So I finished Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. (He also wrote Reefer Madness, which I also read and enjoyed.) I won't get into a lot of the details. I can say that it seems well researched (references in the back), explores a lot of the effects of fast food. I'll leave the details to the book, which I highly recommend. I am quite reluctant to eat at McDonald's now.
Part of the book discussed the expansion of fast food outside of the US. I can very directly see that. Out of all the places I've been, I have stayed in exactly one town that did not have a McDonald's (Ubud, in Bali). Everywhere else, Mickey D's, KFC, and sometimes Pizza Hut were all beacons in the night.
We tend to eat fast food because it's so convenient. It seems as if the rest of the world sits down to eat. You go to a restaurant, order, stay there, and eat. The idea of "take out" is foreign. The meal seems to be more than a way to not be hungry anymore.
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I did get mashed potatoes in China. Tasted mostly like home. They had fried chicken, but most selections had Chinese inspired flavoring. And I'm wanting to say that the desert was a bit odd, something with beans/corn that I never would have associated with deserts. I think there were milkshake flavors not available at home. I didn't try them.
And they didn't have the "value meal" concept. It was far more common to order ala carte. And serving sizes were smaller. More like "kids" size in the US.
All of this based on a KFC in China, and McD's through Hong Kong. I haven't had Western fast food since then.
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