McDonalds Ugly Truth

McDonalds Ugly Truth

Fast food chains have taken over America, but this is not a good thing. The Fast food industry has had a tremendous outbreak of popularity since they first came into existence. In the course of two years 25,000 fast food restaurants were built. Almost everyone knows that fast food is bad for you. With the media highlighting every bad thing in the world it is hard to not know that. Most of us do not realize that it is not only bad for our health, but a threat to it as well. Some may know about the calories in it, which in just one meal can be enough for the day. One of the biggest fast food restaurants is McDonalds.

 McDonald’s sells various fast food items and soft drinks including, burgers, chicken, salads, fries, and ice cream. Very few may even know about the bad meat. So they think I won’t eat the hamburger, I’ll have French fries instead. I know I used to think that, but the French fries are worse, because of the “partially hydrogenated” oils they are cooked in. Amazing isn’t it? There is virtually no way to make fast food good for you. Not only the food in McDonalds is bad but the way they treat their employees is nothing better. Is it McDonalds worth for people to be “loving it” or not?  

McDonald’s is one of the most popular in the United States and to reach such an enormous accomplishment, it had been through a long way with an extensive history. The creators of McDonalds is two guys named Dick and Mac. The first McDonald was built  in 1940, at that time it was just a Bar-B-Q restaurant in California with a large menu. In 1948, they made a historical decision to closed down the restaurant for alternation and reopened it with “the menu reduced to nine items: hamburger, cheeseburger, soft drink, milk, coffee, potato chip and a slice of pie. The staple of the menu is the 15 cent hamburger” (History). This decision helps their business to be a lot more successful.

As time goes on, McDonalds had become a nationwide restaurant with the help of a salesman named Ray Kroc. He opened his McDonald’s in Illinois in 1955. After 12 years in business, McDonald’s restaurant appeared all over the United States with about 700 locations. The franchise turned into a worldwide restaurant when the Moscow location opened in 1990. Along with its success, McDonald’s added numerous of options to its menu including breakfast, smoothies, frappes, deserts, and milkshakes. In 2011, the franchise opened more new locations in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Trinidad & Tobago, affirmed they now operate restaurant in 119 countries and became the biggest fast food restaurant franchise nowadays.  (History)

 Each McDonald's restaurant is operated by a franchisee, an affiliate, or the corporation itself. The corporation's' revenues come from the rent, royalties and fees paid by the franchisees, as well as sales in company-operated restaurants. “McDonald's revenues grew 27% over the three years ending in 2007 to $22.8 billion, and 9% growth in operating income to $3.9 billion” (Friedman). The comfort of how McDonalds is set up makes everyone blind of how their food is being made behind the door.

A lot of time McDonalds claims their meat are 100% ground and fresh. It also was being frozen right after it being made but only a few knows that their meat is responsible for “70% of all food-poisoning incidents, with chicken and minced meat (as used in burgers) being the worst offenders” (McDonalds). When animals are slaughtered, meat can be contaminated with gut contents, urine, leading to bacterial infection. In an attempt to counteract infection in their animals, farmers routinely inject them with doses of antibiotics. In addition to growth-promoting hormone drugs and pesticide residues in their feed, build up in the animals' tissues and can further damage the health of people on a meat-based diet.

Most of the people that live in United States have eaten McDonalds at least once throughout their life time-line. The most evident advantage of McDonald’s is that it saves cost and time. If one individual live alone and tries to prepare for a meal, it’s going to be cheaper and quicker to buy a meal from McDonald’s instead of buying all the ingredients and cooking it at home. Besides the time an individual has to spend in the kitchen, there is the added effort consumed in washing and peeling the vegetable. No matter how much benefit you can get from fresh meals with vegetables, at the end of a hard-working day, when one returns home all tired and hungry, a McDonald would be a godsend. All this makes eating McDonald’s score more preferably over cooking a meal for a busy individual. That’s when McDonald provides time and cost benefits. It has also impact on the relationship with people by having things such as play land, plasma TVs’, and free Wi-Fi.

Along the line to get people to eat McDonalds, the company put a lot of investment in advertisements. Many McDonald's restaurants have included a playground for children and advertising geared toward children. Some have been redesigned in a more 'natural' style, with a particular emphasis on comfort: introducing lounge areas and fireplaces, and eliminating hard plastic chairs and tables. There are commercials all over most of the television channels that the kids usually watch; therefore they can ask their parents to bring them to McDonalds after school or so. In McDonalds, they have the cute kid’s meals called “happy meals” along with toys to attract the kids. The kids today in America eat too much as it is, and a lot of what they eat isn’t healthy. The large amount of advertisement from McDonalds contributes to this. If children know so much about McDonalds, you would guess that they would have eaten there.

Surveys that have been taken say that most people eat McDonalds at least once a month. A study that was performed said that immigrant children coming to America, even with all their poverty and lack of good health care, are healthier than the everyday American child. Instead of eating processed foods, they eat more fruits, vegetables, and grains. Of course over time, every immigrant child will be sucked up into the contagious American way, and develop our unhealthy eating habits. “The amount of obese children has increased by 50% in the last 20 years. Obesity has become one of the biggest problems the United States of America. Anywhere from 25 – 30% of children, and 50% of adults are obese” (Robbins).