i’ve got a question. and in asking this question i’m not trying to address the old and inflammatory ‘vegetarian vs. non-vegetarian’ issue. but nonetheless, i have a question.
the question is this: why do fast food companies still use meat to make products that bear no resemblance to meat and that could easily be made without meat? specifically i’m referring to foods like chicken mcnuggets and hot dogs.
a chicken mcnugget doesn’t look or taste or feel like chicken, and a hot dog doesn’t look or taste or feel like beef or pork. so wouldn’t it be in the fast-food industries best interests to use non-meat based products whenever they can? in my opinion it would make sense to avoid the use of meat in the fast food industry and here’s why:
1-money. meat is more expensive than soy and wheat. making 1,000,000 chicken mcnuggets out of chicken is bound to be more expensive than making 1,000,000 chicken mcnuggets out of soy or wheat. and in case you’re wondering, ‘mcnuggets’ made out of soy or wheat (tvp or seitan) could be indistinguishable from the chicken variety in terms of taste and texture.
2-sanitary issues. the production, storage, processing, shipping, and cooking of meat products is fraught with sanitary liabilities. whereas the production, storage, processing, shipping and cooking of non-meat based products is not. almost every day you hear about an outbreak of tainted meat. either it has salmonella or e. coli or some other nasty bacterial agent that makes people very sick. when was the last time you heard about people getting sick en masse from a non-meat based foodstuff? again, it would seem to be in the fast-food industries best interests to make food out of materials that didn’t run the risk of making people sick. if you’re in the food service industry, having people getting sick from eating your food is bad for business and it’s an insurance liability.
3-health. it’s pretty much a given that healthy people try to stay away from fatty and unhealthy fast-food and junk-food. a meat based meal at mcdonalds can have up to 50 or 60 grams of fat and lots and lots of cholesterol. the same meal made out of non-meat based materials could have almost no fat and absolutely no cholesterol. if junk food weren’t so unhealthy then it stands to reason that more people would eat it, and it thus stands to reason that the fast-food chains would make more money (especially when the food would cost so much less for them to produce it).
as you can see, i’m not addressing any of the ethical aspects of using meat-based foodstuffs vs. non-meat-based foodstuffs. i’ve addressed that issue in other essays in the past. but it just strikes me as odd that in a competitive market economy such as ours that fast-food and junk-food restaurants would avoid business practices (using non-meat based foodstuffs whenever possible) that would increase their profit and market share and reduce their exposure to bad p.r and lawsuits.
people don’t eat crappy junk-food cos it’s crappy. they eat it cos it’s cheap and satisfying. and i’m sure that the fast-food companies could easily develop non-meat based versions of a lot of their products that would be just as satisfying (and cheaper and healthier) as the products that they’re making now.
thanks,
moby