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Fast Food Nations Eating Themselves To Death

Jay Rayner Reports

Feb. 23, 2009

Every economic cloud has a silver lining apparently, though not perhaps if you’re a chicken. Last week, KFC, which dumps more intensively reared birds in the deep-fat fryer than almost anybody else, announced it was responding to vastly increased demand by creating 9,000 new jobs in this country and opening up to 300 new outlets. Money might be too tight to mention, but not if you want to fill up on a killer combination of cheap protein, even cheaper carbs and tongue-coating fats. Last month, a new KFC drive-thru took £100,000 in just one week, a record.

The story is repeated across the high street. Subway, whose sandwiches are to gastronomy what Kim Jong-il is to democracy - sweet onion chicken teriyaki sub anyone? - said it would be creating 7,000 jobs and opening 600 new outlets. Sales of Domino’s Pizzas are up 10%. High street pasty seller Greggs is booming. Even McDonald’s, which just a couple of years ago was written off as being in terminal decline, is adding another 4,000 people to its workforce. The economy might be tanking, fancy restaurants might be closing, but in the junk food business it’s trebles all round.

For those trying to get us to eat more healthily, it’s head in hands time. Although let’s be absolutely clear. What we are witnessing is not proof of something new; rather, it’s symptomatic of an age-old and deeply chronic divide in this country between those who give a toss about what they eat and those who, frankly, do not; who see the lectures about what they have for dinner as little more than that, a hectoring irrelevance for lives lived at the bottom of the economic heap.

The announcement last week that the government is to introduce fiercely enforced targets across public sector catering for things such as pastry bulk in pies, the quantity of salad in sandwiches and general salt levels will be regarded as just so much more paternalistic finger wagging.

Rightly or wrongly, those who are actually paying for the bargain buckets and the sweet onion chicken teriyaki subs believe their lives are bounded by far greater concerns than the nutritional balance of what they are putting in their mouths. Indeed, it goes further. For those helping to bulk out the bank balances of KFC, Subway and the rest, their products are not simply a convenience. They are a reward, a form of cheap comfort, when everything else is a hideous, cramping struggle.

Cue howls of outrage from those who insist that meagre resources do not mean you have to eat badly. They are absolutely right. Just because money is in short supply, you do not have to eat the bad stuff. There are people all over the country on meagre incomes who, through culinary smarts, clever shopping, hard work on allotments and sheer bloody-mindedness, feed themselves very well indeed. At the risk of sounding horribly patronising, they deserve admiration and respect. However, we are not talking about what it’s possible to do, but about what is. And while we can all wish that so many people were not giving the shareholders of KFC such a warm glow, we cannot pretend either that it isn’t happening or delude ourselves as to why it’s happening.

As ever, it’s about the shape of the debate on food in Britain. It is fundamentally disfigured, between those who have mistaken a set of aesthetic judgments about how we feed ourselves - the middle-class, local, seasonal food Taliban - and the rest for whom this is simply a closed bit of chatter at the equivalent of a cocktail party to which they have not been invited. Earlier this year on Channel 4, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall was once more pursuing his campaign on behalf of the poor, benighted intensively reared chicken. He is a passionate campaigner and makes his argument well, though being driven by a killer combination of British sentimentality and suspicion of big business, he completely misses the point. What matters in this country today is not how the chicken is raised - however distasteful some of us may find the circumstances in which that too often happens - but whether the bird ends up in the deep-fat fryer. Right now, an awful lot of chicken is going in to the deep-fat fryer.

Farmers’ markets are lovely. I adore rare breed pork with a good, thick layer of creamy fat, and regard proper, artisanally made Keen’s or Montgomery cheddar as one of life’s necessities. This is because I make good money and never have to struggle with more brutal realities. Lucky me. What I try not to do is mistake that lifestyle choice with a much wider debate on food policy which, to my mind, is what far too many of our media food stars do.

Only Jamie Oliver, to his vast credit, has made a real attempt to address the issue, with his Ministry of Food campaign and TV show. It was easy to criticise as patronising to those on low incomes in general and the people of Rotherham in particular. But at least it recognised the fundamental issue, which is life skills: a basic knowledge of ingredients and an understanding of the simple processes required to turn that into dinner. And so we start to rehearse the age-old arguments: bring back cookery classes in schools, more and better-calibrated education programmes around the downsides of junk food and so on.

Unfortunately, all of this takes time and that’s one thing which isn’t available. Because ranged against those who would like to refocus the way we all think about what we eat are the fast-food businesses - and they don’t call it fast food for nothing. It is not simply about the speed with which these companies are able to deliver their products from the moment the customer walks through the door. It is also about their responsiveness to economic circumstances. They know that unless they respond quickly they die. They are completely designed to do so, which is why the big high street names have, with remarkable rapidity, announced their expansion plans.

But it goes further than that. A couple of years ago, McDonald’s really did look like it was on the skids. Sales were down and outlets were being closed down. With immense skill, it proved why it has been so successful for so long by swiftly appearing to address consumer concerns.

In came fair trade coffee. In came organic milk and a local sourcing policy for its beef. McDonald’s did just enough to spike the guns of its critics, smothering dispute in the media, which in turn brought back the punters.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that McDonald’s is still a joint that makes its cash from hamburgers and fries which, eaten too often, are a nutritional disaster. Poor nutrition leads in turn to obesity and that is obviously a Very Bad Thing. But, as Sir Michael Marmot of the World Health Organisation explains in today’s Observer, it is now clear that obesity is also a huge determinant for cancer. Quite simply, the stakes could not be higher.

Are there any grounds for optimism? As it happens, there are. As part of the government’s anti-obesity Change4Life campaign, a group of local food retailers in the north east has been given grants to help it improve the display and storage of fresh produce and has been encouraged to link up with local cookery clubs, so consumers know what to do with the stuff once they’ve bought it.

It’s not prescriptive, it’s practical. The result, two months into the pilot project? According to the shops’ owners, there’s been a significant lift in fresh fruit and vegetable sales. Will it make the chief executives of KFC and Subway tremble in their well-filled boots? Perhaps not. But in the battle for our cholesterol-drenched hearts - and minds - it’s a start.

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