History by the Numbers (2021) s01e01 Episode Script
4 Trillion French Fries
1
(clattering plates)
- How many French fries
have I had in my lifetime?
- Oh man.
- I need a calculator.
- Let's go 124,800, no.
- Carry the two.
- Thousands upon thousands.
- About 48,392 and a half.
- I eat fast food in a year.
- Oh man, like maybe every
morning, every other day.
- 100 times, at least.
- Quarter pounder, poutine,
chocolate milkshake, apple pie.
Double coronary artery
bypass, (laughs) to go.
- 96%, that's how
many Americans visit
fast food restaurants
in the course of a year.
That's more than
Americans go to church,
go to gyms, even
participate on the internet.
- Fast food is a
cultural phenomenon.
It defines our country,
it is us, it's who we are.
- [Narrator] In just one
century, fast food transformed
the American way of life.
- When you look at fast food
over the last 100 years,
it's not possible to
separate American history
from fast food because
of how powerful
and influential it's been and
how much it's an institution
that really explains
where we've been,
where we are and
where we're going.
- [Narrator] And fast food
didn't just conquer America.
It took on the world.
- Almost 1% of the
world's population
eats at McDonald's every day?
Wow.
The globalization of
fast food is the future,
but I do know that we can't
sustain it as a planet.
- [Narrator] This isn't
just the story of fast food.
It's the story of the American
dream, of globalization
and the history of a 100
years in 4 trillion fries.
(rock music begins)
(rockets blare)
- 4 trillion, four, that's
actually eight. (laughs)
Dum dum, dum dum dum dum
dum, dum dum, dum dum dum dum ♪
(ketchup squirts)
4 trillion fries,
that's how many fries
McDonald's has served
since they first open.
(multiple loud bites)
- 4 trillion is a number
that's basically unfathomable
to the human mind.
- 4 Million, I could understand.
Like even 4 billion sounds like
my brain could process that.
- I wonder how it is that we
haven't made potatoes extinct.
- 4 trillion anything?
I can't even fathom what
that would even look like
or how much land the
earth that would occupy.
- [Astronaut]
Command, there appears
to be french fries in orbit.
- [Narrator] If the average
French fry is 2.32 inches.
- [Man] Okay.
- [Narrator] And you
line up 4 trillion fries.
- [Man] And away we go.
- [Narrator] It would
stretch 146,464,646.5 miles.
Ooh, and could wrap around the
earth's equator 5,889 times.
- [Man] Holy moly.
- [Astronaut] Yeah
Command, I've never seen
that many French fries.
(film reel clicks)
(triumphant orchestral music)
- There's a rumor that
even Thomas Jefferson
was eating French
fries when he wrote
the Declaration of Independence.
Obviously, that's
probably not true,
but Jefferson did introduce
French fries to America
in 1802, 1 year before he
bought Louisiana territory
from France so I don't know
if that's a good or bad thing
about French fries.
(clicking metal)
- [Narrator] Fast
forward, 180 years.
The French fry is the most
popular dish in America
and a McDonald's drive-through
will serve 144 cars in an hour.
That's one, every 25 seconds.
- What a statistic like
being able to get your food
in less than a minute says
about how we value time.
In some ways that's a
little bit frightening,
even as it's impressive
and even as there's a lot
of fascinating science
that goes into that.
The need that we feel
to be in such a hurry
says something particular
about American culture.
- Fast food plays on
human convenience.
We want instant gratification.
We want it in every
aspect of our life.
- [Narrator] But fast food
isn't just a reflection
of the modern world.
It's one of the things that
made us who we are today.
(playful techno music begins)
- [Radio] Take yourself
down to Ocean Drive
to enjoy free breakfast.
- [Narrator] Miami 1980,
at McDonald's a 16 year old
high school student begins
his first summer job
in the back kitchen
as a grill man.
- [Boy] Yeah.
- A giant wall mounted
ketchup dispenser dumps
across the floor.
- [Boy] Oh.
- [Narrator] And he's
handed a bucket and a mop
and told to get cleaning.
Looking back, he'll say you
learn a lot as a teenager
working at McDonald's,
it's different
from what you learn in school.
Don't underestimate
the value of that,
and his biggest lesson apart
from how to scramble eggs,
flip burgers, and pull
fries out of the boiling VA
without injuring himself,
is customer service.
I learned that it's really
hard, this teenager's name,
Jeff Bezos, the CEO
and founder of Amazon,
who's now worth 190 billion.
- King of Amazon who used
to work the Saturday shift
at McDonald's still brags
that he can crack an egg
with one hand.
(egg cracks)
(cars honk)
- [Narrator] Easy
access, speedy delivery,
cheap prices and
customer service.
Fast food restaurants are
the roadside embodiments
of the American way.
Just look at a map.
- [Man] Mm.
- [Narrator] There are
more franchise restaurants
in the United States
than there are schools
or family doctors.
- [Man] The doctor
will see you now.
- [Narrator] And you'll
never be more than 115 miles
from the nearest McDonald's.
- [Man] Hm mm.
- [Narrator] In Katy,
Texas, there are a whopping
166 fast food restaurants
to choose from.
- [Man] Yeah.
- [Narrator] That's one
for every 160 people
or a different place
to eat every week
for the next three years.
- [Man] Well whistle me dixie.
- [Narrator] Making it
the fast food capital
of the United States.
- [Crowd] Wow.
- Fast food is deeply
embedded in the culture.
It's to the point where
it's taken for granted
and it's all the things
that America represents.
(salsa music continues)
It's available to
the whole population.
It's democratic in that sense.
- Nothing brings people together
from different backgrounds,
quicker than fast food,
whether you are a millionaire
or someone's
struggling to survive.
You're sitting in the same place
and enjoying the same meal.
- Fast food is
made for everybody.
It's a great equalizer
in terms of food.
- I've seen people
in suits after work,
I've seen mom in sweatpants,
I've seen a homeless
guy not wearing pants.
- I've seen people in teenage
mutant ninja turtle costume,
not on Halloween,
just like day-to-day.
- The guy in the full suit.
The person in
pajamas at 3:00 PM.
- Anything goes in a
fast food restaurant.
- Mm.
- No one's judging me
for eating fast food.
Like fast foods is the
sweatpants of food. (laughs)
(upbeat techno music begins)
- [Narrator] In any given month,
80% of us visit at least
one fast food joint.
And even though we
may think fast foods
origin's story is American,
well, it actually
isn't our invention.
It's been around for as
long as we've craved carbs.
The first fast food
joint was unearthed
in ancient Mesopotamia
more than 5,000 years ago.
- [Man] Mm.
- [Narrator] 80 fast food
restaurants known as Thermapolia
have been found in Roman
Pompeii and 1,500 years ago,
the Julia Child of her
day, wrote down the world's
first ever recipe for a
burger in a Latin manuscript.
- [Man] I think to be yummy.
- Our founding fathers,
our philosophies,
our government was
based on the Romans.
The Romans impact
American history more
than people realize.
Not only are our
governing style,
but our architecture
and also our fast food.
They were extremely indulgent,
but they also had a
fast food service.
They had what would be the
equivalent of food trucks.
(truck honks)
They even add in Pompeii,
a delivery service.
They had ancient Roman GrubHub.
So as advanced as we
like to think we are,
we're just doing a
newer version of stuff
that ancient cultures
have done for a long time.
- [Narrator] But in
the last 100 years,
we've made it uniquely ours,
and it begins in
Wichita, Kansas in 1921.
(harmonica music continues)
When Walter
Anderson, the founder
of White Castle restaurants
has a temper tantrum
at his food stand.
- He's cooking grilled
meatballs on his griddle
and it was taking too long.
- [Man] Come on.
- One day out of frustration,
he grabs the spatula, he
smashes it down on the grill.
- [Man] Ah, fiddle faddle.
- [Adam] He finds that it
cooks the meat really quickly
and also tastes good.
- [Man] Ah ha.
- He starts creating
these patties
and serving them in buns
and the next thing you know,
he's got this product
that nobody else has.
- [Man] Yeah.
- And that becomes the beginning
of his hamburger invention.
- [Narrator] The fast
food hamburger is born
and Walt calls them sliders
because they slide
down the throat.
Soon after, Walt puts
a sign above his door,
hamburgers 5 cents,
and he puts his griddle
in full view where
the customer can see
exactly what's going
into his slider.
- [Man] Oh, you don't
see that everyday.
- [Narrator] Another
bold decision,
because at the start
of the 20th century,
red meat had a bad reputation.
- In the early 1900s,
Americans were generally afraid
of eating ground beef because
they'd read horror stories
about the meat packing industry
in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
It really set off
a lot of alarms.
- [Narrator] The book
is a muckraking expose
of Chicago's union
stockyards cataloging,
the horrors of rotting
meat mixed with sawdust,
dead rats in the meat
grinder and workers
with mysteriously
missing digits.
Eating ground meat
is said to be as safe
as picking your food
out of a trash can.
- The birth of fast
food really comes about
in the early 20th century
following the Progressive Era,
when there was a big scare
around the meat packing
industry and sanitation.
- There was also a lot
of immigrant anxiety
tied up in that,
there's racism tied up in that,
the idea that people who
are recent immigrants
are preparing your food
behind closed doors
and it's not hygienic.
- In the middle of all of
that comes White Castle,
which has the brand new business
model of super transparent,
you know, right where
your burger came from,
not expensive and sanitary.
- White Castle really is
the beginning of fast food.
It spoke to how America
was changing at the time.
The Model T was becoming
much more affordable.
So more people were driving
around and looking for food
that they could pick
up pick up quickly
and at the heart of
it was the hamburger.
(car honks)
- I have had at least
500,000 burgers in my life.
That's like a warm
corporate hug in my mouth.
It's just salty and
there's ketchup happening.
- I'm licking my
lips, I'm salivating.
