Speech

Don’t eat Fast Food

By Wes Grigsby

Fast food is a wolf in an ill-fitting sheep suit. Obviously publicized, we all know that it is delicious and that it is bad for us. Yet, we still gorge ourselves with tasty fries and burgers, and push all the dark knowledge trying to make its way to us under the rug. Well, what questions do we have now since we think freshly of this new topic? How bad is fast food for us actually? How did that burger or that chicken nugget arrive in your little cardboard food box? What am I giving up, and how does fast food affect ourselves and the life around us? Worthy questions, for through my research I have arrived at the conclusion that fast food not only has negative health effects, but also that by eating fast food, we are facing ethical dilemmas as well.

                For now, I will focus on health. CARDIA (Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults) revealed that people who consumed  fast food two or more times a week experienced an average weight gain of 10 pounds or more than study participants who ate fast food less than once a week. Especially now, shouldn’t we heed this warning. I will not go on about the negative health effects of fast food, for it is well known, and hasn’t seemed to stop us yet. But what of other concerns?

                How does eating fast food cause an ethical dilemma? To many of us, the fast food ethical crisis is unknown, so I will give you the most “wonderful” images to dwell upon concerning the animals we are being ruthlessly cruel to.

                Take chickens, for example. Meat chickens, especially those at KFC and McDonald’s, face a very short existence. Instead of a natural life of around six years, chickens are given hormones to grow to maturity and are slaughtered at around 6-12 weeks. No problem, if they were given a good life right? Wrong, these meat chickens may be raised in the most horrifying environment of all, an intensive meat production plant.

                These chickens are raised from birth, to make meat as fast as possible through hormone treatment. Even, in their infancy, they are shown no mercy. As young chicks, they are thrown together shoulder to shoulder, as many as can be crowded into a space at once. To prevent the natural behavior of pecking (which in this confined space would cause injury to the other chicks) the chicks growing beaks are clipped off without anesthesia. Even with our different physiology, it is estimated to be extremely painful. So, is the extreme pain upon baby chickens worth your chicken nuggets?

                Okay, enough of chickens. Let’s move on to pigs. Pigs are also raised from birth. Their mothers are kept in narrow crates, where their only interest by the company that owns them is to make piglets. Hold on, the images get worse. The piglets are taken from their mother, and placed in bedded boxes with perhaps dozens of other piglets. They are not put there comfortably either. They are usually mutilated or otherwise severely injured, and given hormone treatments. There, they will remain in pain, until they mature, where they will be dragged screaming to their deaths at the factory slaughterhouse. Now, if I still haven’t got your attention, do I have it now?

Not only is eating fast food harmful for your body, it is also bad for millions and millions of animals, whose welfare is not looked at in the slightest by the production plants that are paid by the fast food industry. Is it not enough to think of a beakless chick, or a maimed piglet screaming for its mother? Hopefully today, I have convinced you of one thing, fast food is definitely bad for your body and for your conscience. Now I know myself to act upon my judgment, but will you?

Sources:

1.       Falkenberg, Katie. Mcdonalds. 2007. Paragraph. Fineartamerica.comWeb. 30 June 2013. http://fineartamerica.com/featured/mcdonalds-katie-falkenberg.html

2.       Recoverable source: Turn it in Academy Summer Project source 2

3.       Recoverable source: Turn it in Academy Summer Project source 3

4.       Recoverable source: Turn it in Academy Summer Project source 4