enclaves around us, are insulated from these options.  I haven't even caught a glimpse of a burger bag or a soda straw in weeks.  The families we see at the school tend to be fit.  Walking up School Hill helps.  The lack of fast food probably does too.

John told me that he didn't see fast food until he was a teenager.  As a child, caravan holidays meant stopping at pubs for lunch.  For me, holidays were a family road trip to LA or Vegas, and french fries were invariably a staple.  I grew up in a modern city with highways and big shopping malls.  Definitely a different background than a quiet, quaint village of sandstone cottages and history, easily predating the 20th century.  The latter is seeping with high cultural capital and seemingly at odds with the material mass consumption of fast food.

Pret A Manger (photo taken by Alicia when she visited us!)
Even if you live near McDonald's in the UK, you may find fresher fast food options along the same block.  Higher end "fast food" options here like Pret a Manger, Marks & Spencer Food, Eat, and Upper Crust are plentiful--portable and freshly baked bread, homemade soups, attractive salads and sandwiches, edamame (!)  Marks & Spencer food has an incredible selection of fancier lunch items like hoisin duck wraps, smoked salmon sandwiches, goats cheese salads, made recently and presented in windowed boxes rather than squished into cellophane.  The last time we were at a train station, I thought the kids would be excited to see a Burger King.  They seemed surprisingly apathetic.  The line was long, so we picked up sandwiches from M&S Food accompanied by a bag of cheese curls that Anna picked to up the sodium a bit.

On balance, I find that the longer I'm away from McD's, the less I personally desire it.  This is odd coming from someone who's big treat was going to McDonald's as a child and who likes having it as a tasty fall back option when busy.  When we were at the outlet mall recently, we huddled with the kids at a McD's booth with kids happy meals on one end and Pret sandwiches and salads on the other.

On a related note, I drink far less soda.  Coke used to be my "thing" with a burger or after teaching or going out for dinner.  I am just less interested in it now and don't enjoy it as much as I once did.

The kids sometimes ask about McDonald's.  I sometimes wish there was one nearby. However, now that Krispie Kreme is here in the UK, I can satisfy my American carb intake in other ways.  That's one thing I can't resist.

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