Drive-Thru Dreams - Adam Chandler Page 0,47

New York, where Pollan and I met, is an ostensibly liberal city that had recently thrown a hissy fit when its previous mayor, Michael Bloomberg, had tried to limit the size of sugary drinks in the name of public health. “Look, food culture is emotionally very fraught,” Pollan said, sighing. “People have very strong feelings and they don’t want to be told by anybody how to eat. You have to be very careful how you have this conversation.” He referenced an episode in the public health wars of 2006 when parents passed fatty snacks through the fence of a British school to students in protest of a healthy-eating initiative led by chef Jamie Oliver. “Although it’s worth pointing out that we tolerate social engineering from corporations about our eating in a way we won’t tolerate it from our elected representatives. So you take something like Bloomberg’s efforts to deal with soda—”

As if on cue, we were interrupted by a manager, who had clearly recognized Pollan and approached with the diffident shyness and tender nerves of a kid at a junior high dance to present our plates of $9 toast. Pollan, who must endure encounters like this regularly, made this man’s young life by asking him where their bread comes from.

“We make it in-house,” the manager said.

“Cool,” Pollan replied.

“You’d be happy,” the man stammered. “Flour, water, our own starter.”

“Your own starter?”

“Yeah! About five years old.”

“Wow! Cool.”

“The bread is what makes everything,” the man added, now in a full-on blush. “From the pizza to the bread.”

The manager then skated away on air, trying to suppress a smile. Pollan picked up exactly where he’d left off. “So for Bloomberg, this was outrage. Essentially, he was asking people to pause and reflect before you go from [drinking] sixteen to thirty-two ounces of soda,” Pollan said with some exasperation. “It’s what in social sciences is referred to as a nudge, it’s the mildest form of social reform. And beloved by the right, by the way. And they went all over it. Yet every time you step into the supermarket, you are being manipulated ten ways till Sunday, and this doesn’t bother us. And I find that’s a very curious thing.”

* * *

In recent years, as consumer moods have grown more polarized and defensive, many of the larger national fast-food chains have tried to maintain their mass appeal while also making overtures to more politically conscious diners. To create distance between themselves and the negative perception of fast food, companies have employed the semi-clever tactic of disavowing the term fast food entirely.

The industry has long chafed at its given name (fast food), preferring the more credible, dignified quick-service restaurant (QSR). But in the years since the industry became a target of a larger examination by the mainstream, it’s taken to some true rhetorical gymnastics. Here’s a small sampling of some current and recent slogans: Dairy Queen (Fan food, not fast food), Wendy’s (It’s waaaay better than fast food. It’s Wendy’s), and Arby’s (Fast crafted). An incredible 2002 commercial for KFC popcorn chicken features Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander and major league slugger Barry Bonds, who would later be accused of taking a regimen of cattle steroids, ripping on the blight of “mystery meat nuggets.” It defiantly concludes with the tagline “There’s fast food … Then there’s KFC.”

By 2015, McDonald’s had rebranded itself as a “modern, progressive burger company” with “good food, served fast.” Just like Northstar, even McDonald’s now has a “philosophy” section on its company website to highlight its food-supply changes, which reads a bit like a hostage script that went through about fourteen rounds of focus-group testing: “At McDonald’s, we’re making changes based on what we’re hearing from all of you. That’s why we work hard to make tasty food with a ‘less is more’ philosophy. But what does that mean for our ingredients?” In lady-doth-protest-too-much fashion, the statement goes on to list menu items featuring “100% real beef,” “real buttermilk,” “sustainably-sourced Alaskan Pollack,” and “a freshly-cracked egg” before concluding, “To put it frankly, it means—The Simpler The Better™.”

In recent years, McDonald’s has also verbally pledged to some more-than-cosmetic changes. Its announced plan to shift to cage-free eggs in the United States and Canada seems meaningful even before considering that the company uses about 2 billion eggs, or about 5 percent of all the eggs produced in the United States. It also moved from using margarine to butter in its Egg McMuffins, and like Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Dunkin’ Donuts before it, it unveiled