WHAT FACTORS LED AMERICANS TOWARDS FAST FOOD?

After World War II, the diet of Americans began to change. Fast food started becoming very popular. There are many factors that effected the growth of the fast food industry and there are many factors that fast food has changed America. Steve Mintz wrote the following in the article “Food in America”: “Since WWII, and especially since 1970s, shifts in eating patterns have greatly accelerated. WWII played a key role in making the American diet more cosmopolitan.”

According to The American Forum for Global Education, there are four main factors that contributed to the growth of the fast food industry. These four are the automobile, development of the highway and suburbs and the “baby boom”. In the late 1940s and early 1950s many middle class families were able to purchase cars because of the American economy  After World War II there was a huge birth rate increase known as the “ baby boom”. This caused middle class families to buy homes. Also after World War II,the expansion of suburban areas started to increase. This expansion was made possible by the development of the highway in the 1950s. The highway was so important because it’s what made it possible for people to live in the suburbs but work somewhere else.

You are probably wondering how all of that has to do with fast food, just like I was. But i learned from The American Forum for Global Education, there needed to be food for the people who lived in the suburbs, so fast food restaurants became popular. In the beginning fast food restaurants were designed for car owners who lived in the suburbs.The American Forum for Global Education also says that fast food is a sign of our culture because we take pride in “speed and efficiency”.  This speediness brings us back to the car industry.

Henry Ford's Assembly Line

Autumn Libal, the author of Fats,Sugars, and Empty Calories, says that fast food all started with the assembly line. Henry Ford created the assembly to make his cars cheaper and affordable.By doing this the assembly line broke down each task to a different person. This meant that each person would only have one job that they would do. Because each person would only be assigned a simply task, they no longer needed skilled and professional workers. The whole reason behind the assembly line was to make the process efficient.  

First McDonalds

Libal then goes on to say that how McDonald’s used the assembly line. The two McDonald brothers, Richard and Maurice, used Ford’s assembly line to make food in 1948. First, they only served food that did not need silverware. They served burgers, fries and milkshakes. To make the process faster they made every burger the same way. Because each person had a  different task, this is where the assembly line came into play. They called this their “Speedee Service System”.  Just like the car, they did not need professional chefs. This meant that they could hire regular people and pay them less. The assembly line made the process of making food cheaper and more efficient.  

Ray Croc with McDonalds

On the McDonald’s website I learned that a young man named Ray Croc had the idea of opening McDonald’s all over the US. McDonalds is what started chain restaurants. Eric Schlosser says that, the reasoning behind fast food is how our retail economy works today, shutting down small businesses and opening up the exact same stores but in different places.  Now a day’s most everything is chained. 

Fast Food Nation

    The fast food industry has changed all aspects of life.Eric Scholsser, the author of Fast Food Nation, said that the fast food industry helped many things other than just the diet of Americans. For example he says that the growth of our economy, landscape, workforce and popular culture was affected by the fast food industry. In this book I learned that one effect of the fast food industry is woman working. During this time period many woman started working. This meant that they did not have time to cook dinner, so they would just go swing by a fast food restaurant and pick up dinner. Another effect would be wages. Wages increased in 1973 but then after that they slowly declined.

starting in 1950s women working increased

Low wages are still a problem today

SOURCES:
Digital History- "Food in America"
The American Forum for Global Education
McDonald's
Marketplace Big Book- Pandora's Lunchbox
Fast Food Nation by Eric Scholsser
Fats, Sugars, and Empty Calories: The Fast Food Habit by Autumn Libal