You Don't Need to Teach your Kids McDonald's

The first time that my wife and I ate hamburgers together in America was at Whataburger. I loved and grew up on burgers and pizza. For my wife on the other hand eating that kind of food was just a fun thing that families only occasionally did. It wasn’t a regular occurrence. When restaraunts like McDonald’s opened up in Mexico in the 1980’s it was a new high quality middle class experience. I can even remember while I lived and studied Spanish in the summer of 1988 in Saltillo, Mexico  I went to a newly opened Pizza Hut in downtown Monterrey. I recall that the clientele consisted of a lot of beautiful well dressed young Mexican cuties. As a gringo I got a lot of attention from them. Being 19, I ate it up. The store was immaculate and even looked luxerious in comparison to the ones that I knew in America. So were the McDonalds. Needless to say, my wife did not like Whataburger. The place had a greasy smell and was not clean. The clientele looked a little different to here than from the McDonald’s in Mexico City she knew. That however, was not the most important message I got from her that night.

What happened later that night was a turning point for my values. Before bed time my wife insisted that we cook something to eat for dinner. I reminded her that we had eaten a hamburger. She then responded that “hamburgers are not food.” We need to have a real dinner!” I was confused and self righteously said to her “but wait a minute!” Hamburgers are a fairly well rounded meal. “You got buns which are part of the bread group, cheese which part of the dairy group, lettuce and tomato which are part of the fruit and vegetable group, and then you got meat.” She gave a look at me like the small town Texas country boy that I was and said “NO!”

She went on to explain that hamburgers are not real food and neither is pizza. I could not even count the hundreds, if not thousands of burgers, hot dogs, pizza, and burritos with chili and cheese that I had consumed in my life. I did know that a salad now and then was healthy. The pizza hut salad bar variety, of course, meaning all lettuce, and then you had to pour the obligatory half cup of Thousand Island or Ranch dressing on top.  

How I came to eat so much “junk food” was no surprise. I was raised on it.  It was common habit to grab a burger and fries for lunch. It was the American way! At home sure my mom did not cook with lard anymore. That had gone out of fashion in the early 70’s in south Texas. But, we did deep fry a lot. Boy did we deep fry!

Needless to say we had some friction early on in our marriage and food was the source of much of it. Now I felt as if I was being sent to a re-education camp for the inbred. Certainly, much of the problem was that I was stubborn. After a while I did come to realize that my wife was right. Maybe  she was just a little ahead of her time, I thought later. Because of her my values regarding food and many other aspects about life and family changed. I will add in afterthought thought that my conversion became convincingly thorough.  My definition of junk food even changed.” Before I met my wife junk food was a snickers and a bag of Cheetos. Now fast food was the new junk food. As for chips and candy bars… Well, they were beyond junk. In short I had my own paradigm shift in the way I viewed my diet.

With respect to fast food culture there are several disturbing aspects that  bother me. One is the fact that when you arrive to one of these places you will often  see a line of cars circling the whole establishment. Engines running (and polluting), vehicles populated more often than not by one person who is...more often than not… overweight and... on his or her cell phone. Sometimes I am not sure if fast food really came about as a way to save time for busy people. It seems that this American cultural institution serves more just to make life easy for us. The less we move ourselves and the greater  quantity we have access  to seems the be the mutually inclusive desired effect. We all know that “bigger is better” in Texas. Yet it does not seem to cross the minds of many people to park their pickups or cars, go inside, and get served in half the time!

The second that bothers me is that fast food culture is so ingrained in our collective identity that like gun culture it is near impossible to make inroads of change in a sensible way. There have been noted efforts by some including Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 documentary Supersize Me (http://morganspurlock.com/work/super- size-me/, which documents Spurlock’s anti-lenten indulgence mission to eat for 30 consecutive days at McDonald’s. And he doesn’t just eat there, he “supersizes” his orders. The production documents his medically traced physical and psychological demise during the course of that time period. Another was the book Food Inc., which looks at the unsustainable nature of corporate farming and the harmful impact of pesticides on our nation’s food supply. (http://www.takepart.com/foodinc).

