McDonald's and Sustainability...Say What?

I'm lovin' (sustainability?)

While I was scouring the web yesterday for some good reads for my upcoming trip to Vegas, I came across a headline that gave me a tickle in the back of my throat.

"McDonald's Courting Sustainability"

After reading into the article a little further, the headline starting making a little sense. If one company could completely change the landscape of Agribusiness and it's centralized food system, it would be McDonald's. The question that comes to mind is , what does sustainability actually mean to McDonald's?" The article paints a unique picture of how a company of it's size could facilitate such a movement. Remember, McDonald's makes none of it's food - it's all provided by their Vendors.


Some interesting takes from the article on products and systems pertaining to McDonalds and sustainability:

Beef: Develop a pilot program to trace and certify sustainable beef in the Amazon, and to investigate carbon emissions from farms in the UK.
Note: Previously the Amazon was off-limits because of major sustainability issues.

Poultry: No, it's not about creating new ways of raising chickens that make up those Chicken McNuggets. Or about instituting cage-free systems. It's about soy used for feed. McDonald's will continue a moratorium on soy produced in the Amazon, and that is destroying the rain forest.

Coffee: Seems McDonald's Europe is ahead of the U.S game on this front, buying coffee certified by the Rainforest Alliance. Now, the company turns to the U.S. and its supply chain to "assess a comprehensive approach."

Palm Oil: If you love McDonald's fried foods, you have an intimate knowledge of palm oil. And the burning and clear-cutting required to produce palm oil has created a host of environmental problems in places such as Indonesia. McDonald's says it will use only certified-sustainable palm oil by 2015.

Packaging: Wood fiber makes those nifty paper fry holders (and so much more at McDonald's). The goal is to use more certified sources of wood fiber. In Canada, 15% is now from certified sources. No stats are given for the U.S. Sound familiar?

This is one initiative I'm sure we will all be paying close attention to.

Some weekend thoughts before you get all weekendy..

The way we eat has changed more in the last ten years than in the previous ten-thousand…..

-          Michael Pollan (Food Inc.)

Why do you have a kitchen?  Stop and think about that for a minute. Is it for the sparkling granite counter tops and the automated Kohler appliances? Is it for that stainless Sub-Zero refrigerator that can shave the perfect ice for your wine sangria? You might have a fine-looking Garland 4-burner stove that sits there for the vista of your guests to showcase your kitchen’s style and grace. It might be the place where you hang your car keys in prior to heading out to Longhorn Steakhouse for your Friday date night.

Sometime in the last 30 years we lost patience.

We are a pretty fast group of inhabitants.  We want everything high-speed and immediate. If I have to wait more than 30 seconds for my web page to load, I’m done and on to the next site. Hasty is the word in today’s tech savvy lifestyle. Food is no different.  We knew we wanted fast way back in 1951 when a popular trade magazine called “Fountain and Food” predicted, “Fast food type restaurants will soon do the lion’s share of business for breakfast and noon meals eaten out”. We have become numb to the thought of shared family dinners, cracking a new bottle of wine open with friends and heading out to your garden to pick that fresh basil for mom’s lasagna.

In its place, we have turned to our friendly food retailers.  We have created a frenzy pace in this country with food that is piggybacking our love for the quick tempo or friends in the tech industry are creating.  As somewhat of a tech nerd, I truly enjoy my gadgetry that gives me ultimate control over the information world. Currently I am typing this book on a Mac, which is sitting next to my iPad, as I occasionally converse on my iphone. I have bought into technology. But, some things in life are not meant to be coaxed into this medium.

Food being one of them.

Let’s take a step back into the fast food revolution, shall we?  Back in the early 50’s, people started becoming infatuated in speed. The automotive industry began pushing the “hot rods” and home construction was being built at a blistering place.  The friendly skies, were actually, well, friendly. Warren Spahn and Whitey Ford were rewriting the record books with their fastballs. People were seriously moving and shaking. So, what came next? Ah yes, the food.  A quote from the Christian Science Monitor in 1982 summed up the rapid increase of this new model of food service back in the late 1950’s,

“The fast food model was a quick success throughout the land, and two decades later it was conquering the world. The U.S. outcry against the infiltration from the south was matched in vehemence by our neighbor’s outcry of fast food imperialism and the eventual Americanism of their own societies.”

It’s humorous to think that the term “junk food” wasn’t coined until the mid 70’s. And, the wave of fast food that exploded into our country during these years truly summed up the term and introduced the American diet to colossal amounts of empty calories.  We as a society bought in. We bought into this crafted discipline of food shenanigans that played with our health for the years to come. Refined sugars, white flours, trans fat, salt additives, preservatives and coloring agents became our god deity and we bowed down to it often. Very often.

How did we fall victim to this?

We basically bent over and said, “Give me that whopper swiftly and often”. It was this generations credit default swaps. We believed that for $3-5 dollars we could eat and drink our way to a healthy well-being. The problem was that our bodies soon figured out this complex milieu and called us out. “You know what dickhead, that wasn’t real meat and lettuce and I’m calling you out with a little thorn called diabetes, enjoy. Call me when you will consider being an omnivore again.”

As a food industry insider with years of invaluable time spent at researching the Tom foolery of this retail game called “foodservice” and it's not pretty. We've  been hoodwinked and swindled into eating this industrial rubbish for too damn long. I’m calling it out for you and everyone that has bought in.

Step up. Start a garden. Shop at a farmer’s market. (In a non-hippie way of course.)

Amen and here comes Happy Hour....

Now bring me my PINT!