I take a huge bite,
there's ketchup and mustard
on the sides of my mouth.
- Hm, this is delicious,
maybe some Coca-Cola?
Yeah, okay, great,
now it's a party.
- I'm thinking, wow,
this burger's great.
It's juicy, it's delicious.
- I think there's like
this ratio of salt
and fat and juiciness.
- I want to just feed these
dirty little grabs and blar,
and just (beep) drool
out of our faces.
Sorry for swearing but like
there's a lot of people invested
in making it that way.
(loud chewing)
- [Narrator] Like all primates.
(monkey coos)
Our brains are biologically
programmed to consume carbs,
fats and protein.
- [Man] Mm.
- [Narrator] But in the
course of evolution,
our brains have become
three times bigger
than our closest genetic
cousins, the chimpanzees
and so have our cravings.
(video game beeps)
When we eat fast food,
up to 100 million neurons
fire rapidly, releasing
dopamine and opioids,
the chemicals which
are responsible
for the feelings of pleasure.
- [Woman] Ooh.
- For an early human,
salt, fat, sugar,
are rare in the environment.
So our hunter gatherer brains
just light up in delight
to find something that
contains high amounts
of any of those things and
especially in combination,
which is something that fast
food's taken advantage of.
(squirting ketchup)
- If you're used to whopping
quantities of sugar, fat,
and salt, your whole
system of craving
will be expecting these high
levels, so I'm hungry and oh,
the golden arches,
woof, dopamine rush.
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
hallelujah, hallelujah ♪
That's the dopamine,
that's craving.
- [Man] The craving.
- I don't know if Walt Anderson
would ever expect that,
the one day he was
frustrated at his griddle.
- [Man] Ah fiddle faddle.
- Would unleash this
enormous hamburger craze
that really took
the nation by storm
and eventually the world.
- [Narrator] In the history
of American fast food,
White Castle is
restaurant number one,
but how did one become 196,839
fast food joints in America?
(car engine revs)
Everybody listen
to me, what? ♪
Tell everybody
car you got to see ♪
The other day was
jolly just free ♪
So every Cadillac still ♪
- In the post-war
boom of the 1950s,
America discovers the
joys of the open road.
With full employment and
money in our pockets,
we become a nation of car
owners driving three quarters
of all automobiles
on the planet,
along 47,000 miles
of brand new highway.
(jazz music continues)
- Just to sum up the 1950s,
in a few words, the burbs.
(pleasant 50s music plays)
Babies.
(baby coos)
Buicks and burgers.
You were either driving
in or driving through.
- [Announcer] Eat, take in a
movie, do your laundry, shop
go to the library and
bank all without once
having to leave your car.
(radio static)
(rock music begins)
- We spend a lot of our time
in our cars in the 1950s.
It makes perfect sense that
the rise of automobile culture
is synonymous with the
rise of fast foods.
- [Narrator] Teenagers,
liberated housewives,
or the average sized
family can now drive to any
of the fast food joints
that have sprung up
along the highway.
And one of these
restaurants happens to be
a roadside barbecue
joint in San Bernardino,
operated by the
McDonald brothers.
(dramatic orchestral
music begins)
Having already chopped
up a failed movie theater
to their names.
- [Man] I got an idea.
- Dick and Mac
McDonald repurposed
the usherette uniforms
and employed 20 car
hops to take meals
to their drive-up customers.
- [Announcer] That's right
friends, on roller skates.
- Before drive-thrus
became ubiquitous,
the precursor to that
was the drive in.
People would drive in and
they'd order their food
from a car hop.
- [Narrator] But
they quickly learned
that this squeezes their
margins, it's slow,
besides which, if you've got
20 teenage girls in uniform,
you'll get teenage boys swarming
like bees round a honeypot,
which kills your family market.
So they begin to rethink
the whole fast food model.
Henry Ford has already
(train whistle blows)
revolutionized the
automobile industry.
Prior to his introduction
of the assembly line,
it was taking 12 hours
to manufacture a Model T.
Now it takes precisely
one hour, 33 minutes.
What Ford does for the car,
the McDonald brothers
decide to do for the burger.
- The McDonald's brothers
decided we're going to cut
the cost of everything and that
was unheard of at the time.
That was very unique.
- [Narrator] First off,
they fire the car hops.
Waitress service is
a thing of the past,
like the Great
Depression, the Dust Bowl,
and big band music.
Instead they employ 12 people,
each performing a separate
task to prepare one meal.
From the grill and
deep fat fryer,
to the dressing station
and milkshake dispenser,
to the counter.
40 patties can be
grilled in 110 seconds.
- [Man] Holy moly.
- [Narrator] And a
meal can be prepared
in just 20 seconds flat.
McDonald's burgers are half
the price of their rivals.
- [Man] Good gravy.
- [Narrator] They call it
the speedy service system.
- It was an assembly line.
Every single movement
within the kitchen was timed
down to the step,
down to the pickle,
down to the chopped onion.
It was cheaper and
it was quicker.
- The key to maintaining
speed is to eliminate choice.
- [Man] I got it.
- So the McDonald brothers
reduced the number
of items on the
menu to just nine,
a hamburger, cheeseburger,
fries, milkshake, three flavors,
milk coffee, and a soda.
- [Man] Shazam.
- [Narrator] And on every
burger, there is exactly
two pickles along with
ketchup, mustard and onions.
- [Man] Mm, yes.
- Limited menu served quickly
was revolutionary at the time
and it's something that
struck a chord as car culture
in the 1940s and 50s
was really taking off,
especially in California.
- [Narrator] The new McDonald's
attracts not only customers,
but imitators and one
of the is James McLemore
who will become
founder of Burger King.
Another is Ray
Crock, who in 1954
is a 52 year old
milkshake mixer salesman.
When the McDonald brothers
buy eight of his mixers,
he goes to see what
all the fuss is about.
- [Man] Mm.
- [Narrator] He's
impressed and has a vision
of McDonald's restaurants
dotted across the country.
- [Man] Ah.
(triumphant horns play)
- [Narrator] He convinces
the brothers to let him open
the first McDonald's
franchise in Illinois.
- [Man] Mm hm.
- [Narrator] An empire is born
and more than 60 years later,
the numbers surpasses 14,000.
- Once Ray Crock gets involved,
McDonald's goes from being
a sleepy hamburger stand
in a desert county in
California to the beginnings
of a national institution
and as a result,
hundreds of imitators came
by and tried to create
their own version of
what McDonald's had done.
- [Narrator] And a handful of
these bootstrapping imitators
launch the next wave
of fast-food empires,
which continue to
grow every day.
Including Wendy's, Taco Bell,
Popeye's and Kentucky
Fried Chicken.
But what number do
these fast food pioneers
all have in common?
Zero.
(record scratches)
Zero high school or college
degrees between them.
- Dave Thomas, the founder
of Wendy's was an orphan
who was independent at 12
and started working
at restaurants.
Glen Bell, who was a college
dropout learned how to cook
while serving in the
Pacific during World War II
and he found a Taco Bell.
Ray Crock was also a
high school dropout.
Al Copeland grew up in the
first American housing project
in the country and would
amass a huge fortune
by working in
restaurants his life,
and eventually
founding Popeye's.
The same goes for
Colonel Sanders.
(country music plays)
- Harland Sanders leaves
school in grade seven
and begins working
as a farmhand.
He gets a job as a fireman
on the Illinois railroad.
(train whistles)
- [Man] Oh wise guy, aren't ya?
- [Narrator] And is
fired after brawling
with the engine driver.
- [Man] Fired.
- He practices law
without a law degree
in Little Rock, Arkansas.
- [Man] We got a problem?
Overruled.
- [Narrator] Until he has a
fight with his own client.
He delivers babies in
Pennsylvania without
a medical degree.
- [Man] Hit the road.
- [Narrator] Then
he goes on the road,
selling insurance
and promptly quits.
Then he gets a big break.
- [Man] Mm.
- [Narrator] A rent-free lease
on a gas station in Kentucky,
As well as gas, he
starts selling chicken
fried with his secret
11 spice coating.
- I found myself ending the
service station business
and a little restaurant,
little luncheon.
And I developed this special
seasoning of 11 spices
and herbs, and special
method of frying chicken
and I had a product that was
really out of this world.
- [Narrator] It's a hit
and things are looking up
for Harland until he
gets into another fight
with a rival gas station owner.
(gunshot fires)
Who shoots dead his employee
and then along
comes interstate 75,
which bypasses his gas
station altogether.
So he opens a motel in
Asheville, North Carolina,
and it burns down.
- [Man] Oh buggers.
- [Narrator] But
he doesn't give up.
At the age of 65, he
travels the country,
dressed up as a Southern
Colonel cooking his chicken
for restaurant owners.
Finally, it works.
- [Man] That's the best
chicken I've ever tasted.
- [Narrator] The KFC
franchise empire is born.
Harlan is nothing if
not a serial failure
until the moment he isn't.
- [Man] Yeah.
- Well we use fresh
chicken, never frozen.
- He patented this
fried chicken recipe,
that became regionally famous
and then international famous.
Eventually he became the second
most recognizable
figure in the world.
Pretty impressive
accomplishment from a guy
with a middle school education.
- I like seeing people
who have failed and failed
and failed become successful
and I think Harland Sanders
is the epitome of that.
It is never too late
to start your life
or to change the world
or to change fast food.
(disco music begins)
- [Announcer] The desire for
fast, expensive tasty meals
has made convenience
food franchises
the most popular choice
for the new franchisee.
- [Narrator] In the 1960s and
70s, America becomes the land
of franchise opportunity
for aspiring go-getters.
This accessible path
to business ownership
creates a new class
of rich Americans.
- Ray Kroc famously said that
he made more millionaires
in America than anyone else.
Fast food was a way to
succeed in post-war America.
- [Announcer] Elk Grove
Village, Illinois is the home
of McDonald's
Hamburger University.