The problem is that this type of media is mostly absorbed by people with better education and who are more often “liberal.” Deeply set notions and behavior are less likely to be challenged by conservative types and perhaps this explains some of the obesity epidemic in southern areas of the United States. Obesity rates at least vaguely follow political lines according to CDC data (http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/prevalence-maps.html). The date, however is far from conclusive since fast food consumption does seem to transcend income levels. According to a 2013 gallup poll, individuals earning over 75,000/year seem to consume more than other groups. (http://www.gallup.com/poll/163868/fast-food-major-part-diet.aspx?g_source=fast%20food%20consumption&g_medium=search&g_campaign=tiles.

So if we know that fast foods are not good for us why do we insist on taking our kids to McDonald’s  before they can even walk? Well...we do so because McDonald’s is fun! Go to any and you will almost always find a playground with kids doing what they do best...play.  And it just so happens that they will also get addicted to the burgers and fries! What this all says is that America is firmly a fast food culture and it appears that will not change at least for a long time.

Oxford Dictionaries defines culture as  “the ideas, customs,  and social behavior of a particular people or society.” (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/culture).

This means that in order for cultural traits to take root we have to teach them to our children. However, this teaching is not conscious effort on our part. Learning culture is like riding on a huge boat with thousands or even millions of people who are dressed identically. There is a lot of interaction and guidance going on inside the ship, but it keeps floating in a one direction. Why a mom on a given moment decides to take her kid to McDonald’s in a given moment is both a conscious and subconscious decision. It is done so subconsciously because it was already an option in her own mind before she ever gave it any thought.  Taking the family to McDonald’s then is a “self navigable” trait which means that they will learn it on their own and that as parents we are then free to  work harder to instill a different set of values that we will navigate. The point is this:

We do not need to teach our kids McDonalds, they will learn it with their friends!

The implications run deep. McDonald’s is only one small example of the cultural misdirection that permeates our daily lives. This misdirection is active by default which means that it is our responsibility as parents to provide a powerful overlayer of alternatives.  It means that we have to begin to explore ways to change our behavior as a family and how we occupy our time together as a unit. The challenge is great  and certainly not easy. It can be compared to swimming against a great tide.

It is recognized that there will be some objections to this prescription. There are certainly area of gray involved. However, I can say that it has worked for our family and  others that I know. About six months ago my 13 year old said that she wanted to try a Wendy’s hamburger for the first time in her life. Once we did she was satisfied and has not requested another since. Of course even in our family there is the occasional McFlurry or fries request from McDonald’s. Such requests are always satisfied. The point is that both of my daughters understand that fast food is merely an infrequent diversion, and not a matter of our family habit.  Nevertheless one of these possible reservations comes to mind from my childhood.

Sometime between the ages of 8 and 11 my sister commented about how strange the Bitter’s were. “They are weird, they don’t even let their kids watch tv,” she said. The Bitter’s were a well respected family in Edna. The population of my home town has not changed today from what it was then, about 5,500. What was remarkable was the fact that Dr. and Mrs. Bitter they had around 12 kids. They were mainstay members of St. Agnes Catholic Church like we were. Dr. Bitter was often a spokesman for parishoners on various community related issues. The family had monied roots in San Antonio, and apparently at one point or another they decided that a small town would be an idea place to raise their children.

The subtle implications of my sister’s comments, which I also heard from others later was that their kids were going to turn out to be some kind of antisocial, unadjusted freaks who don’t won’t even know how to have fun! The eventual outcome proved those assertions to be completely untrue. The  Bitter kids all  essentially ‘turned out normal’ as we often say in Texas when referring to other people’s offspring. In fact they are all educated and more successful on the whole than most families. But, how can that happen? The reason is crystal clear, and we are all living, breathing proof! The fact is that American culture is both dominant and  unavoidable in all of our lives. It is not something that can be shaken off even if we wanted to. It is so powerful that everywhere you look around the world you will see our cultural influence making inroads into the daily lives of almost everyone.