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We tend to talk about the fast food burger as if it’s one entity, but in actuality, that monster fast food meal deal is the sum of its many parts. And to be frank, it's not pretty.
I can talk about why fast food is bad for you and why it’s bad for the planet, but when you break it down into ingredients that’s where the real pain behind the burger comes into play.
The Patty
Undoubtedly, fast food beef isn’t of the highest grade; that’s why it’s cheap. You won’t find free range and organic at your local fast food joint as you might expect. And as a result you can be quite sure that your burger was sourced from cattle in a factory farm. This rather anonymous patty was once an animal that was treated like a commodity at best, and at worst, inhumanely.
The Cheese
Unless you can certify that the cheese you eat comes from a small, local farm where animals were allowed to roam freely and their milk is lovingly made into cheese, you can expect the opposite. Mickey Z wrote that according to PETA, "The 9 million cows living on dairy farms in the United States spend most of their lives in large sheds or on feces-caked mud lots, where disease is rampant. Cows raised for their milk are repeatedly impregnated. Their babies are taken away so that humans can drink the milk intended for the calves. When their exhausted bodies can no longer provide enough milk, they are sent to slaughter and ground up for hamburgers.” So whether for beef or dairy, the picture can be bleak.
Lettuce, Chopped Onions, Pickle
These seemingly innocent condiments were grown with pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides that can pollute our groundwater and make workers sick. Unless produce is USDA certified organic, this is likely true of your fast food veggie sampler.
Ketchup
Ketchup contains high fructose corn syrup amongst a slew of other ingredients. High fructose corn syrup is made with GMO corn, which is a large monoculture. Large monocultures can be riddled with pests. As a result, monocultures are often dressed with a toxic cocktail of pesticides so that they can survive. Monocultures can deplete the nutrients in soil and lead to erosion. In addition, the pesticides used to grow them, pollute our soil and ground water.
Again, it's not just the burger, it's the sum of its parts.
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More on Fast Food
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