- Ray Crock's an interesting
one because he dropped
out of high school
to started McDonald's
but then he started
Hamburger University.
- [Announcer] These aren't
Ivy league students,
but new franchisees
who are attending
a comprehensive
training program.
- His students, they
graduate with a degree
in Hamburgerology,
Hamburgerology.
- [Narrator] Ray's
three tips for success.
Number one, if any of my
competitors were drowning,
I'd stick a hose in their mouth.
Number two, the gentle
art of salesmanship
is letting the customer
have it your way
and number three, if
you have time to lean,
you have time to clean.
Today, there are an
estimated 50,000 fast food
franchise chains competing
for our attention
and with overwhelming success.
On any given day,
one in four Americans
will visit a fast
food restaurant.
Show you the way out ♪
In a year, we'll
spend $239 billion
and eat approximately
50 billion burgers.
Cooking, cooking some food ♪
And I'm making some food now ♪
But for this world champion,
it's all in a day's work.
- Any time you food that
a lot of people love,
you'll inevitably run into
a competition about it.
- Okay, so I'm
going to press play.
- [Narrator] It's
Wednesday, June 6th, 2018.
- [Crowd] Three, two, one.
- Oh, is it Molly Schuyler.
I follow her, I
don't want to see no,
I'm not ready night now.
- [Crowd] Go.
- [Narrator] Molly Schuyler,
a married mother of four
has flown two and a half
thousand miles across America
to attend the Highway 55
burgers, shakes and fries,
hamburger eating championship.
- Some sort of prize
involved because why,
why would you do this?
Oh my god.
- [Announcer] From inside,
26 for Molly, 24 for Dean.
- She's eating like
cookie monster.
- I feel kind of sick.
- [Narrator] It takes Molly
one minute and 25 seconds
to eat three and a half
pounds of ground beef,
smashing the competition.
In less than a hundred seconds,
she consumes her recommended
daily intake of calories,
sodium and fat for the
next week and a half.
- [Woman] Thank you very much.
- How are you that skinny?
- [Narrator] Molly
is the number one,
independent female competitive
eater in the world.
But the original
burger eating challenge
was an experiment done
in the name of science.
(car honks)
It's 1932, Bernard Flesche
is a student working
his way through med school at
the University of Minnesota
when he sees an ad
asking for volunteers
in the Department of
Physiological Chemistry.
- [Man] Okay.
- [Narrator] He replies and
becomes the world's first
burger eating Guinea pig,
beating Morgan Spurlock
and Molly Schuyler by 80 years.
It's the idea of the
White Castle burger chain.
Co-founded by Walt Anderson,
which wants to prove
to the world that their sliders
are as healthy as
they are delicious.
Bernard keeps a diary
throughout the experiment.
- [Man] Day one.
- [Narrator] He begins by
happily downing 10 burgers
at a single sitting.
- [Man] I ate a whole
lot of burger today.
- [Narrator] By week three,
his enthusiasm begins to wane
but when offered fresh
vegetables, he refuses.
- [Man] No thank you.
- [Narrator] By week 10,
he's back in the zone,
eating 20 to 24
hamburgers a day.
- [Man] I feel fine today.
- [Narrator] At the
end of the experiment.
- [Man] Blood pressure.
- [Narrator] Flesche is
pronounced to be fit.
- [Man] Heart rate.
- [Narrator] And healthy.
- [Man] You're fine.
- [Narrator] Apparently proving
that White Castle customers
if they ate nothing but
our sandwiches and water
and fully develop all their
physical and mental faculties.
- [Man] Well slap my momma.
- That became a way for
White Castle to promote
what they were serving as
not just a healthy lunch,
but family friendly food,
things that you could serve
to your kids without worrying
about the nutritional content.
- [Narrator] Up until
1950, the standard size
of a White Castle slider
is just two ounces.
You could pop them in
your mouth with one hand,
but all that is about to change.
The classic burger
that Americans have
fallen in love with,
is about to grow up and out.
1950 is the year of the big
bang in the burger universe.
When Harmon Dobson opens
his first fast food joint
in Corpus Christi, Texas.
- [Man] Ride 'em cowboy.
- [Narrator] The state
where they don't do small.
He's already tried and
failed to make his fortune
in South African diamonds.
- [Man] Ooh, these are shiny.
- [Narrator] Texan oil and
selling secondhand cars.
- [Man] I'll give
you a great deal.
- [Narrator] But Harmon does
nothing if not dream big.
(harmonica music begins)
Having grown up on
a farm in Arkansas
during the Depression and Dust
Bowl, portion size counts.
- When Harmon Dobson came
along, he decided I want
to have a burger that you
need two hands to eat.
- [Narrator] And he
wants it to taste so good
that when you take
a bite, you'll say.
- [Man] Wow, what a burger.
- [Narrator] Which is
exactly what he calls
his new invention.
- What Whataburger
did differently was
that they created
a hamburger that
was a quarter pound
and at the time, that
was revolutionary.
- [Man] You don't
see that every day.
- [Narrator] It's a four
ounce monster that sells
for a quarter instead
of the standard nickel.
- He needed it to actually
create specialty hamburger buns
because they didn't make
hamburger buns big enough
to support the size of a
burger he was talking about.
Something special about that.
- Harmon's Whataburger
will be quickly followed
by the Big Mac, the double
quarter pounder and the Whopper.
You're the roast to my beef ♪
The Mash to my potato ♪
- Part of market competition,
between different
fast food vendors,
they started to offer
larger and larger
and in the human mind, it
seems like a better deal.
If there's the same
price at one place,
but it's six ounces as
opposed to four ounces,
(squirting ketchup)
that must be a better product,
and so you have this train
that goes off the rails
of size getting
bigger and bigger.
- Mm.
- [Narrator] 20 years ago,
the average serving of fries
used to be 2.4 ounces,
now it's 6.9 ounces.
Soda pop size is tripled.
Instead of 6.5 ounces,
we're getting 20 ounces.
The average cheeseburger
has nearly doubled in size.
That's 800 more
calories in one meal
and to burn off
the extra calories,
the average Joe will have
to go on a 10 mile hike.
- [Man] Too much work.
- [Narrator] Which the
average Joe tends not to do.
- For the companies, this
makes a lot of sense,
consumers like a great deal.
It doesn't cost that much more.
The problem for us is
that we don't eat half.
We think this is dinner
and they're constantly
evolving new options as well.
I don't know what's next step
to the Big Gulp. (laughs)
- [Narrator] By the 1990s,
Americans are gulping down
giant portions of fast
food at an insatiable rate.
- You eat it fast, like so
fast, like in three breaths.
So fast that your
stomach hurts after,
and then you regret it, but
then you do it again next week.
- How fast do I
eat my fast food?
I look around the room,
see if there's a defibrillator
on sight, two bites.
- Once I start a fast food meal,
I'm gonna eat the whole thing,
look, I spent $8 on this.
- It's kinda like
you're eating air,
but it's like meat and
cheese flavored air.
- It's the food science at play,
which is designed to hit
all of your flavor sensors
in a way that really
makes you feel
like you are eating
something that you love.
- Fast food really operates
on this idea of a bliss point,
this point at which you can
get the exact right amount
of these sugars, salts
and fats that you never
feel like you've
had too much of it,
that you walk out of the
fast food restaurant,
ready to eat fast
food in four hours.
- And this is a very
deliberate strategy.
It's engineered to be addictive.
Your brain just becomes
habituated to it,
to the point where when you
stop eating that kind of food,
you will actually
experience withdrawal
and you'll want more.
- [Narrator] As a
portion size has grown
and consumption rates
have skyrocketed
so has the average Joe.
He's an inch taller,
three inches rounder.
- [Man] Oh man.
- [Narrator] And
25 pounds heavier.
Collectively as a nation of
average Joes, at this rate,
soon we'll be carrying
around an excess weight
equivalent of the
great pyramid of Giza.
- [Man] Ow my back,
this is really heavy.
- [Narrator] That's
5.75 million tons.
- [Man] Holy moly.
(liquid drips)
- American obesity has grown
exponentially in just 30 years.
In 1990, less than 10%
of Americans were obese.
We now have in some states more
than 40% of Americans obese.
That's a huge change and
within one generation.
- It's not just
adults, it's kids,
kids are becoming diabetic.
Another number that is
hard to even get over
is the excess risk for having
childhood type two diabetes
for kids of color and
it's about four times
compared to whites.
It's not fair and they're
being target marketed.
The companies are competing
for stomach share.
That's what they call
it, stomach share.
- [Narrator] On any
given day over, one third
of American kids
will eat fast food.
And over the course
of a lifetime,
the average person will eat
an astonishing 2,808 burgers
and 3,744 portions of
fries but it will only take
one Big Mac to change
the course of history.
Moscow, January 1990.
Welcome to Soviet Russia where
the temperature is less than
30 degrees Fahrenheit
and 5,000 Muscovites
have been in a lineup for
food since before dawn.
But this isn't your ordinary
communist era bread queue.
- Well, it's been 14
years in the making
and today finally McDonald's
threw open the doors
to its first restaurant in
Moscow and make no mistake,
this was an event of major
gastronomical proportions.
- Most people associate
the end of the Cold War
with the fall of
the Berlin Wall.
I mean, you can argue
that it was the opening
of the first McDonald's.
I mean, it's not a
coincidence that Ronald Reagan
gave his iconic speech,
Mr. Gorbachev tear
down this wall.
- Mr. Gorbachev
tear down this wall.
(crowd cheers)
- Then in 1989, the
wall comes down.
(crowd cheers)
And McDonald's goes up.
That is probably the
official end of the Cold War.
- This is what 31,255 nuclear
warheads could never achieve.
The end of the cold war
for the price of a Big Mac.
- The McDonald's in Moscow
was the biggest McDonald's
in the world at the time.
