Fast Food and Loathing on the Campaign Trail

I was listening to an interview with one of the major political candidates this election and they were describing what it's like being on the campaign trail.

It went something like this:

"It's rough. You know, it's Chick-fil-A for breakfast, Subway for lunch, some other fast food for dinner..." 

Gross, I thought.

That would get old, expensive and disgusting really quickly. Then, as I thought more about it, I wondered if diet, having to cram in a Big Mac here and a Cheesy Gorditia Crunch there, in between phone calls with foreign leaders and photo-ops with the working class, is one of the contributing factors why sitting presidents seem to age so much during their term in office. 

Fast food is a staple in the USA. Our sweet land of liberty is littered with Whopper wrappers and soda fountain straws and it is in fryer grease and combo meals that we now trust. 

These corporate eateries are so important that politicians are now making visiting them into full-fledged press events. Whether it's President Trump making a spectacle salting fries at the drive-thru or Douglas Emhoff teaching Beto O'Rourke his two-thirds Diet Coke, one-third regular Coke recipe at Whataburger, the message is clear and bipartisan. America supports fast food!

The few, the proud, the McDonald's!

With a healthy (heh!) lead, heart disease maintains its title as the number one cause of death in this country, so why not celebrate the very establishments that supply the unhealthy diet in order to make it possible?

"Why don't they just walk into the Marlboro factory and light up?" asked comedian Tim Dillon when commenting on this recent fast food campaign trend. 

Would I rather the political candidates make time to stop by a real organic farm or shop at one or two farmers markets along the way? Sure! (Local and state-level politicians actually do. I’ve seen many, from both sides of the aisle, at our markets. Washington hopefuls should take note!) 

Do I blame them for not? Eh.

Sure, it's not a great look if you supporting anything close to a healthy population, which clearly they are not. But showing up to fast food places with cameras is a strategic political move. Simply because fast food is relatable to the public. 

Sad. But true. 

There are over 200,000 fast food restaurants in the U.S. That's about one fast food restaurant for every 1,600 people. (I hope I did that math right!) So... A lot of people are eating it. Thirty-seven percent of American adults, in fact, eat it on any given day. 

That's not everyone, of course. More and more people are choosing to eat healthy, unprocessed food as they become more informed. But that's still a big chunk of the voting demographic who isn't. Relatable.

I don't have any issues with fast food restaurants existing. In a pinch or from time-to-time as a treat, whatever. (We used to have birthday parties in the caboose behind our McDonald's!) Americans should be free to eat whatever they'd like, even if it is killing them over the long term or, in some cases as we just saw, more immediately. 

But whether it's pushing for better ingredients, banning additives allowed by the FDA or just educating citizens more about simple, good food, politicians can do better. They have the platform and the power to do more than celebrate the status quo. I wish they would. 

Be sure to vote this week. 

It's a long fight to get mainstream America interested and excited about healthy, local, chemical-free food. "Slow food." But it's a fight worth having. Four years from now, when we do this election thing again, maybe the candidates will have traded in their large fries and double cheeseburgers for salads and roasted squash.

—John