The Standard American Diet

This is part 2 of my research on global food movements, entitled
GLOBALIZATION: It's what's for dinner.

A SAD STORY:
The growing problem of
the Standard American Diet

It may be a generalization to say that it all started with a hamburger, but the globalization of the Standard American Diet is represented today by one. The hamburger is now a worldwide fast food phenomenon, with McDonald's as the proverbial "king," operating over 31,000 restaurants in 119 countries, serving nearly 47 million customers each day, and employing more than 1.5 million people. [3] For many around the planet, as in Hong Kong today, eating at McDonald's is "an ordinary, everyday experience" as the chain creates a transnational culture, becoming a pop icon and local institution by blending into the landscape and adapting to the culture. [4]

This glocalizing of the American diet is evidence of expanding globalization in many cultures. Books like Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser and Don't Eat this Book by Morgan Spurlock tell the story of the fast food movement, but also the shifts that have occurred in food preferences, which have resulted in an increase in health risk factors and shifts in farming practices. The tale these books tell is really a SAD one.

Schlosser writes, "The obesity epidemic that began in the United States during the late 1970s is now spreading to the rest of the world, with fast food as one of its vectors." [5] As the number of fast food restaurants in Great Britain roughly doubled, he goes on tell, so did the obesity rate among adults. Unlike the Brits who eat more fast food than other Western Europeans and who have the highest obesity rates, Italy and Spain have the lowest rate, while consuming far less fast food fare. In Japan, overweight people, once a rarity, are now common as the traditional healthy diet of rice, vegetables, and soy products is being replaced by an increase in red meat, a Western diet, and American fast food with its "Bi-gu Ma-ku."

Schlosser notes that, "The relationship between a nation's fast food consumption and its rate of obesity has not been definitely established through any long term, epidemiological study. The growing popularity of fast food is just one of many cultural changes that have been brought about by globalization. Nevertheless, it seems wherever America's fast food chains go, waistlines start expanding."

And it's not just waistlines that are expanding. The risks of a heart attack, cancer, diabetes, and other degenerative diseases also rise as Campbell and Campbell reveal in The China Study, the most comprehensive international study of nutrition ever conducted. [6] The study, which began in 1983, found that the greatest single influence on the growth of degenerative diseases was the amount of animal fat and animal protein eaten – the more you eat, the greater your risk. A recent 2008 study of 16,000 participants in 52 countries confirmed again that a western diet of fried food, salty snacks, meat and eggs (what would be classified as a typical fast food meal) accounts for 30 percent of heart attack risk across the world. The study noted that "the same relationships that are observed in Western countries exist in different regions of the world." [7]

Next week:
The Standard American Diet and the farming industry

[3] McDonald's Canada, "FAQs," http://www.mcdonalds.ca/en/aboutus/faq.aspx (accessed December 15, 2008).
[4] James L. Watson, "McDonald's in Hong Kong," in The Globalization Reader, 3rd ed., ed. Frank J. Lechner and John Boli (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 129.
[5] Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001), 242.
[6] T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell II, The China Study, 1st Benbella paperback ed. (Dallas: Benbella Books, 2006).
[7] "'Western' Diet Increases Heart Attack Risk Globally," ScienceDaily (October 22, 2008), http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081020171337.htm (accessed October 31, 2008).