Do you think fast food chains promote or destroy food culture?
If you go to foreign McDonald's, Subways, Pizza Hut. Etc they will usually have menus that are based around the local diet and give their own twist to local favorites, some argue that by doing this they preserve the food culture by modernizing it, others say this puts family owned eateries out of business and destroys that culture. I was talking about this with my from Sweden the other day, and I realized I don't really have an opinion. Whats your own opinion?? and please give detailed reasoning
Update:@ Kaj they were talking about like emphasis on herring sandwiches, I'm usually opinionated but I don't know where to go on this one. But I can see that it probably poses a threat to the local shops that are probably much better, and I do agree fast food is ruining overall health.
Update 3:@Fiz yea, it seems like in most Western Culture we have a really negative view of it, But in places like China, India, parts of Japan, and other areas really have given positive feedback about it but their fast food has a lot more quality to it than ours does. Especially when its a huge population that doesn't have the ability to sustain itself on its more traditional food culture. Which is why i'm having a problem forming an opinion on it.
Comments
When I think about how "fast food" came to be, I think it definately destroys the art of traditional cooking. Fast food changes the nutritional value and flavor of food. It has to be mass produced to feed so many people(although allot of food gets thrown away by restaurants). It has to be made in a way so it can be shipped all over the country and then prepared in 5minutes to eat. Allot of McDonald's food products aren't even real food. They put fillers in the meats with flavor enhancers. Subway has fake chicken and their bread is so cheap it goes bad within hours after being made (it becomes hard as a rock by the end of the day, I use to work at a few subways). I think if fast food chains were taken away, allot of poor people might die of starvation.
Destroys it....lol. Didn't know it was even a question.
You CAN make healthy food fast, but businesses like McDonald's, etc don't care in the least about your health. They just want to make money. They do everything within their power to use the worst, cheapest possible ingredients that won't kill you or put you in the hospital to where it's obvious it was from the food.....otherwise they have top pay lawsuits.
They aren't preserving anything. To preserve something means to leave it unchanged. If they 'modernize' it, they kind of have to change it. If they want to do that, fine, but they can't say they are 'preserving' anything.
It certainly doesn't promote food culture. I can't think of one single thing that McDonald's or Pizza hut in Sweden sell that reminds of typical Swedish food.
The basic food culture in many countries is actually healthy. The fast food chains sell all but healthy food.