The pictures of people lining
up around Pushkin Square
to have a McDonald's
was legendary.
It made newspapers around
the world, it was a big deal.
- [Narrator] The biggest
McDonald's in 1990
seats 900 people with
27 cash registers.
- [Man] Thank you much.
- [Narrator] The Soviet
era cafeteria it replaced
struggled to serve
20,000 people in a month.
- [Man] Oh.
- [Narrator] McDonald's serves
30,000 on its first day.
- [Man] Very nice.
- [Journalist] The verdict
on the feast was mixed.
I don't like it at all,
he says, it's not Russian.
- It's very beautiful but
I expected more I think.
- [Journalist] This woman
doesn't know what she just ate,
but she says it was
unusual and delicious.
- [Narrator] Since that day
in 1990, American fast food
has gone on to
conquer the world.
McDonald's now has 37,000
restaurants across the globe.
KFC has six times as many
international restaurants
as domestic and the total
number of fast food restaurants
across the globe is
a staggering 897,683.
- Fast food can't go
anywhere without adapting
to the local customs if
it's going to succeed.
So it is tailored to
the place that it is.
- Fast food has achieved
global domination by adapting
to its global market.
Dunkin Donuts' specialty in
Beijing is a seaweed donut.
- [Woman] Ooh.
- Burger King is
certified halal and kosher
in the Middle East.
- [Man] Oh man.
- [Narrator] KFC's buckets
are vegetarian in India
and in France, not only do
you get a Royal with cheese
because with the metric system,
they don't do quarter pounders
and mayo for your fries,
you can also get a glass
of wine to wash it down.
- [Man] All right.
- The most exotic place I've
ever had fast food is Trinidad.
When I went there, I had KFC.
The spices are different
than what you get here.
And it's so much better.
- Hong Kong, the
burgers were spicy.
In the Netherlands,
they served this thing
called the McCrock, which
they don't serve anywhere
outside of the Netherlands,
which is like a patty
with potato and I
think maybe some meat
and deep fried, it's awesome.
- The most exotic place
I've eaten fast food,
I think I had like a piri piri
burger in Papua, New Guinea.
- McDonald's in Paris
and it was more or
less the same thing.
I kind of thought they
would have snails on a menu,
but it was just brie, still
too fancy for me though.
- [Narrator] Fast food isn't
only taking over the world.
It's changing the planet itself.
(cow moos)
- A lot of the criticism of
fast food in recent years
has become more focused
on environmental concerns.
Eating beef in particular
is one of the leading causes
of environmental damage.
- Americans really
love beef way more
than any other country.
If you encouraged every
person on the planet
to eat as much beef
as an American,
it would take five planet
earth just to sustain
the cow populations necessary
to feed that hunger.
- You can't grow beef
everywhere in the world
and think that the world
is going to survive.
You can't privatize
water to make soda
in parts of the world
that are experiencing
climate change and
water scarcity.
The problem with
this business model
is it is environmentally
unsustainable.
- [Narrator] So just how
many quarter pound hamburgers
of meat can you actually
get from one cow?
- How many Quarter Pounders
can you get from one cow?
- I'm gonna
guesstimate 800 pounds
and if I'm doing the math,
a quarter pounder, (laughs)
that's 3,200 quarter pounders.
- I think a cow is
what, 600 pounds.
So 600 times four, I'd
need a calculator. (laughs)
- 508.
- You know what?
Cows are pretty big so
I feel like the amount
of Quarter Pounders you
can get from them is like
quite substantial,
I want to say 50?
- Well, if I was the cut
out little Quarter Pounders
out of a cow which is
horrible, 50 at least.
Gotta be at least 50.
- [Narrator] 1 beef steer
actually produces enough meat
for 740 quarter
pound hamburgers.
- [Man] Okay.
- [Narrator] And to produce
one hamburger requires
53.12 square feet of farmland
to provide sufficient feed
as well as 460 gallons of water.
- So one of the really big
problems with our addiction
to hamburgers is that the
cows, when they're alive,
they spend their days
releasing methane gas
into the atmosphere and this
is the cause of climate change.
- Cows have multi chambered
stomachs to be able to move
grass and hay through these
various different microbiomes
to help digest them but
one of the byproducts
is the production of methane.
Methane is 20 times more
potent than carbon dioxide
as a greenhouse gas
so cows releasing that
is even worse than some of
the other forms of pollution
that we see on the planet today.
- [Narrator] If you add up
all the cows in the world,
there's about 1.5 billion
and on any given day,
they will release up to 150
billion gallons of methane.
- You'd think it was the
equipment or it's all the oil
and gas that's used from
this machines that run
but no, it's just cows,
farting and burping.
Pretty crazy, right?
Like cows are belching
and that's actually
damaging the earth?
Like it's funny and scary.
- Can cows even
survive on their own?
Like I've never
heard of a wild cow.
I feel like people like
just farm them for food,
it's kind of icky.
- Thankfully not everyone
eats like Americans do.
A lot of countries
are vegetarian
and so that's good to know.
- Well, I mean, I belch
and fart in the air a lot
and my wife says that's a huge
problem to the environment.
So yeah, I think
it would be good
if we all ate less red meat.
- [Narrator] And our
demand for fast food
isn't just impacting the planet.
The animals themselves
are changing.
- The chicken of today
has kind of turned
into a Frankenstein's monster.
We want an animal that has
lots of meat where we want
to eat it on the breaths
and on the thigh,
specifically with chicken,
because we've had to breed
a bigger and bigger chicken
to keep up with that
growing portion size.
- [Narrator] In
the last 50 years,
the chicken has grown
nearly five fold.
If this rate of expansion
were to continue
for another 250 years.
(T-Rex growls)
The average chicken would be
the same size as the T-Rex.
(T-Rex growls)
Fast-food is reshaping
the Heartland of America
in the way we grow food,
the way we eat and look,
and even the way we
conduct politics.
(military horns begin)
- Wipe everything
from my calendar.
I want a hamburger
on my desk by noon.
- Every single presidential
candidate in the last
30 Or 40 years can
pretty much be seen
at a fast food
restaurant at some point
during their campaigns
to get a good photo op.
It's a way to meet people,
but it's also a way to
seem like they're authentic
and in touch with the
heartbeat of America.
- [Narrator] January 2019,
the college football
national champion,
the Clemson Tigers are
at the White House.
President Donald Trump is
hosting them and on the menu
are all his favorite fast foods.
- No matter how you
feel about Donald Trump,
he successfully parlayed
his love of fast food,
which is genuine.
- We have Big Macs, we have
Quarter Pounders with cheese,
we have everything that
I like that you like.
- To give his
billionaire exterior,
this kind of every man quality.
- There's nothing you could have
that's better than that, right?
- It really is a
meaningful political weapon
when wielded properly.
- [Narrator] Imagine
a map of the USA.
As you move either east
or west towards the coast,
the average state consumption
of fruit or
vegetables increases.
- [Man] Let's make a salad.
- [Narrator] And as you move
back towards the Heartland,
the consumption of Baconators
per head of population
increases in inverse proportion.
- [Man] We love our bacon here.
- [Narrator] And if you
color-code each state
by the number of fast food
joints per 10,000 people,
with Alabama at the top
of the list with 6.3
and Vermont at the
bottom, with 1.9,
it corresponds almost
exactly to the states
won by Donald Trump in the 2016
U.S. Presidential Election.
- [Man] Fast food's tremendous,
absolutely tremendous.
- [Narrator] Of the 20 states
that eat the most fast food,
17 are red and
voted for Mr. Trump.
- [Man] It doesn't get
any bigger than fast food.
- There's a reason why when
every presidential hopeful
goes to Iowa, they have a
corn dog, they have meat.
God forbid, you go to
Iowa and be a vegetarian.
You know, you can't run a
country if you're a vegetarian.
Iowans aren't going
to vote for you.
But in America,
I hate to say it,
but if you are a meat eater,
and if you're a fast food eater,
you will get a lot more votes.
- [Narrator] For
the last century,
whether it's a part of
our politics, our palate
or our pocketbook, fast
food has deeply woven itself
into the fabric
of American life.
(bell rings)
But after transforming
our taste buds,
expanding our waistlines and
impacting our environment,
will fast food change
to meet the demands
of the next 100 years.
- If we look at the
history of fast food,
it's been really good at
changing itself to market
what people want at the time.
- [Announcer] The
world's most famous menu.
Tomorrow there are changes.
Salads, yogurts, grilled
chicken sandwiches
to address health concerns.
- So my expectation that
is as we look to the future
of fast food, that they're
going to continue to do that.
- Whether it's KFC offering
plant-based chicken,
just test markets and
seeing if people respond it,
which they did and Taco Bell
launching a vegetarian menu,
you've seen a lot of
experimentation for food
to be healthier and
more sustainable.
It follows trends very closely.
It's one of the reasons why
it's managed to stay on top.
- I think the future
of fast food is simple.
They will cater to the
countries they live in.
They'll provide vegan options
and be more health conscious
here because people
are becoming more aware
of what they eat
but at same time,
then they'll go into
a different country
and then start up shop there.
- And the biggest threat
is to the environments
and the food systems
in those countries.
They are displacing
traditional diets with junk,
but we can retrain our palates.
If we gradually reduce sugar
or gradually reduce salt,
our palates will become
more sensitized over time
and we can adapt to
loving healthy food again.
- In the future, you know
what, chewing is a lot of work.
So I feel in the
future, they're just
going to get rid of that.
- Test tube sliders. (laughs)
- Rollers are going to
deliver your fast food order.
You'd be looking up to the
sky like this, burger lands
right in your hands.
- We're going full
cyber punk with it.
Everything's going to be made
out of a krill and locusts.
- Or you could get your
nutrition through pills
or a pulse to your brain that
gives you like the flavor
of sensation in your mouth.
