Why Fast Food Is Bad

I mentioned on NPR that I should write about my experience with avoiding fast food (I’m leaving out specific brand names) and my brief re-introduction to eating it. Keep in mind that I like to overdramatize when writing about particular events in my life.

If the story below doesn’t change you mind on fast food, how about this video I found about how bad fast food is.

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It was early one evening on a warm summer night a few years back. Mom and I had just finished with a bunch of shopping and we were both tired and ravenously hungry. I had need of new dress clothes for work so, as usual, I dragged her along for her opinion. Being as fashion challenged as I am, having her along is a necessity for me. Why exactly is it that black shoes don’t go with brown slacks anyway? No, no, I digress. I’ll save my fashion follies for another humiliating blog post. This one is for my fast food follies.

So there we were just leaving the mall and ready to gnaw our own limbs off for the sustenance when mom comes up with what sounded like a reasonable idea at the time.

“Hey! Why don’t we go and get a couple of rib sandwiches at the fast food place down the street! They are only out for a limited time and I’ve been craving one all week.” she says.

I blame the hunger and lack of fuel to my brain for what follows. My stomach was not-so-subtly letting me know that if it did not get food NOW, it was going to get its revenge by any means necessary. I had the distinct feeling it was plotting against me with my bowels at this point and I really didn’t want to give those two any more time to concoct something unpleasant for me. In retrospect, I should have let my stomach have its revenge then and there rather than take the abuse that was about to come. And yet, I agreed with mom and off to rib sandwich land we went.

You see, I had not eaten fast food in…well, years to be honest. Not since I was doing temp work demolishing kitchens and bathrooms. It wasn’t really a conscious effort on my part not to eat fast food after that. It was more a thing of convenience. I was working regularly and every time I passed by a fast food place it was usually when I was getting off work. They were always crowded and it would have been a nightmare trying to work my way back into traffic for the drive home. Flash forward a few years and there you have me with mom deciding to go ahead and give fast food another go.

We pulled into the sparsely populated parking lot none to soon. As I get out of the car, the aroma of freshly cooked fries reaches me. I breathe the heady scent in deeply, letting it pull me toward the entrance like a mythical siren seductively calling its next victim.

At this point my brain, which has been quietly sulking moodily and steadfastly avoiding interaction with the outside world, comes alive. Perhaps ‘comes alive’ is too mild of a term. Picture instead a pack of ADHD kindergarteners on a sugar high with no supervision. That is probably more appropriate. I’m pretty sure I can feel it rapidly bouncing around in my head like a superball shot from a canon. And I know for certain that my brain managed to send the message to my stomach because it has begun to caterwaul like a heard of desperate cats in heat.

Somehow we manage to get our food and back into the car despite my addled brain and rebelling stomach. As mom begins to drive back to her house I hardly wait to unwrap my sandwich before taking my first bite. My hand shakily rips the wrapper away from my food as my brain redoubles its efforts to bounce right out of my head and my stomach composes symphonies of gurgling noises that even Beethoven would be proud of.

Finally, I get it unwrapped and the scent of barbeque sauce nearly drives me mad as I shove too much of it into my mouth and take that first glorious bite….squish!  Squish? Meat isn’t supposed to squish?!? My brain stops dead in its tracks and I swear I can hear it whimpering. The symphony my stomach was playing comes to an abrupt halt. After a moment of silence I hear it whisper to me in the most deadly serious voice I had ever heard in my life.

“Don’t…You…Dare!” it says to me just as I swallow the mess that was sold to me as a ‘rib’ sandwich.

The wad of congealed fat surrounded by a thin layer of sauce and bread makes a hollow plunking noise as it drops into my stomach. My eyes widen and I sit up straight as I feel my stomach quiver in barely contained fury. Oh dear sweet Jesus, I say to myself as I realize what revenge my stomach is plotting against me. He’s trying to talk to my bowels again!

As my mother is chattering in the background about how wonderful her lump of sauce covered, congealed fat is, I realize I have only one option if I hope to make it home before my stomach’s plots come to fruition. I must drown out his ability to communicate with my bowels with the only thing available…the rest of the jellied goo that I have clutched in a death grip.

I take bite after bite of my sandwich, desperately trying to drown out my stomachs piteous cries to my bowels for help. In an attempt to wash some of the foul slippery mess from my tongue I begin to guzzle soda in between bites of my breaded, festering lump of so-called meat. While this helps save my taste buds from sure destruction, it also increases the pressure inside of me and allows my stomach to work in conjunction with my intestines. And I’ve just run out of slop to stuff down my throat.

The rest of the car ride home is an agonizing blur of frenzied panting, cold sweats and prayers that I make it there in time. As we pull into the driveway, I hardly wait for the car to stop as I bolt from my seat and dash into the house making a B-line for the bathroom. Things slow down. I can feel my heart make each individual thud as my legs churn in slow motion. It’s neck and neck. My stomach is cheering my lower intestines on with maniacal laughter and cries of, “Faster! Push! Faster! Push!”  The animals of the house scatter as I charge through the living room and into the hallway that ends in the bathroom. As I tear through the bathroom doorway and kick the door closed behind me, it’s still quite uncertain on whether I will make it despite being less than a foot from my goal. I rip frantically at my belt, pulling it and three belt loops off in the blink of an eye. I desperately claw at the front of my pants, dancing around with tears streaming from my eyes as my struggles finally come to a close! … Let’s just leave it at, ‘I made it!’  The rest of the story involves harsh language and scenes of violence that is not suitable for minors. Not to mention the death of a canary.

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Tagged as: Fast Food, Story