Although the U.S. does have an abundance of fast food chains, I find these types of reductionist comments unhelpful. If you look at a map of a metropolitan area in Europe, you’d likely see several McDonald's or other popular fast food chains located fairly close to each other as well.
Not sure if you've been to the USA but it's not like many Americans have a choice. As an American from a smaller town it's something that depresses me a great deal. Basically every restaurant is an instance of a chain. Outside of the cities it's rare to find an original small business. Especially because the only place to get food is sometimes a parking lot "food court" or mall, and I guess only the franchisers can afford the rent there? Idk.
Anyway that combined with the fact that fast food chains can leverage cost saving measures like putting their employees on food stamps and economies of scale mean nobody can beat them on prices, so for those that don't have a grocery store and wouldn't know how to cook a meal even if they did, for your daily dinner the 5$ McDonald's burger or whatever is genuinely your only choice unless you wanna eat gas station canned chili.
Meanwhile now I live in Taiwan and every alley is chock full of original, small business restaurants all serving population that basically exclusively eats out for every meal and it's lovely.
Where in the USA do you live? For my parent's house in Texas City there wasn't really a grocery store for ten miles and I'm not even sure delivery apps were available there. It's like trying to call an Uber in league city... MAYBE you'll get one in 30 minutes or something.
I'm curious if you think it's because Americans are too lazy or undisciplined or stupid or something to find and cook food? Is it hard to believe there's structural issues making it harder there than in other places? I mean even if you just open a map the geographical obstacle should be pretty apparent... It's an enormous country.
Per Google maps, there is an HEB, Kroger, Aldi, and Walmart Supercenter within 5 miles of what looks like all the populous parts of Texas City, TX.
I am not making value judgments. I just know that the availability of ingredients and knowledge of how to use those ingredients is there for the taking for most Americans.
Maybe people don’t have time, maybe people don’t find it worthwhile to cook for households of 1 adult, maybe people prefer the taste of super sugary/salty/sat fat laden restaurant food.
Edit:
> I mean even if you just open a map the geographical obstacle should be pretty apparent... It's an enormous country
The size of the country is irrelevant. All metropolitan areas have numerous options for purchasing groceries.
In fairness, I live in an "urban area" with 2 neighbors on the surrounding 100+ acres of land. A lot of people hear the census "urban area" and they imagine a dense downtown. That said there is no shortage of grocery stores and restaurants (if not especially high-end restaurants) around where I live.
I do suspect that most of the people who say they have no choice but to eat at McDonalds or wherever just don't want to make a meal at home.
There's also a lot of indie restaurants in Texas City. Sure right off 146 there's a sea of chain restaurants but head down Palmer to 6th and you'll find a number of indie places to eat along the way.
What proportion of Americans are traveling from one job site to the next? Surely, the vast majority are coming home every day, and the vast majority of those presumably have a kitchen.
It sounds like you're arguing that the lived experience of an itinerant construction worker doesn't matter in your quest to ensure everyone cooks all of their meals from healthy fruits and vegetables no matter how much grind it takes to accomplish. That's probably not the best way to address GP's concerns.
I once had to wait out a lease and commute an hour and a half one way when I got a new job, and I stopped at convenience stores a lot more often than I would have liked. It's not pretty but sometimes you have to compromise between many competing priorities in your life, especially if you really need the job as a springboard to something better or as a big pay increase on its own.
I empathize with other people currently in a similar situation, even if it's by choice, because unless you live off of a trust fund or are supremely fortunate you will often have to take work at the intersection of your skill set and your willingness to compromise other aspects of your life in order to get ahead.
> Not sure if you've been to the USA but it's not like many Americans have a choice.
A small portion of Americans, such as itinerant construction workers or people with 90 minute one way commutes, might not have a choice, but to say “many Americans” don’t have the option to make simple lentil/rice/vegetable/etc meals is not correct in the sense that much of the restaurant business exists due to necessity rather than desire.
The vast, vast majority of decisions to eat at restaurants are made out of convenience or preference, not time or money constraints.
This is most every Houstonian I know, including previously me. Maybe that's unique to oil and gas where you live in Pasadena and then do jobs all over. Then again on a bad day Pasadena to the energy corridor could take an hour and a half...
IDK I guess this just reminds me of the time I had a conversation with this startup guy that was totally convinced that single moms working two jobs could totally pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they had an hour of freetime at night. "She can teach herself to code, or pick up another marketable skill, and use that to get a higher paying job."
I'm not sure if it's lack of empathy, or a lack of understanding of human energy as a resource, or maybe folks like you and that guy are just super awesome energetic people... oooor maybe it's a privileged position failing to understand the reality of burden and how much harder it is to make "the good decision" after 2 90 minute commutes and a day of degrading labor vs when one spends the day working from home at what ostensibly may be a hard job with long hours but still just isn't the same level of energy cost.
BTW there are 3.54 million truckers in the USA, lack of rail infrastructure created an absurdly massive class of people that are constantly in transit and genuinely have no options other than fast food. Oh wait, sorry, they could have a fridge in their truck they fill with overnight oats they prepare at home between jobs.
I think "choice" is a weirdly binary term in these kinds of conversations. We can all choose to run 5ks every day. You could choose to memorize every USA president and their home state. You could choose to start a garden - why don't you garden? It saves money, generates dopamine, and increases your resilience to market shifts in food costs. Why don't you choose to do pullups every day? Pullups are a very useful compound bodyweight exercise that improve strength and require literally no equipment other than a tree branch, and according to google, 99.9% of Americans live within a mile of a tree.
You should re-read your comments. You made falsifiable claims, which were shown to be false. Has nothing to do with empathy or other feelings nonsense.
The small proportion of Americans for whom it is unfeasible to cook were already addressed, specifically that they are a small proportion based on data regarding how far most people commute and how close they live to a proper grocery store.
> So is rationality orthogonal to feeling? No; our emotions arise from our models of reality.
> Becoming more rational—arriving at better estimates of how-the-world-is—can diminish feelings or intensify them. Sometimes we run away from strong feelings by denying the facts, by flinching away from the view of the world that gave rise to the powerful emotion. If so, then as you study the skills of rationality and train yourself not to deny facts, your feelings will become stronger.
8.5% of the working population of Americans is a lot of people. Driving a long time isn't the only obstacle people might face. I don't disagree that there's some mechanism by which the vast majority of Americans can cook every meal, or plant gardens, or do pullups every day, I'm disagreeing that it's a reasonable expectation given the environment. We should work to improve the environment.
I think you're trying to shoehorn a human situation into some pure thought experiment territory. When I say "don't have a choice" and you take me to mean "it's literally impossible," I feel like that's a bad faith interpretation. Would it be falsifiable for me to claim most Americans don't have the ability to do pullups every day? Yes of course. Negating it though is loaded because the topic isn't, "is there a mechanism by which Americans can do pullups every day," it's "is it reasonable to expect the majority of Americans to do pullups every day?"
What do you think? Is it reasonable to expect the majority of Americans to maintain 12% bodyfat while raising their 2.5 children to rational, well-studied standards, while meditating daily, while being 10 minutes early to work every day and staying 10 minutes later than their boss to ensure maximized potential for career success, while also learning to code to improve their job prospects, while supplementing their income by starting a drop shipping company, while ensuring the future of their liberal democracy by participating in local politics, while ensuring the future of their planet by engaging in climate activism, while reading at least one book per month? Which of the things on the list aren't you doing, and why "can't" you do them?
The US clearly eats way too much fast food.