Basically, I'm talking
about drugs. (laughs)
(mellow techno music continues)
(clattering plates)
- How many French fries
have I had in my lifetime?
- Oh man.
- I need a calculator.
- Let's go 124,800, no.
- Carry the two.
- Thousands upon thousands.
- About 48,392 and a half.
- I eat fast food in a year.
- Oh man, like maybe every
morning, every other day.
- 100 times, at least.
- Quarter pounder, poutine,
chocolate milkshake, apple pie.
Double coronary artery
bypass, (laughs) to go.
- 96%, that's how
many Americans visit
fast food restaurants
in the course of a year.
That's more than
Americans go to church,
go to gyms, even
participate on the internet.
- Fast food is a
cultural phenomenon.
It defines our country,
it is us, it's who we are.
- [Narrator] In just one
century, fast food transformed
the American way of life.
- When you look at fast food
over the last 100 years,
it's not possible to
separate American history
from fast food because
of how powerful
and influential it's been and
how much it's an institution
that really explains
where we've been,
where we are and
where we're going.
- [Narrator] And fast food
didn't just conquer America.
It took on the world.
- Almost 1% of the
world's population
eats at McDonald's every day?
Wow.
The globalization of
fast food is the future,
but I do know that we can't
sustain it as a planet.
- [Narrator] This isn't
just the story of fast food.
It's the story of the American
dream, of globalization
and the history of a 100
years in 4 trillion fries.
(rock music begins)
(rockets blare)
- 4 trillion, four, that's
actually eight. (laughs)
Dum dum, dum dum dum dum
dum, dum dum, dum dum dum dum ♪
(ketchup squirts)
4 trillion fries,
that's how many fries
McDonald's has served
since they first open.
(multiple loud bites)
- 4 trillion is a number
that's basically unfathomable
to the human mind.
- 4 Million, I could understand.
Like even 4 billion sounds like
my brain could process that.
- I wonder how it is that we
haven't made potatoes extinct.
- 4 trillion anything?
I can't even fathom what
that would even look like
or how much land the
earth that would occupy.
- [Astronaut]
Command, there appears
to be french fries in orbit.
- [Narrator] If the average
French fry is 2.32 inches.
- [Man] Okay.
- [Narrator] And you
line up 4 trillion fries.
- [Man] And away we go.
- [Narrator] It would
stretch 146,464,646.5 miles.
Ooh, and could wrap around the
earth's equator 5,889 times.
- [Man] Holy moly.
- [Astronaut] Yeah
Command, I've never seen
that many French fries.
(film reel clicks)
(triumphant orchestral music)
- There's a rumor that
even Thomas Jefferson
was eating French
fries when he wrote
the Declaration of Independence.
Obviously, that's
probably not true,
but Jefferson did introduce
French fries to America
in 1802, 1 year before he
bought Louisiana territory
from France so I don't know
if that's a good or bad thing
about French fries.
(clicking metal)
- [Narrator] Fast
forward, 180 years.
The French fry is the most
popular dish in America
and a McDonald's drive-through
will serve 144 cars in an hour.
That's one, every 25 seconds.
- What a statistic like
being able to get your food
in less than a minute says
about how we value time.
In some ways that's a
little bit frightening,
even as it's impressive
and even as there's a lot
of fascinating science
that goes into that.
The need that we feel
to be in such a hurry
says something particular
about American culture.
- Fast food plays on
human convenience.
We want instant gratification.
We want it in every
aspect of our life.
- [Narrator] But fast food
isn't just a reflection
of the modern world.
It's one of the things that
made us who we are today.
(playful techno music begins)
- [Radio] Take yourself
down to Ocean Drive
to enjoy free breakfast.
- [Narrator] Miami 1980,
at McDonald's a 16 year old
high school student begins
his first summer job
in the back kitchen
as a grill man.
- [Boy] Yeah.
- A giant wall mounted
ketchup dispenser dumps
across the floor.
- [Boy] Oh.
- [Narrator] And he's
handed a bucket and a mop
and told to get cleaning.
Looking back, he'll say you
learn a lot as a teenager
working at McDonald's,
it's different
from what you learn in school.
Don't underestimate
the value of that,
and his biggest lesson apart
from how to scramble eggs,
flip burgers, and pull
fries out of the boiling VA
without injuring himself,
is customer service.
I learned that it's really
hard, this teenager's name,
Jeff Bezos, the CEO
and founder of Amazon,
who's now worth 190 billion.
- King of Amazon who used
to work the Saturday shift
at McDonald's still brags
that he can crack an egg
with one hand.
(egg cracks)
(cars honk)
- [Narrator] Easy
access, speedy delivery,
cheap prices and
customer service.
Fast food restaurants are
the roadside embodiments
of the American way.
Just look at a map.
- [Man] Mm.
- [Narrator] There are
more franchise restaurants
in the United States
than there are schools
or family doctors.
- [Man] The doctor
will see you now.
- [Narrator] And you'll
never be more than 115 miles
from the nearest McDonald's.
- [Man] Hm mm.
- [Narrator] In Katy,
Texas, there are a whopping
166 fast food restaurants
to choose from.
- [Man] Yeah.
- [Narrator] That's one
for every 160 people
or a different place
to eat every week
for the next three years.
- [Man] Well whistle me dixie.
- [Narrator] Making it
the fast food capital
of the United States.
- [Crowd] Wow.
- Fast food is deeply
embedded in the culture.
It's to the point where
it's taken for granted
and it's all the things
that America represents.
(salsa music continues)
It's available to
the whole population.
It's democratic in that sense.
- Nothing brings people together
from different backgrounds,
quicker than fast food,
whether you are a millionaire
or someone's
struggling to survive.
You're sitting in the same place
and enjoying the same meal.
- Fast food is
made for everybody.
It's a great equalizer
in terms of food.
- I've seen people
in suits after work,
I've seen mom in sweatpants,
I've seen a homeless
guy not wearing pants.
- I've seen people in teenage
mutant ninja turtle costume,
not on Halloween,
just like day-to-day.
- The guy in the full suit.
The person in
pajamas at 3:00 PM.
- Anything goes in a
fast food restaurant.
- Mm.
- No one's judging me
for eating fast food.
Like fast foods is the
sweatpants of food. (laughs)
(upbeat techno music begins)
- [Narrator] In any given month,
80% of us visit at least
one fast food joint.
And even though we
may think fast foods
origin's story is American,
well, it actually
isn't our invention.
It's been around for as
long as we've craved carbs.
The first fast food
joint was unearthed
in ancient Mesopotamia
more than 5,000 years ago.
- [Man] Mm.
- [Narrator] 80 fast food
restaurants known as Thermapolia
have been found in Roman
Pompeii and 1,500 years ago,
the Julia Child of her
day, wrote down the world's
first ever recipe for a
burger in a Latin manuscript.
- [Man] I think to be yummy.
- Our founding fathers,
our philosophies,
our government was
based on the Romans.
The Romans impact
American history more
than people realize.
Not only are our
governing style,
but our architecture
and also our fast food.
They were extremely indulgent,
but they also had a
fast food service.
They had what would be the
equivalent of food trucks.
(truck honks)
They even add in Pompeii,
a delivery service.
They had ancient Roman GrubHub.
So as advanced as we
like to think we are,
we're just doing a
newer version of stuff
that ancient cultures
have done for a long time.
- [Narrator] But in
the last 100 years,
we've made it uniquely ours,
and it begins in
Wichita, Kansas in 1921.
(harmonica music continues)
When Walter
Anderson, the founder
of White Castle restaurants
has a temper tantrum
at his food stand.
- He's cooking grilled
meatballs on his griddle
and it was taking too long.
- [Man] Come on.
- One day out of frustration,
he grabs the spatula, he
smashes it down on the grill.
- [Man] Ah, fiddle faddle.
- [Adam] He finds that it
cooks the meat really quickly
and also tastes good.
- [Man] Ah ha.
- He starts creating
these patties
and serving them in buns
and the next thing you know,
he's got this product
that nobody else has.
- [Man] Yeah.
- And that becomes the beginning
of his hamburger invention.
- [Narrator] The fast
food hamburger is born
and Walt calls them sliders
because they slide
down the throat.
Soon after, Walt puts
a sign above his door,
hamburgers 5 cents,
and he puts his griddle
in full view where
the customer can see
exactly what's going
into his slider.
- [Man] Oh, you don't
see that everyday.
- [Narrator] Another
bold decision,
because at the start
of the 20th century,
red meat had a bad reputation.
- In the early 1900s,
Americans were generally afraid
of eating ground beef because
they'd read horror stories
about the meat packing industry
in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
It really set off
a lot of alarms.
- [Narrator] The book
is a muckraking expose
of Chicago's union
stockyards cataloging,
the horrors of rotting
meat mixed with sawdust,
dead rats in the meat
grinder and workers
with mysteriously
missing digits.
Eating ground meat
is said to be as safe
as picking your food
out of a trash can.
- The birth of fast
food really comes about
in the early 20th century
following the Progressive Era,
when there was a big scare
around the meat packing
industry and sanitation.
- There was also a lot
of immigrant anxiety
tied up in that,
there's racism tied up in that,
the idea that people who
are recent immigrants
are preparing your food
behind closed doors
and it's not hygienic.
- In the middle of all of
that comes White Castle,
which has the brand new business
model of super transparent,
you know, right where
your burger came from,
not expensive and sanitary.
- White Castle really is
the beginning of fast food.
It spoke to how America
was changing at the time.
The Model T was becoming
much more affordable.
So more people were driving
around and looking for food
that they could pick
up pick up quickly
and at the heart of
it was the hamburger.
(car honks)
- I have had at least
500,000 burgers in my life.
That's like a warm
corporate hug in my mouth.
It's just salty and
there's ketchup happening.
- I'm licking my
lips, I'm salivating.
I take a huge bite,
there's ketchup and mustard
on the sides of my mouth.
