" In one supreme irony, as McDonald's makes Americans less healthy, McDonald's as a company is dependant on poorly-paid workers who receive few benefits, including healthcare. The workers are disposable as the food and the packaging they assemble for McDonald's patrons. It is in the company's interest not to keep them employed for long, so they remain part-time employees without real healthcare. They learn no skills and do not improve their promotional prospects. And often the only food they can afford, lacking adequate facilities or time to prepare a meal, is a McDonald's meal.
The slaughterhouses where the processed meats that go into McDonald's hamburgers are just as mechanized as McDonald's drive-through, only the cows that move through their doors do not exit intact. Yet the fate of the human executors of these cows is almost as terrible. Working conditions in slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants are dangerous. The workers are often illegal...
The industrialized food system sustains itself because of the seductions of cheap food, and the fact that 'we,' the McDonald's-consuming public are happy we do not have to work hard to obtain our food. But in exchange for such leisure, according to Pollan, we have fallen into a devil's bargain. This bargain is costing us good taste, our health, and a sense of real, pleasurable human connection with the communal joys of eating.
Industrialized food
