People are obsessed with making things faster and more efficient. We want our wait times to be shorter, our loading times to be faster, and the time spent between productive tasks to be cut down to a minimum. Born out of this obsession was fast food, with a name so apt that there’s no questioning the reasons for its origin and success. Fast food offers the convenience of a cheap, pre-made meal that can be eaten quickly, on the go, and during or in between tasks, and these apparent benefits have led the global fast food market to be valued at over 641 billion USD in 2021 and it is projected to continue to grow. Unfortunately, there are some very not-so-hidden costs that have come with the explosion of fast food.

The most obvious impact that fast food has had on people is in terms of physical health. Fast food is extremely calorie dense and designed to be addictive. A combination of sugar, fat, salt, and caffeine make people return again and again to fast food and eat more than they need. This combination of factors is also what contributes to the need to snack in between meals - salty, oily snacks like chips can be addictive in the same way that fast food is. It’s no surprise that at the time of a 2018 study, it was estimated that 71% of Americans were obese, on an increasing trend from the last referenced measurement 5 years prior.

The idea that fast food and junk food aren’t good for your health is by no means a new one, so let’s move on to a different extreme - diets and food fads. Sometimes it feels like every third person you come across is talking about a fad diet they’re following or that every time you turn on the local news, the reporters are talking about the latest superfood. Clearly these people understand that fast food is not a good source of daily nutrition, but fad diets and obsession with calorie and specific nutrition content is not the healthiest (let alone most enjoyable) way to eat, either. This brings us to something called the “French Paradox”. The French are known to eat foods that are at least as - if not more - calorie-dense than those often eaten by Americans and, despite their higher consumption of saturated fats, the French have a lower average incidence of coronary heart disease than Americans. If following diets and counting calories were better than eating calorie-rich foods, then how do we explain this “French Paradox”?

To answer this question, let’s talk about a movement that is being referred to as Slow Food. Psychologist Paul Rozin explains that the attitudes that French have towards food vary very much from those that Americans have. The French tend to enjoy and appreciate the experience of eating while Americans are more focused on the effects of eating. In France, the act of eating is one associated with pleasure and is savored, meaning that meals are eaten slowly, resulting in smaller portion sizes and less stress associated with the idea of eating. By contrast, higher percentages of Americans said that they would rather eat a nutrition pill than deal with the stress of figuring out what to eat and spending time eating. The Slow Food movement focuses on trying to cut back on the increasing grasp of the convenience and addictiveness of fast food and bringing an attitude of enjoyment towards food and eating back to the masses.

Eating together has always been - and continues to be - an important setting for building connections with those around us. When we meet someone new or spend time with friends, it will generally be around a meal at a restaurant. We discuss, converse, and connect over food. What we need to revive is spending time around a meal every day. If we approach every meal with the same deliberateness that we approach special occassions, we can expect our “social health” to improve. Eating lunch with colleagues instead of in front of your computer at your desk and eating dinner with your family away from the TV nurtures conversation and helps build deeper connections with the people around you. Building stronger networks can help us feel less lonely and eating with others over conversation can make us eat slower and avoid overeating. By focusing on the experience of eating, we won’t worry constantly about the results of our consumption.

Why have the French managed to have this lifestyle around food while Americans seems to have been struggling with their relationship with food for years? Perhaps this is because the United States, as a relatively young country, doesn’t have its own distinct food culture in the way that countries born from ancient civilizations do. France, India, and Italy are countries whose food cultures come to mind. Despite what seem like strong and prevasive food cultures in these and other similar countries, the appeal of fast food has spread to their citizens as well. The Italians were famously leery of McDonald’s when its first restaurant opened in Rome in the 1980s. With a few changes, McDonald’s has been slowly increasing its presence in Italy and turning Italians over to the convenience of fast food and a quick meal. Similarly, Indians have been experiencing rapidly increasing rates of incidence of heart disease as their once culturally-central dietary habits have changed to involve increased consumption of fast food and processed foods. Even the French aren’t immune to this phenomenon. Despite the significantly lower obesity rates in France than in the United States, these rates are on the rise as the French make the shift from enjoying the experience of eating fine foods to appreciating the convenience of eating fast food.

Combatting our internal GPS that leads us to crave addictive foods and eat as fast as possible is not easy. If it was, then we wouldn’t have found ourselves in this position in the first place. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make the change - one individual at a time. Try an attitude change - think less about how each meal is going to affect your calorie count for the day and how much time it’s going to take out of your day and instead try making sure you’re eating at least one meal a day, un-rushed, with conversational companions. Over time, maybe you’ll find yourself looking forward to meals for more than just sating your hunger and hopefully you’ll find yourself less stressed about what its effects are going to be on your waistline.

The Slow Food movement goes beyond just diet and the culture of eating. It covers anything that has an impact on and is impacted by food - this includes climate change, food waste, and agricultural practices, among other topics. Learn more at Slow Food International’s website!

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