- Hm, this is delicious,
maybe some Coca-Cola?
Yeah, okay, great,
now it's a party.
- I'm thinking, wow,
this burger's great.
It's juicy, it's delicious.
- I think there's like
this ratio of salt
and fat and juiciness.
- I want to just feed these
dirty little grabs and blar,
and just (beep) drool
out of our faces.
Sorry for swearing but like
there's a lot of people invested
in making it that way.
(loud chewing)
- [Narrator] Like all primates.
(monkey coos)
Our brains are biologically
programmed to consume carbs,
fats and protein.
- [Man] Mm.
- [Narrator] But in the
course of evolution,
our brains have become
three times bigger
than our closest genetic
cousins, the chimpanzees
and so have our cravings.
(video game beeps)
When we eat fast food,
up to 100 million neurons
fire rapidly, releasing
dopamine and opioids,
the chemicals which
are responsible
for the feelings of pleasure.
- [Woman] Ooh.
- For an early human,
salt, fat, sugar,
are rare in the environment.
So our hunter gatherer brains
just light up in delight
to find something that
contains high amounts
of any of those things and
especially in combination,
which is something that fast
food's taken advantage of.
(squirting ketchup)
- If you're used to whopping
quantities of sugar, fat,
and salt, your whole
system of craving
will be expecting these high
levels, so I'm hungry and oh,
the golden arches,
woof, dopamine rush.
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
hallelujah, hallelujah ♪
That's the dopamine,
that's craving.
- [Man] The craving.
- I don't know if Walt Anderson
would ever expect that,
the one day he was
frustrated at his griddle.
- [Man] Ah fiddle faddle.
- Would unleash this
enormous hamburger craze
that really took
the nation by storm
and eventually the world.
- [Narrator] In the history
of American fast food,
White Castle is
restaurant number one,
but how did one become 196,839
fast food joints in America?
(car engine revs)
Everybody listen
to me, what? ♪
Tell everybody
car you got to see ♪
The other day was
jolly just free ♪
So every Cadillac still ♪
- In the post-war
boom of the 1950s,
America discovers the
joys of the open road.
With full employment and
money in our pockets,
we become a nation of car
owners driving three quarters
of all automobiles
on the planet,
along 47,000 miles
of brand new highway.
(jazz music continues)
- Just to sum up the 1950s,
in a few words, the burbs.
(pleasant 50s music plays)
Babies.
(baby coos)
Buicks and burgers.
You were either driving
in or driving through.
- [Announcer] Eat, take in a
movie, do your laundry, shop
go to the library and
bank all without once
having to leave your car.
(radio static)
(rock music begins)
- We spend a lot of our time
in our cars in the 1950s.
It makes perfect sense that
the rise of automobile culture
is synonymous with the
rise of fast foods.
- [Narrator] Teenagers,
liberated housewives,
or the average sized
family can now drive to any
of the fast food joints
that have sprung up
along the highway.
And one of these
restaurants happens to be
a roadside barbecue
joint in San Bernardino,
operated by the
McDonald brothers.
(dramatic orchestral
music begins)
Having already chopped
up a failed movie theater
to their names.
- [Man] I got an idea.
- Dick and Mac
McDonald repurposed
the usherette uniforms
and employed 20 car
hops to take meals
to their drive-up customers.
- [Announcer] That's right
friends, on roller skates.
- Before drive-thrus
became ubiquitous,
the precursor to that
was the drive in.
People would drive in and
they'd order their food
from a car hop.
- [Narrator] But
they quickly learned
that this squeezes their
margins, it's slow,
besides which, if you've got
20 teenage girls in uniform,
you'll get teenage boys swarming
like bees round a honeypot,
which kills your family market.
So they begin to rethink
the whole fast food model.
Henry Ford has already
(train whistle blows)
revolutionized the
automobile industry.
Prior to his introduction
of the assembly line,
it was taking 12 hours
to manufacture a Model T.
Now it takes precisely
one hour, 33 minutes.
What Ford does for the car,
the McDonald brothers
decide to do for the burger.
- The McDonald's brothers
decided we're going to cut
the cost of everything and that
was unheard of at the time.
That was very unique.
- [Narrator] First off,
they fire the car hops.
Waitress service is
a thing of the past,
like the Great
Depression, the Dust Bowl,
and big band music.
Instead they employ 12 people,
each performing a separate
task to prepare one meal.
From the grill and
deep fat fryer,
to the dressing station
and milkshake dispenser,
to the counter.
40 patties can be
grilled in 110 seconds.
- [Man] Holy moly.
- [Narrator] And a
meal can be prepared
in just 20 seconds flat.
McDonald's burgers are half
the price of their rivals.
- [Man] Good gravy.
- [Narrator] They call it
the speedy service system.
- It was an assembly line.
Every single movement
within the kitchen was timed
down to the step,
down to the pickle,
down to the chopped onion.
It was cheaper and
it was quicker.
- The key to maintaining
speed is to eliminate choice.
- [Man] I got it.
- So the McDonald brothers
reduced the number
of items on the
menu to just nine,
a hamburger, cheeseburger,
fries, milkshake, three flavors,
milk coffee, and a soda.
- [Man] Shazam.
- [Narrator] And on every
burger, there is exactly
two pickles along with
ketchup, mustard and onions.
- [Man] Mm, yes.
- Limited menu served quickly
was revolutionary at the time
and it's something that
struck a chord as car culture
in the 1940s and 50s
was really taking off,
especially in California.
- [Narrator] The new McDonald's
attracts not only customers,
but imitators and one
of the is James McLemore
who will become
founder of Burger King.
Another is Ray
Crock, who in 1954
is a 52 year old
milkshake mixer salesman.
When the McDonald brothers
buy eight of his mixers,
he goes to see what
all the fuss is about.
- [Man] Mm.
- [Narrator] He's
impressed and has a vision
of McDonald's restaurants
dotted across the country.
- [Man] Ah.
(triumphant horns play)
- [Narrator] He convinces
the brothers to let him open
the first McDonald's
franchise in Illinois.
- [Man] Mm hm.
- [Narrator] An empire is born
and more than 60 years later,
the numbers surpasses 14,000.
- Once Ray Crock gets involved,
McDonald's goes from being
a sleepy hamburger stand
in a desert county in
California to the beginnings
of a national institution
and as a result,
hundreds of imitators came
by and tried to create
their own version of
what McDonald's had done.
- [Narrator] And a handful of
these bootstrapping imitators
launch the next wave
of fast-food empires,
which continue to
grow every day.
Including Wendy's, Taco Bell,
Popeye's and Kentucky
Fried Chicken.
But what number do
these fast food pioneers
all have in common?
Zero.
(record scratches)
Zero high school or college
degrees between them.
- Dave Thomas, the founder
of Wendy's was an orphan
who was independent at 12
and started working
at restaurants.
Glen Bell, who was a college
dropout learned how to cook
while serving in the
Pacific during World War II
and he found a Taco Bell.
Ray Crock was also a
high school dropout.
Al Copeland grew up in the
first American housing project
in the country and would
amass a huge fortune
by working in
restaurants his life,
and eventually
founding Popeye's.
The same goes for
Colonel Sanders.
(country music plays)
- Harland Sanders leaves
school in grade seven
and begins working
as a farmhand.
He gets a job as a fireman
on the Illinois railroad.
(train whistles)
- [Man] Oh wise guy, aren't ya?
- [Narrator] And is
fired after brawling
with the engine driver.
- [Man] Fired.
- He practices law
without a law degree
in Little Rock, Arkansas.
- [Man] We got a problem?
Overruled.
- [Narrator] Until he has a
fight with his own client.
He delivers babies in
Pennsylvania without
a medical degree.
- [Man] Hit the road.
- [Narrator] Then
he goes on the road,
selling insurance
and promptly quits.
Then he gets a big break.
- [Man] Mm.
- [Narrator] A rent-free lease
on a gas station in Kentucky,
As well as gas, he
starts selling chicken
fried with his secret
11 spice coating.
- I found myself ending the
service station business
and a little restaurant,
little luncheon.
And I developed this special
seasoning of 11 spices
and herbs, and special
method of frying chicken
and I had a product that was
really out of this world.
- [Narrator] It's a hit
and things are looking up
for Harland until he
gets into another fight
with a rival gas station owner.
(gunshot fires)
Who shoots dead his employee
and then along
comes interstate 75,
which bypasses his gas
station altogether.
So he opens a motel in
Asheville, North Carolina,
and it burns down.
- [Man] Oh buggers.
- [Narrator] But
he doesn't give up.
At the age of 65, he
travels the country,
dressed up as a Southern
Colonel cooking his chicken
for restaurant owners.
Finally, it works.
- [Man] That's the best
chicken I've ever tasted.
- [Narrator] The KFC
franchise empire is born.
Harlan is nothing if
not a serial failure
until the moment he isn't.
- [Man] Yeah.
- Well we use fresh
chicken, never frozen.
- He patented this
fried chicken recipe,
that became regionally famous
and then international famous.
Eventually he became the second
most recognizable
figure in the world.
Pretty impressive
accomplishment from a guy
with a middle school education.
- I like seeing people
who have failed and failed
and failed become successful
and I think Harland Sanders
is the epitome of that.
It is never too late
to start your life
or to change the world
or to change fast food.
(disco music begins)
- [Announcer] The desire for
fast, expensive tasty meals
has made convenience
food franchises
the most popular choice
for the new franchisee.
- [Narrator] In the 1960s and
70s, America becomes the land
of franchise opportunity
for aspiring go-getters.
This accessible path
to business ownership
creates a new class
of rich Americans.
- Ray Kroc famously said that
he made more millionaires
in America than anyone else.
Fast food was a way to
succeed in post-war America.
- [Announcer] Elk Grove
Village, Illinois is the home
of McDonald's
Hamburger University.
