Good to see a shit US franchise like mac dognalds go out of business.
Agree. People don't realize that fast food, apart from being cheap and junk food, is also 'cheat food'. Apart from low nutritional value, high trans fats and questionable food processing methods, these giant food conglomerates press prices down by exploiting immigrant farm workers who're paid slave wages ($6/hr) with no protection. (Tomato workers in Florida, for instance, have to pay extra for
water to hose insecticides off their body – many resort to bleach to save money.) Many other costs, e.g. industrial pollution, environmental degradation, ecological destruction, are
externalized and passed on to the community at large, hence not reflected in the final price of a burger.
https://indypendent.org/2009/11/19/i...view-raj-patel
The Center for Science and Environment in India tried a few years ago to figure out the true cost of a hamburger. Assuming that it was raised on pasture that was once rainforest, the ecological services provided by that rainforest, the loss of diversity, carbon sequestration, water cycling, fuel and tropical product sources, among many other things, the cost would come to $200. The U.S. food industry has huge hidden costs, from the agricultural run-off that causes a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico to the cultural destruction wrought by the “Western” diet. There are also huge health costs associated with poor diet — in 2007, $174 billion was spent in the U.S. caring for people with diabetes — as well as the public funds that support the industrial food system.
Cheap food is “cheat food.” There are all kinds of costs that are externalized from the price we pay at the checkout. We pay those costs one way or another — but the food companies don’t. Merely having a system of free markets with accurate prices still doesn’t address the underlying issues of poverty and disenfranchisement.
