FOOD, PROCESSED AND FAST

Convenience, uniformity, predictability, affordability, and accessibility characterized twentieth-century processed and fast foods. Technology made mass-produced fast food possible by automating agricultural production and food processing. Globally, fast food provided a service for busy people who lacked time to buy groceries and cook their meals or could not afford the costs and time associated with eating traditional restaurant fare.

As early as the nineteenth century, some cafeterias and restaurants, foreshadowing fast-food franchises, offered patrons self-service opportunities to select cooked and raw foods, such as meats and salads, from displays. Many modern cafeterias are affiliated with schools, businesses, and clubs to provide quick, cheap meals, often using processed foods and condiments, for students, employees, and members.

In the U.K., fish and chips shops introduced people to the possibilities of food being prepared and served quickly for restaurant dining or takeaway. Sources credit the French with first preparing fried chips, also called fries, from potatoes, possibly in the seventeenth century. Simultaneously, the English bought fried fish at businesses that were so widespread that they were mentioned in nineteenth-century novels by writers including Charles Dickens. By the 1860s, English shopkeepers combined fish and chips for a nutritious and filling meal providing essential proteins and vitamins. Demand for fish and chips soared, with the approximately 8,500 modern shops, including the Harry Ramsden’s chain, in the U.K. outnumbering McDonald’s eight to one, and extending to serve patrons in countries worldwide.

Food-processing technology is designed primarily to standardize the food industry and produce food that is more flavorful and palatable for consumers and manageable and inexpensive for restaurant personnel. Food technologists develop better devices to improve the processing of food from slaughter or harvesting to presentation to diners. They are concerned with making food edible while extending the time period it can be consumed. Flavor, texture, and temperature retention of these foods when they are prepared for consumers are also sought in these processes. Microwave and radio frequency ovens process food quickly, consistently, and affordably. Microwaves are used to precook meats before they are frozen for later frying in fast-food restaurants. Nitrogen-based freezing systems have proven useful to process seafood, particularly shrimp. Mechanical and cryogenic systems also are used. The dehydrating and sterilizing of foods remove contaminants and make them easier to package. Heating and thawing eliminate bacteria to meet health codes.

These processes are limited by associated expenses and occasional damage to foods. Processing techniques have been adapted to produce a greater variety of products from basic foods and have been automated to make production and packaging, such as mixing and bottling, efficient enough to meet consumer demand.

McDonald’s is the most recognized fast-food brand name in the world. Approximately 28,000 McDonald’s restaurants operated worldwide by the end of the twentieth century, with 2,000 opening annually. That chain originated in 1948 at San Bernadino, California, when brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald created the Speedee Service System. The thriving post-World War II economy encouraged a materialistic culture and population expansion. People embraced such technological developments as automobiles and enjoyed traveling within their communities and to distant destinations. The interstate highway system encouraged travel, and new forms of businesses catered to motorists. Drive-in restaurants provided convenient, quick meal sources.

The McDonalds innovated the assembly-line production of food. They limited their menus to several popular meals that could be consumed without utensils and were easy for children to handle. A hamburger, fries, and soft drink or milkshake composed the ubiquitous fast-food meal. Instead of hiring carhops to wait on customers, the McDonalds created a system in which patrons served themselves. Employees did not need special skills to operate the McDonalds’ food assembly line. As a result, the Speedee Service System reduced prices, establishing a familyfriendly environment.

Multimixer milkshake machine salesman Ray Kroc bought rights to franchise the McDonalds’ restaurant. He had traveled to the McDonalds’ San Bernadino hamburger stand in 1954 because the brothers had bought eight milkshake machines. Because each machine had five spindles, 40 milkshakes could be produced at the same time.

Curiously observing the stand, Kroc questioned customers about why they chose to patronize that restaurant. He then monitored kitchen activity and was especially intrigued by french fry preparations that created crispy yet soft fries. Kroc had an epiphany, deciding to establish a chain of identical hamburger stands where customers could expect food efficiently and consistently produced to taste the same regardless of their geographical location.

Technology was crucial for the spread of McDonald’s. In addition to technical knowledge, tools, and materials to construct similar buildings which people would recognize as McDonald’s anywhere, Kroc used technology to select suitable sites. He researched locations by flying above communities in airplanes or helicopters to determine where schools, shopping centers, and recreational places were located. Later, commercial satellites produced photographs for McDonald’s representatives to identify where clusters of children and other possible customers were centralized. Computer software was utilized to analyze census and demographic information for optimal restaurant site selection.

