Last of the Red-Hot Weasels

Last of the Red-Hot Weasels

We Americans like to be the best in the world.  We’re better at tackle football, military spending, and cosmetic surgery.   We’re also best at exporting arms, producing beef, and making billionaires.   But where we crush it worldwide is buying fast-food.  On average, Americans spend over $1,200 a year on quick meals.  That’s almost double what we donate to charity, more than we spend on fruits and vegetables combined, even more than we spend on prescription drugs.  Heck, its twice what we spend on alcohol.  Its ten times what we spend to read, although for-your-information, you’ve spent nothing glazing over the 106 words I’ve written so far.                                                   

If you think it’s just younger people driving this indulgence, you’d be dead wrong.  Seniors can also feel good about their role in making this country number one in fast-food consumption.  Americans over the age of sixty spend north of 60 billion dollars a year on it.  Their participation will continue to help boost USA’s lofty fast-food status, though their doctors would argue that they have done plenty already!                                        

Somehow, fast-food wasn’t invented in the United States.  Throughout history, like at the Forum marketplace in ancient Rome for instance, people could purchase and eat baked goods and cooked animals.  And at the Colosseum across town, animals could eat people, but they were seldom cooked.                                                             

In 12th century China, fast-food diners could fill up with fried dough, and an hour later be hungry for more.  During the middle-ages street vendors in Europe would hawk pies, pastries and hot rats-on-a-stick.                                                                                         

Fish and chips were a popular fast-food meal in England, with one Yorkshire establishment serving 10,000 portions of it on a day in 1952, which put them in the Guinness Book of Records.  Controversy followed, however, when it was discovered the meat vs. potato ratio was skewed.  This led to the Commonwealth Fish and Chips Act of 1953.                                                                                                                                                      

Over generations, in the United States, there have been three classic pillars of the fast-food world: I’m talking French fries, the cheeseburger and the great-grandaddy of Americana fast food, the hot dog.  Their success has made our climb to the gluttonous top that much easier.  Americans might have made French fries popular, but they weren’t invented here, or even in France, really.  Belgians built what may be theworld’s one and only French Fry Museum to prove the point that French fry is really a Belgian fry.  Apparently, back in the 17th century some man from Bruges fried potatoes because his fish were too frozen to cook.  But ketchup wasn’t around for another 150-years, so Belgium’s lost interest and started making waffles instead.                                                                                      

Americans eat nearly 30 pounds each year of French fries, or the equivalent of four Pomeranians.  That is close to 4,000,000,000 of them annually, which is a big number with more digits than a Tom Brady contract.  The number one and two most eaten vegetables in America are potatoes and tomatoes, although onions and carrots are demanding a recount.                                               

None of this would have happened with out American scientists, taking a break from curing cancer, figuring out how to properly freeze French fries.  It involves blanching them in boiling water, drying them in hot fat and injecting them with the preserver, sodium acid pyrophosphate.  People can get a little uneasy about putting edible salty and acid-hot phosphates in their body.  But frozen French-fry companies assure us that for the most part, at least, we won’t end up with a pickled intestine.                             

While the hamburger is thought to have been brought over from Germany, the cheeseburger is undisputedly all-American.  It was first made in the ‘20’s in Los Angeles if you believe the Big Bun Theory.  It claims the bread was too big for the patties, so a diner fry-cook added cheese to fill the edges.  The customer who ate that first one liked it so much he told over a billion of his closest his friends.                                              

The principal ingredients have remained the same, but every fast-food cheeseburger chain has its own spin.  One of the most secretive of these was the McDonald’s Big Mac, until an advertising executive put the recipe in a TV jingle.  Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.  The campaign proved so successful Ray Kroc allegedly canceled a contract he had out on the loose-lipped ad man’s life.  Kroc died not long after that, some say he gave up wanting to live after his special sauce recipe (mayonnaise and French dressing) had been leaked.                                                                                                                           

 First sold from food carts on the streets of New York City, the hot dog was initially two pieces of bread and a German sausage nicknamed dachshund because of its long, slender shape.  It was shortened to dog since, before Google, dachshund was impossible to spell.  If the street vendors had chosen a different skinny animal like the weasel, Americans might have ended up eating more vegetables.   Vendors calling out “get your red-hot weasel” doesn’t have that same ring to it.    

                                           

But, of the 20 billion dogs eaten every year by Americans, only a fraction is sold at restaurants.  While most expect fast-food to be quick and cheap, some like it hot and tasty.  The hot dog, because of its shape and girth, is difficult to manage compared to cooking a burger on a grill.  If not eaten right away, they quickly cool off inside and sweat on the outside. Americans traditionally haven’t been big on eating sweat.           

Finally, there is some good news for those people wanting America to eat healthier.  Due to increasing labor, transportation and ingredient costs, the price of fast-food is rising at a rate almost double that of inflation.  Soon, the only thing on the dollar menu will be a single French fry.   And if the higher expense of the grub doesn’t slow down our trips through the drive-thru, maybe the cost of fuel will.  You could burn through your monthly food budget just idling in line waiting for a Whopper.                                                       

So, will America lose its place at the front of the fast-food line?  Not a chance.  We are a resilient bunch, and we won’t let a few un-eaten cheeseburgers and hot dogs stop us from being number one.  The good news is we are also on top of the world in obesity, so a few thousand less calories might go unnoticed.

 

Copyright by Rusty Evans, Food Service Department Head, 2022

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