- Ray Crock's an interesting
one because he dropped
out of high school
to started McDonald's
but then he started
Hamburger University.
- [Announcer] These aren't
Ivy league students,
but new franchisees
who are attending
a comprehensive
training program.
- His students, they
graduate with a degree
in Hamburgerology,
Hamburgerology.
- [Narrator] Ray's
three tips for success.
Number one, if any of my
competitors were drowning,
I'd stick a hose in their mouth.
Number two, the gentle
art of salesmanship
is letting the customer
have it your way
and number three, if
you have time to lean,
you have time to clean.
Today, there are an
estimated 50,000 fast food
franchise chains competing
for our attention
and with overwhelming success.
On any given day,
one in four Americans
will visit a fast
food restaurant.
Show you the way out ♪
In a year, we'll
spend $239 billion
and eat approximately
50 billion burgers.
Cooking, cooking some food ♪
And I'm making some food now ♪
But for this world champion,
it's all in a day's work.
- Any time you food that
a lot of people love,
you'll inevitably run into
a competition about it.
- Okay, so I'm
going to press play.
- [Narrator] It's
Wednesday, June 6th, 2018.
- [Crowd] Three, two, one.
- Oh, is it Molly Schuyler.
I follow her, I
don't want to see no,
I'm not ready night now.
- [Crowd] Go.
- [Narrator] Molly Schuyler,
a married mother of four
has flown two and a half
thousand miles across America
to attend the Highway 55
burgers, shakes and fries,
hamburger eating championship.
- Some sort of prize
involved because why,
why would you do this?
Oh my god.
- [Announcer] From inside,
26 for Molly, 24 for Dean.
- She's eating like
cookie monster.
- I feel kind of sick.
- [Narrator] It takes Molly
one minute and 25 seconds
to eat three and a half
pounds of ground beef,
smashing the competition.
In less than a hundred seconds,
she consumes her recommended
daily intake of calories,
sodium and fat for the
next week and a half.
- [Woman] Thank you very much.
- How are you that skinny?
- [Narrator] Molly
is the number one,
independent female competitive
eater in the world.
But the original
burger eating challenge
was an experiment done
in the name of science.
(car honks)
It's 1932, Bernard Flesche
is a student working
his way through med school at
the University of Minnesota
when he sees an ad
asking for volunteers
in the Department of
Physiological Chemistry.
- [Man] Okay.
- [Narrator] He replies and
becomes the world's first
burger eating Guinea pig,
beating Morgan Spurlock
and Molly Schuyler by 80 years.
It's the idea of the
White Castle burger chain.
Co-founded by Walt Anderson,
which wants to prove
to the world that their sliders
are as healthy as
they are delicious.
Bernard keeps a diary
throughout the experiment.
- [Man] Day one.
- [Narrator] He begins by
happily downing 10 burgers
at a single sitting.
- [Man] I ate a whole
lot of burger today.
- [Narrator] By week three,
his enthusiasm begins to wane
but when offered fresh
vegetables, he refuses.
- [Man] No thank you.
- [Narrator] By week 10,
he's back in the zone,
eating 20 to 24
hamburgers a day.
- [Man] I feel fine today.
- [Narrator] At the
end of the experiment.
- [Man] Blood pressure.
- [Narrator] Flesche is
pronounced to be fit.
- [Man] Heart rate.
- [Narrator] And healthy.
- [Man] You're fine.
- [Narrator] Apparently proving
that White Castle customers
if they ate nothing but
our sandwiches and water
and fully develop all their
physical and mental faculties.
- [Man] Well slap my momma.
- That became a way for
White Castle to promote
what they were serving as
not just a healthy lunch,
but family friendly food,
things that you could serve
to your kids without worrying
about the nutritional content.
- [Narrator] Up until
1950, the standard size
of a White Castle slider
is just two ounces.
You could pop them in
your mouth with one hand,
but all that is about to change.
The classic burger
that Americans have
fallen in love with,
is about to grow up and out.
1950 is the year of the big
bang in the burger universe.
When Harmon Dobson opens
his first fast food joint
in Corpus Christi, Texas.
- [Man] Ride 'em cowboy.
- [Narrator] The state
where they don't do small.
He's already tried and
failed to make his fortune
in South African diamonds.
- [Man] Ooh, these are shiny.
- [Narrator] Texan oil and
selling secondhand cars.
- [Man] I'll give
you a great deal.
- [Narrator] But Harmon does
nothing if not dream big.
(harmonica music begins)
Having grown up on
a farm in Arkansas
during the Depression and Dust
Bowl, portion size counts.
- When Harmon Dobson came
along, he decided I want
to have a burger that you
need two hands to eat.
- [Narrator] And he
wants it to taste so good
that when you take
a bite, you'll say.
- [Man] Wow, what a burger.
- [Narrator] Which is
exactly what he calls
his new invention.
- What Whataburger
did differently was
that they created
a hamburger that
was a quarter pound
and at the time, that
was revolutionary.
- [Man] You don't
see that every day.
- [Narrator] It's a four
ounce monster that sells
for a quarter instead
of the standard nickel.
- He needed it to actually
create specialty hamburger buns
because they didn't make
hamburger buns big enough
to support the size of a
burger he was talking about.
Something special about that.
- Harmon's Whataburger
will be quickly followed
by the Big Mac, the double
quarter pounder and the Whopper.
You're the roast to my beef ♪
The Mash to my potato ♪
- Part of market competition,
between different
fast food vendors,
they started to offer
larger and larger
and in the human mind, it
seems like a better deal.
If there's the same
price at one place,
but it's six ounces as
opposed to four ounces,
(squirting ketchup)
that must be a better product,
and so you have this train
that goes off the rails
of size getting
bigger and bigger.
- Mm.
- [Narrator] 20 years ago,
the average serving of fries
used to be 2.4 ounces,
now it's 6.9 ounces.
Soda pop size is tripled.
Instead of 6.5 ounces,
we're getting 20 ounces.
The average cheeseburger
has nearly doubled in size.
That's 800 more
calories in one meal
and to burn off
the extra calories,
the average Joe will have
to go on a 10 mile hike.
- [Man] Too much work.
- [Narrator] Which the
average Joe tends not to do.
- For the companies, this
makes a lot of sense,
consumers like a great deal.
It doesn't cost that much more.
The problem for us is
that we don't eat half.
We think this is dinner
and they're constantly
evolving new options as well.
I don't know what's next step
to the Big Gulp. (laughs)
- [Narrator] By the 1990s,
Americans are gulping down
giant portions of fast
food at an insatiable rate.
- You eat it fast, like so
fast, like in three breaths.
So fast that your
stomach hurts after,
and then you regret it, but
then you do it again next week.
- How fast do I
eat my fast food?
I look around the room,
see if there's a defibrillator
on sight, two bites.
- Once I start a fast food meal,
I'm gonna eat the whole thing,
look, I spent $8 on this.
- It's kinda like
you're eating air,
but it's like meat and
cheese flavored air.
- It's the food science at play,
which is designed to hit
all of your flavor sensors
in a way that really
makes you feel
like you are eating
something that you love.
- Fast food really operates
on this idea of a bliss point,
this point at which you can
get the exact right amount
of these sugars, salts
and fats that you never
feel like you've
had too much of it,
that you walk out of the
fast food restaurant,
ready to eat fast
food in four hours.
- And this is a very
deliberate strategy.
It's engineered to be addictive.
Your brain just becomes
habituated to it,
to the point where when you
stop eating that kind of food,
you will actually
experience withdrawal
and you'll want more.
- [Narrator] As a
portion size has grown
and consumption rates
have skyrocketed
so has the average Joe.
He's an inch taller,
three inches rounder.
- [Man] Oh man.
- [Narrator] And
25 pounds heavier.
Collectively as a nation of
average Joes, at this rate,
soon we'll be carrying
around an excess weight
equivalent of the
great pyramid of Giza.
- [Man] Ow my back,
this is really heavy.
- [Narrator] That's
5.75 million tons.
- [Man] Holy moly.
(liquid drips)
- American obesity has grown
exponentially in just 30 years.
In 1990, less than 10%
of Americans were obese.
We now have in some states more
than 40% of Americans obese.
That's a huge change and
within one generation.
- It's not just
adults, it's kids,
kids are becoming diabetic.
Another number that is
hard to even get over
is the excess risk for having
childhood type two diabetes
for kids of color and
it's about four times
compared to whites.
It's not fair and they're
being target marketed.
The companies are competing
for stomach share.
That's what they call
it, stomach share.
- [Narrator] On any
given day over, one third
of American kids
will eat fast food.
And over the course
of a lifetime,
the average person will eat
an astonishing 2,808 burgers
and 3,744 portions of
fries but it will only take
one Big Mac to change
the course of history.
Moscow, January 1990.
Welcome to Soviet Russia where
the temperature is less than
30 degrees Fahrenheit
and 5,000 Muscovites
have been in a lineup for
food since before dawn.
But this isn't your ordinary
communist era bread queue.
- Well, it's been 14
years in the making
and today finally McDonald's
threw open the doors
to its first restaurant in
Moscow and make no mistake,
this was an event of major
gastronomical proportions.
- Most people associate
the end of the Cold War
with the fall of
the Berlin Wall.
I mean, you can argue
that it was the opening
of the first McDonald's.
I mean, it's not a
coincidence that Ronald Reagan
gave his iconic speech,
Mr. Gorbachev tear
down this wall.
- Mr. Gorbachev
tear down this wall.
(crowd cheers)
- Then in 1989, the
wall comes down.
(crowd cheers)
And McDonald's goes up.
That is probably the
official end of the Cold War.
- This is what 31,255 nuclear
warheads could never achieve.
The end of the cold war
for the price of a Big Mac.
- The McDonald's in Moscow
was the biggest McDonald's
in the world at the time.
The pictures of people lining
up around Pushkin Square
to have a McDonald's
was legendary.