Fast-food culture gradually altered eating habits in the latter twentieth century. Inspired by McDonalds’ success, other major fast-food chains, including Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Wendy’s, Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Carl’s Jr. were created. Cake mixes, instant mashed potatoes, breakfast cereal, macaroni and cheese, and junk food such as potato chips, pretzels, canned cheese, and doughnuts also became popular processed and fast food available in grocery stores. Purchasing fast food became a routine activity for many people. The ‘‘drive-thru’’ enhanced fast food’s convenience. In addition to restaurants, fast foods were served at airports, schools, gas stations, and large stores such as Wal-Mart.

McDonald’s targeted children with marketing that promoted toys, often movie-related, in Happy Meals and featured children enjoying McDonald’s playgrounds. McDonald’s hired approximately one million workers annually. Most employees, many of them teenagers, were unskilled and paid minimum wages. Training was minimal, and the turnover rate was high. Fast-food corporations caused the demise of many independent food entrepreneurs. Conformity soon overshadowed regional cuisine.

Influencing agricultural distribution,McDonald’s bought a large portion of the world’s potatoes and meat. Slaughterhouses were industrialized to process hundreds of carcasses hourly on an assembly line system of conveyor belts and automated meat recovery (AMR) systems, which stripped all meat from bones. Because these machines often included bone and other contaminants in ground beef, European laws forbade their use. Meatpacking plants were cleaned with high-pressure hoses emitting a water and chlorine mixture. McDonald’s implemented technological fast-food processes that altered how food was made. Only salad ingredients arrived at fast-food restaurants fresh. Everything else was reformulated and freeze-dried, dehydrated, frozen, or canned to prepare in fast-food kitchens designed by engineers. In laboratories, scientists manufactured chemicals to achieve desired flavors and smells in processed fast foods that were designed to please consumers.

Kroc hired people to assess water content of potato crops with hydrometers. He realized that potatoes needed to be stored in curing bins so that sugars converted into starches to prevent sugars from caramelizing during frying. Electrical engineer Louis Martino invented a potato computer for McDonald’s to calculate how long fries should be cooked according to oil temperature. Fast-food chains used a system of blanching, drying, briefly frying, then freezing fries before they were deep fried for consumption. Sometimes fries were dipped in sugar or starch to achieve desired appearance and texture. At french fry factories, machines washed potatoes then blew off their skins. A water gun knife propelled potatoes 36 meters per second through a cutter that sliced them uniformly before they were frozen and shipped to restaurants.

Critics lambasted the high fat, sugar, salt, and calorie content of fast foods, which they linked to increased obesity, heart disease, and diabetes rates, especially in children. They demanded healthier options. Some menus were changed but were vulnerable to patrons’ acceptance or rejection. Auburn University scientists replaced some fat in ground beef with carrageenan for moisture and flavor additives to create leaner beef that tasted like normal ground beef. Marketed by McDonald’s as the McLean Deluxe in the early 1990s, this lean hamburger failed to attract consumers because it was described as health food.

Hindus and vegetarians were angered when McDonald’s disclosed that french fries were fried in beef tallow. Some people protested at the placement of fast-food restaurants in their neighborhoods. In 1990, McDonald’s sued David Morris and Helen Steel, members of London Greenpeace, for libel because they distributed leaflets critical of the chain. The defendants lost the McLibel trial, but The Court of Appeals overturned some of the initial judgment. McDonald’s stopped purchasing genetically engineered potatoes in an effort to prevent European consumer protests spreading to the U.S.

Fast-food globalization occurred as fast-food chains were built worldwide. McDonald’s owned the most retail property internationally. In addition to archetypal fast-food meals, restaurants often accommodated local tastes such as Wendy’s in Seoul, Korea, selling noodle dishes. Fast-food symbols were seen throughout the world. Ronald McDonald statues appeared in areas of the former East Germany, and the first McDonald’s Golden Arch Hotel opened in Zurich, Switzerland, in 2001. A large plastic Colonel Sanders greeted passengers at Don Muang airport, Bangkok, Thailand. Even St. Kitts, a small Caribbean island, has a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. Fast food was the target of anti-American protests in China, which internationally is second in the number of fast-food restaurants, and other countries.

By Elizabeth D. Schafer in "Encyclopedia of 20th-Century Technology", Colin A. Hempstead, editor; William E. Worthington, associate editor, published in 2005 by Routledge New York,excerpts volume one p.367-369. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa. 

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