If anything represents America more than the Stars and Stripes, it is the Golden Arches.  The omni-presence of McDonald's in other countries is sad, but in America it is natural.  The 30,000 gold and red restaurants dotted across the landscape are the Pyramids of American civilization.  A massive investment of resources, manpower, time and human ingenuity to produce something grand: a testament to the American desire for comfort and familiarity.

McDonald's helped make this country what it is -- the fattest nation on Earth.  Though as I traveled across America I noticed this bulge is not spread evenly throughout.  The further inward I traveled from the civilized coasts the bigger the people became.  Even though my adopted England isn't far behind in the race for most obese populous, the increase in fat people in the middle of America was still appalling.  According to the BBC, Americans have grown so large that x-rays can no longer penetrate their great bulk.  While I have little sympathy for a medical problem whose solution is `put the donuts down, tubby', I can't deny that McDonald's doesn't help those trying to lose weight.

Precisely because of their omni-presence and crushing uniformity, finding a McDonald's that local town boards forced to adapt to their area and become unique was pleasing.  In the 21 states I crossed, I found exactly three that were different: a colonial McDonald's in a North Eastern town, an adobe McDonald's in Sedona, its walls a pinkish-red and arch a cool green, and a Neon McDonald's in Las Vegas.

While traveling on my own, I didn't have the patience to stop at restaurants and diners.  This was a road trip after all, and my motivation was to keep moving.  To accomplish as much travel in a day as possible meant fast food which meant McDonald's.  But ever since I read Fast Food Nation, an expose of the industry, I had sworn off McDonald's.  Much to my surprise I managed to keep this oath for three years.  I was rather proud of the accomplishment, especially considering how much I ate of it in the past.

But America was not the place to be picky about McDonald's.  On many days there were long stretches of nothingness punctuated only by McDonald's and gas stations.  I'd like to say that it was one of these purgatorial highways that broke my spirit and three year record.  To say that hunger overcame me after driving through the desert for twelve hours with neither food nor water when the Golden Arches appeared on the horizon, oasis-like.

I'd like to say that, but I can't.

In reality, I didn't make it one full day.  As I crossed the border from Pennsylvania and into Ohio, I received an emergency message from my bowels that an evacuation was underway.  And, just off the next exit, as it would be at every exit, there waited McDonald's with open arms to receive me back into the fold, without judgment or condemnation.


* * *


Initially, Fast Food Nation did not have its intended effect of reducing my beef consumption.  As I read about the ballooning size of Americans and the oncoming Mad Cow epidemic, all I could think was `Boy, I could really go for a Big Mac right about now.' There I'd be, aware that a better photo opportunity I could not make: an American on line in McDonald's with Fast Food Nation in his hands.

But that changed when I read a chapter called `What's in the meat' which describes the inner working of a slaughter house.  Now, I have no aversion to the fact that cows die for my steak.  I'm fully aware that when ordering extra crispy bacon on my BLT it's dead pig slices the deli guy piles on.  So, to read about the clockwork of an abattoir, rather than putting me off, fascinated the metal-and-wheels part of my brain.  How does one change a 2,000 pound heifer into 8,000 1/4 pound patties?

The knowledge that there is literal cow shit in the burgers was what stopped me from eating there.  I happened to come upon that section of the book while eating a Big Mac, which I then neatly tucked back into its box, thought `right, then' and that was the end of McDonald's for me.

The cow shit is an unfortunate side effect of the shear amount of meat that fast food restaurants require.  Say you have to slaughter 50,000 chickens a day to produce enough McNuggets to satisfy the hunger of the now three hundred million Americans (100 million of which are obese).  Doing this by hand is not an easy task, so you hire someone to build a chicken slaughtering machine and you line these little cluckers up to face their doom.  Machines are great for speeding up work, but only if that work is exactly the same each time.  Sadly for them, living things are not identical.  Some chickens are bigger or fluffier than others.  Say there's a 5% difference in the size of animals within a species.  On chickens, it doesn't matter, because they are so small.

Not so with cattle.  A 5% difference on a two-ton, 7-foot-long animal is a big deal.  As a result of the large size difference in cattle, mechanizing slaughterhouses is a near impossible task.  According to Fast Food Nation, old slaughterhouses would produce 50 cattle an hour from a line of workers, but modern ones demand up to 400 cattle a hour.  Some of these workers make around 10,000 cuts on cattle carcasses in an eight-hour shift.  The stomach contents are removed at what is charmingly called the `gut table'.  Here, each worker eviscerates sixty cows an hour.  If under the constant pressure from a fast-moving disassembly line the job is not performed properly, the occasional colon full of shit gets into the works.  And, since all the cow parts are mixed together in a giant vat that shit gets spread around.

Sitting on the toilet in the Ohio McDonald's I thought about this fact.  Chewed on it a while, as a cow chews on cud, not really doing anything with it, just getting used to its feel.  Slowly, I came to a conclusion: it would be a fair trade.  I flushed the toilet and ordered a Big Mac.

And, God help me, it was good.
 


Previous: Road Trip -- Preparations Archive
 Next: Road Trip -- Corn
Download the Entire Journal