It made newspapers around
the world, it was a big deal.
- [Narrator] The biggest
McDonald's in 1990
seats 900 people with
27 cash registers.
- [Man] Thank you much.
- [Narrator] The Soviet
era cafeteria it replaced
struggled to serve
20,000 people in a month.
- [Man] Oh.
- [Narrator] McDonald's serves
30,000 on its first day.
- [Man] Very nice.
- [Journalist] The verdict
on the feast was mixed.
I don't like it at all,
he says, it's not Russian.
- It's very beautiful but
I expected more I think.
- [Journalist] This woman
doesn't know what she just ate,
but she says it was
unusual and delicious.
- [Narrator] Since that day
in 1990, American fast food
has gone on to
conquer the world.
McDonald's now has 37,000
restaurants across the globe.
KFC has six times as many
international restaurants
as domestic and the total
number of fast food restaurants
across the globe is
a staggering 897,683.
- Fast food can't go
anywhere without adapting
to the local customs if
it's going to succeed.
So it is tailored to
the place that it is.
- Fast food has achieved
global domination by adapting
to its global market.
Dunkin Donuts' specialty in
Beijing is a seaweed donut.
- [Woman] Ooh.
- Burger King is
certified halal and kosher
in the Middle East.
- [Man] Oh man.
- [Narrator] KFC's buckets
are vegetarian in India
and in France, not only do
you get a Royal with cheese
because with the metric system,
they don't do quarter pounders
and mayo for your fries,
you can also get a glass
of wine to wash it down.
- [Man] All right.
- The most exotic place I've
ever had fast food is Trinidad.
When I went there, I had KFC.
The spices are different
than what you get here.
And it's so much better.
- Hong Kong, the
burgers were spicy.
In the Netherlands,
they served this thing
called the McCrock, which
they don't serve anywhere
outside of the Netherlands,
which is like a patty
with potato and I
think maybe some meat
and deep fried, it's awesome.
- The most exotic place
I've eaten fast food,
I think I had like a piri piri
burger in Papua, New Guinea.
- McDonald's in Paris
and it was more or
less the same thing.
I kind of thought they
would have snails on a menu,
but it was just brie, still
too fancy for me though.
- [Narrator] Fast food isn't
only taking over the world.
It's changing the planet itself.
(cow moos)
- A lot of the criticism of
fast food in recent years
has become more focused
on environmental concerns.
Eating beef in particular
is one of the leading causes
of environmental damage.
- Americans really
love beef way more
than any other country.
If you encouraged every
person on the planet
to eat as much beef
as an American,
it would take five planet
earth just to sustain
the cow populations necessary
to feed that hunger.
- You can't grow beef
everywhere in the world
and think that the world
is going to survive.
You can't privatize
water to make soda
in parts of the world
that are experiencing
climate change and
water scarcity.
The problem with
this business model
is it is environmentally
unsustainable.
- [Narrator] So just how
many quarter pound hamburgers
of meat can you actually
get from one cow?
- How many Quarter Pounders
can you get from one cow?
- I'm gonna
guesstimate 800 pounds
and if I'm doing the math,
a quarter pounder, (laughs)
that's 3,200 quarter pounders.
- I think a cow is
what, 600 pounds.
So 600 times four, I'd
need a calculator. (laughs)
- 508.
- You know what?
Cows are pretty big so
I feel like the amount
of Quarter Pounders you
can get from them is like
quite substantial,
I want to say 50?
- Well, if I was the cut
out little Quarter Pounders
out of a cow which is
horrible, 50 at least.
Gotta be at least 50.
- [Narrator] 1 beef steer
actually produces enough meat
for 740 quarter
pound hamburgers.
- [Man] Okay.
- [Narrator] And to produce
one hamburger requires
53.12 square feet of farmland
to provide sufficient feed
as well as 460 gallons of water.
- So one of the really big
problems with our addiction
to hamburgers is that the
cows, when they're alive,
they spend their days
releasing methane gas
into the atmosphere and this
is the cause of climate change.
- Cows have multi chambered
stomachs to be able to move
grass and hay through these
various different microbiomes
to help digest them but
one of the byproducts
is the production of methane.
Methane is 20 times more
potent than carbon dioxide
as a greenhouse gas
so cows releasing that
is even worse than some of
the other forms of pollution
that we see on the planet today.
- [Narrator] If you add up
all the cows in the world,
there's about 1.5 billion
and on any given day,
they will release up to 150
billion gallons of methane.
- You'd think it was the
equipment or it's all the oil
and gas that's used from
this machines that run
but no, it's just cows,
farting and burping.
Pretty crazy, right?
Like cows are belching
and that's actually
damaging the earth?
Like it's funny and scary.
- Can cows even
survive on their own?
Like I've never
heard of a wild cow.
I feel like people like
just farm them for food,
it's kind of icky.
- Thankfully not everyone
eats like Americans do.
A lot of countries
are vegetarian
and so that's good to know.
- Well, I mean, I belch
and fart in the air a lot
and my wife says that's a huge
problem to the environment.
So yeah, I think
it would be good
if we all ate less red meat.
- [Narrator] And our
demand for fast food
isn't just impacting the planet.
The animals themselves
are changing.
- The chicken of today
has kind of turned
into a Frankenstein's monster.
We want an animal that has
lots of meat where we want
to eat it on the breaths
and on the thigh,
specifically with chicken,
because we've had to breed
a bigger and bigger chicken
to keep up with that
growing portion size.
- [Narrator] In
the last 50 years,
the chicken has grown
nearly five fold.
If this rate of expansion
were to continue
for another 250 years.
(T-Rex growls)
The average chicken would be
the same size as the T-Rex.
(T-Rex growls)
Fast-food is reshaping
the Heartland of America
in the way we grow food,
the way we eat and look,
and even the way we
conduct politics.
(military horns begin)
- Wipe everything
from my calendar.
I want a hamburger
on my desk by noon.
- Every single presidential
candidate in the last
30 Or 40 years can
pretty much be seen
at a fast food
restaurant at some point
during their campaigns
to get a good photo op.
It's a way to meet people,
but it's also a way to
seem like they're authentic
and in touch with the
heartbeat of America.
- [Narrator] January 2019,
the college football
national champion,
the Clemson Tigers are
at the White House.
President Donald Trump is
hosting them and on the menu
are all his favorite fast foods.
- No matter how you
feel about Donald Trump,
he successfully parlayed
his love of fast food,
which is genuine.
- We have Big Macs, we have
Quarter Pounders with cheese,
we have everything that
I like that you like.
- To give his
billionaire exterior,
this kind of every man quality.
- There's nothing you could have
that's better than that, right?
- It really is a
meaningful political weapon
when wielded properly.
- [Narrator] Imagine
a map of the USA.
As you move either east
or west towards the coast,
the average state consumption
of fruit or
vegetables increases.
- [Man] Let's make a salad.
- [Narrator] And as you move
back towards the Heartland,
the consumption of Baconators
per head of population
increases in inverse proportion.
- [Man] We love our bacon here.
- [Narrator] And if you
color-code each state
by the number of fast food
joints per 10,000 people,
with Alabama at the top
of the list with 6.3
and Vermont at the
bottom, with 1.9,
it corresponds almost
exactly to the states
won by Donald Trump in the 2016
U.S. Presidential Election.
- [Man] Fast food's tremendous,
absolutely tremendous.
- [Narrator] Of the 20 states
that eat the most fast food,
17 are red and
voted for Mr. Trump.
- [Man] It doesn't get
any bigger than fast food.
- There's a reason why when
every presidential hopeful
goes to Iowa, they have a
corn dog, they have meat.
God forbid, you go to
Iowa and be a vegetarian.
You know, you can't run a
country if you're a vegetarian.
Iowans aren't going
to vote for you.
But in America,
I hate to say it,
but if you are a meat eater,
and if you're a fast food eater,
you will get a lot more votes.
- [Narrator] For
the last century,
whether it's a part of
our politics, our palate
or our pocketbook, fast
food has deeply woven itself
into the fabric
of American life.
(bell rings)
But after transforming
our taste buds,
expanding our waistlines and
impacting our environment,
will fast food change
to meet the demands
of the next 100 years.
- If we look at the
history of fast food,
it's been really good at
changing itself to market
what people want at the time.
- [Announcer] The
world's most famous menu.
Tomorrow there are changes.
Salads, yogurts, grilled
chicken sandwiches
to address health concerns.
- So my expectation that
is as we look to the future
of fast food, that they're
going to continue to do that.
- Whether it's KFC offering
plant-based chicken,
just test markets and
seeing if people respond it,
which they did and Taco Bell
launching a vegetarian menu,
you've seen a lot of
experimentation for food
to be healthier and
more sustainable.
It follows trends very closely.
It's one of the reasons why
it's managed to stay on top.
- I think the future
of fast food is simple.
They will cater to the
countries they live in.
They'll provide vegan options
and be more health conscious
here because people
are becoming more aware
of what they eat
but at same time,
then they'll go into
a different country
and then start up shop there.
- And the biggest threat
is to the environments
and the food systems
in those countries.
They are displacing
traditional diets with junk,
but we can retrain our palates.
If we gradually reduce sugar
or gradually reduce salt,
our palates will become
more sensitized over time
and we can adapt to
loving healthy food again.
- In the future, you know
what, chewing is a lot of work.
So I feel in the
future, they're just
going to get rid of that.
- Test tube sliders. (laughs)
- Rollers are going to
deliver your fast food order.
You'd be looking up to the
sky like this, burger lands
right in your hands.
- We're going full
cyber punk with it.
Everything's going to be made
out of a krill and locusts.
- Or you could get your
nutrition through pills
or a pulse to your brain that
gives you like the flavor
of sensation in your mouth.
Basically, I'm talking
about drugs. (laughs)
(mellow techno music continues)