Mcdonaldization In America

After reading chapters 15 and 21 in our Current Issues and Enduring Questions book and viewing Forks Over Knives, I am afraid I do not see this worrisome food issue in America improving in the near future. Obesity is a known epidemic and it is widespread throughout the entire country. According to the documentary film, Forks Over Knives, “We spend $2.2 trillion a year on healthcare: over five times more than the defense budget.” This quote reveals the issue regarding the state of health and by maintaining a healthier diet not only do people benefit, but the government does as well. The current relationship between food and health industries brings an uncertainty that should be seen as a critical concern to the eyes of the public. Too many people

After watching the Food Inc. documentary I now look at our nation’s food industry differently. As a consumer I feel that there are many things being hidden from us. Nowadays the top four companies for meat control about eighty percent of the market. There’s only about three or four companies controlling everything and they are more powerful than ever. A majority of these companies are putting profit over consumer’s health. They are not considerate about the health and safety of the food produced or about the animals being raised. We have bigger and better food now but we have also have obesity, and diabetes problems and many other health related deficiencies that use to not be as big of an issue back then.

Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto is an eye-opening analysis of the American food industry and the fear driven relationship many of us have with food. He talks in depth about all the little scientific studies, misconceptions and confusions that have gathered over the past fifty years. In the end provide us with a piece of advice that should be obvious but somehow is not, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." He follows the history of nutritionism and the industrialization of food, in hopes to answer one question….. how and when "mom" ceded control of our food choices to nutritionists, food marketers and the government.

McDonaldization involves a process of rationalization described by George Ritzer that is utilized by sociologists (Ritzer 292). Ritzer elaborates the aspect of McDonaldization of society is manifested in situations, for example, where a society adopts the features of a fast-food joints. Worth a note, fast-foods are growing very popular because they highly fits with most individual contemporary lifestyle.

America has been faced with the growing obesity epidemic. This is becoming very wide spread among all races and class levels due in part to the abundance of inexpensive food available and how easily people are becoming persuaded to but things they do not need. David Zinczenko published article “Don’t Blame the Eater”, Zinczenko argues that fast-food industries are not doing their job to provide clear enough nutritional information for hazardous food.

The food economy in America has gone through numerous and substantial changes during the past couple decades. The changes, although economically beneficial for America as a whole, are becoming a detriment to the health of our society. Perhaps the biggest innovation is the rise of fast food culture. The mass fast food monopoly is growing more and more every day, and with the aid of the government in forms of subsidies, the food culture of the United States is being run by big business. “Corporate enterprises” are “moving in to take advantage of” the American food market (Campbell). This shift in the food economy has come to be accepted as the norm, and so the average American consumer is being exposed to the dangers of fast food. Americans are finding it harder and harder to eat healthy. Fast food is causing diseases and deaths to skyrocket, and the happiness level of America is plummeting, all because of ignorance and the greed of big business.

Food production has become a problem in America because as humans we do not enjoy the pleasure of questioning of what is in our food while we eat and we allow the industrial food market to advertise to our children to set them on an early path to obesity. In”Pleasures of Eating” by Wendell Berry, he discusses that the goal of food industrialism is for people to buy more pre-cooked food, however Berry argues against that, trying to persuade the readers to enjoy their food responsibly. Michael Pollan in “When a Crop Becomes King” addresses how corn is impoverishing our health and environment since we only rely on it too much because of the many uses it has. David Barboza asserts that the food market advertise towards children to set them on an early path to obesity in his article “If you Pitch It,They Will Eat It.” I agree that industrial farming threatens the lives of everyone because in America the health of children is declining sixteen percent with the food we continue to consumer blindlessly.

The way that Burger King and other fast food restaurant chains do business and markets their products to consumers is due to the change in our society to where the consumer wants the biggest, fastest, and best product they can get for their money. This change in society can be attributed to a process known as McDonaldization. Although McDonaldization can be applied to many other parts of our society, this paper will focus on its impact on Burger King and Taco Bell restaurants. My belief is that the process of McDonaldization has lead our generations toward a more a much more efficient lifestyle, with much less quality. From my observations and studies of these fast food resturants, several themes have become

When dealing with food, Americans are forced to put their trust into the food industry. Although, there has been an increase of awareness, not enough, on how the industry grows food, processes, and what Americans consume. The United States is riddled with food industry immorality, obesity, and inadequate nutrition education. The government should have more control of the food industry, beyond the mandating of Nutrition Facts labels. In order to enhance the life quality of Americans, the government should partake in a more significant role with food industry regulation.

George Ritzer, in his book The McDonaldization of Society, has given a good understanding of the kind of world we live in. He describes the concept of McDonaldization, which is the process in which the principles that form the basis of McDonalds are greatly influencing the rest of society. McDonalds runs its business on the following key elements: efficiency, calculability, predictability and control by non-human technologies. A fifth element, which Ritzer perceives as a disadvantage of McDonaldization, is the irrationality of rationality. This is the idea that a society which is based entirely on rationality is not a normal human society because humans are not

Diet is a huge concern for many people today who are either trying to control a preventable disease or those people who are trying to lose the excess weight that they are carrying around with them. Not only has our diet as Americans been steadily getting worse but as our population has risen there have been very few attempts to counter the negative effects that over processing our food has done. Every Single American, who has eaten the hot lunches at school remembers and has a first hand knowledge of the taste of preservatives and manufactured flavor of the food they ate during their formative years attending Elementary through High School.

The nutrients in food are something that a human cannot live without, yet so many people are deprived of a nutritious diet. Healthy eating habits are hard for many to obtain with the economy being as bad as it is. Healthy food is pricey and many low income families cannot afford the correct groceries. A healthy diet is not only costly money wise but health wise as well. Quick unhealthy meals can cause very pricey health problems. Even with assistance, finding the funds to support a nutritional diet in the United States is very difficult. Obtaining and keeping a healthy diet in the United States seams merely impossible to most citizens, with no change looking bright in the future.

Today’s society and culture is becoming more and more McDonaldized. This paper will illustrate what the process of McDonaldization is. In addition, this paper will show how today’s society has adapted to this process along with using the theories from Max Weber.

According to George Ritzer, bureaucracy completely dehumanized the social institutions in America. He sees the bureaucracy as having four components: efficiency, predictability, control and quantification. He terms this dehumanization of an institution as "McDonaldization". One of the most prevalent examples in modern society is the health care institution. In the past, health care was more simplistic in nature. House calls were not unheard of, and doctors knew all of their patients and their families on a personal level. The doctor who delivered your parents would deliver you as well as your future children. Follow-ups were quite normal; doctors were concerned with your progress for their own peace of mind. It is only recently that the

George Ritzer describes McDonaldization as “the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world”. McDonaldization is the idea that our society is becoming more efficient and more fast paced. Rational systems can be defined as “unreasonable, dehumanizing systems that deny the humanity, the human reason, of the people who work within them or are served by them”.1 Today there are many types of businesses that are increasingly adapting the same values and principles of the fast-food industry to their needs. Rational systems are dehumanizing our society and seem to be even more irrational than convenient. “Almost every aspect of