Column | The vast divide between Republicans and Democrats over fast food
www.washingtonpost.com
This week, we scour campaign finance reports to reveal strikingly partisan preferences for various restaurants, with few more polarizing than McDonald’s.
  • quicklime@lemm.ee
    241·
    21 days ago

    I can’t afford fast food anymore. This article must be about the vanishing middle class and above.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      21 days ago

      I always thought fast food was incredibly expensive, but maybe that’s just me. When I was living hand to mouth during college and shortly after, I found that a big bag of rice and beans (even canned, although dried would have been even cheaper) went a long way in my food budget. Fast food was a luxury I almost never did.

      • Windex007@lemmy.world
        21·
        21 days ago

        I want to live in a world where people can eat beyond rice and dried beans within their budget.

        It’s 2024. Eating a thin mash of bulk grains like you’re a medieval peasant isn’t a plucky story of resilience. It’s the story of a failed economic policy.

        • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
          61·
          21 days ago

          Oh, of course. But it’s just that I’ve never found fast food to be particularly cheap, ever. And eating off the dollar menu rarely lived up to being all that cheap, either. It certainly seemed like a very bad meal (but lived up to its name: fast) - it usually did not seem very nutritious and certainly not the least bit healthy.

          But maybe that’s because I grew up with not a lot of money, I don’t know. Building up a basic set of spices and learning a few simple meals based around beans and rice definitely worked a lot better for me when it came to finances and to how satiated and how good I felt. The grease bombs of the typical fast food fare usually felt okay in the moment, if I could afford them, but terrible for energy levels, GI tract, etc…shrug. I know the Taco Bells and the McDs of the world are convenient, but it didn’t seem like very great food and it didn’t seem all that cheap, at least to me. I considered it splurging if I went to McDs and got a quarter pounder or a Big Mac back in those days…

      • stoly@lemmy.world
        10·
        21 days ago

        There was like a 20 year period where they had things like a dollar menu to get people in and it really could be cheap to eat fast food. Those days are gone.

      • Itsamelemmy@lemmy.zipEnglish
        3·
        21 days ago

        In the mid 90’s a whopper was a buck. That’s a bit over $2 today with inflation. I think whoppers are like $7-9 now. Sure compared to rice and beans it was probably expensive back then too, but not what I’d call incredibly.

      • oxjox@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        21 days ago

        Same. My mom only took us out to eat fast food either when she was super stretched for time or when she got a little extra money. This was in the ‘80s.

        • stoly@lemmy.world
          3·
          21 days ago

          That’s my experience. Then it got cheap for some years and then expensive again.

        • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          21 days ago

          Yep, same. Both my parents worked and worked weird hours, however, my mother had frugality imprinted on her (and knew that fast food was mostly just hot garbage when it comes to health and nutrition - it seems it has not gotten any better, by the way.) so fast food was a once-in-great-big-while thing. Soda was almost a never kind of thing.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    154·
    21 days ago

    I’d eat at McD’s and heck, even Chick-fil-A if they bothered to make something to eat for veg*ns.

    Chick-fil-a piloted that cauliflower and that was actually pretty good, but I don’t think they kept it.

    It might be me, but the “red” options seems to trend toward the Standard American Diet’s most harmful versions of things. That very much tracks with what I noticed while growing up in an extremely red area - there seems to be a lot of male toxicity (among females, too) leading people to think that eating “manly” foods (read: foods that cause diabetes, cancer, and heart disease - it has to involve lots of dead flesh and dairy, because that’s “healthy”, lol) was just what god’s people should be doing, because Jesus, the Bible, the flag, guns, and the Constitution, or something. And no, it doesn’t make any sense - it’s 100% emotionalism of the amgydalites. Allah forbid anyone should eat a vegetable that isn’t deep-fried or is a freedom fry or mashed potatoes…

    • MagicShel@lemmy.zipEnglish
      114·
      21 days ago

      I don’t need toxic masculinity (or Jesus, guns, or American flags - don’t have any of those in my life) to know steak and bacon and hamburgers are freaking delicious and I want to eat them a lot. I enjoy lots of other things, too. It’s a rare meal I don’t have some kind of meat, but I love crab and fish and chicken as much as red meat.

      I suspect the correlation is more that if you can’t have empathy for your fellow humans, you damn sure can’t for animals. And I’ve never known a vegan who wasn’t driven solely by cruelty to animals.

      I don’t have anything against vegans, and if the food was tastier than bacon and Ribeyes despite the lack of butter and cheese, I might choose it. But here we are. Maybe vat-grown meat will turn out. I’m not thrilled about how animals are treated, but I’m gonna omnivore.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        21 days ago

        I don’t need toxic masculinity (or Jesus, guns, or American flags - don’t have any of those in my life) to know steak and bacon and hamburgers are freaking delicious and I want to eat them a lot. I enjoy lots of other things, too. It’s a rare meal I don’t have some kind of meat, but I love crab and fish and chicken as much as red meat.

        I was talking more about the people that consider their food part of their very identity. The types that toss around silly things like “soy boy” and think that consuming massive quantities of meat and dairy is part of being a “real” man [1] and so on. I’ve seen people do this even when they tell me their doctor tells them they have got to stop eating red meat (at least) altogether or drastically cut it down. They think eating fresh fruits and vegetables is going to emasculate them. They’d rather continue on this performative path of SAD eating that is literally killing them rather than giving the appearance of being liberal or - gasp - caring about animal welfare.

        If you are eating these kinds of things because you find them tasty - hey, have at it. I’m talking about people that feel that they must consume meat/dairy in order to sustain some notion of themselves because of the culture they have chosen to steep themselves in. LOL, then there are the types that want to argue with me and tell me that if I don’t eat meat, I’m going to die…I have no idea where to even start w/ these people.

        [1] I’ve seen women just as susceptible to this, by the way. There is a lot of toxic masculinity that runs very deep when it comes to nutrition and health…

        • MagicShel@lemmy.zipEnglish
          3·
          21 days ago

          That’s fair. Guess I was half defensive but also tying the identity party to their overall lack of empathy which is broadcasted all over the rest of their identity as well. Fuck you for caring sort of thing.

          I probably could’ve focused more on the later and less on the former.

      • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml
        61·
        21 days ago

        You’d be suprised at what you can find out there that are better than you’d think

        Like for example, I’ve had many oat milk skeptics turn into oat milk enthusiasts

        Or if you like cooking, there’s so many great things out there. Ethiopian cuisine for instance has a bunch of traditionally vegan dishes

        Just a handful of examples but there’s so much more out there

        • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          21 days ago

          This. Since I’ve dropped the omnivore thing, I found my food is far, far tastier now, and has much more variation in flavor, as a general rule. Depends on who is doing the cooking, I guess.

          There are some omnivores that think eating something without meat at the core of it has to taste terrible.

      • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
        1·
        21 days ago

        And I’ve never known a vegan who wasn’t driven solely by cruelty to animals.

        There are a lot of reasons that people go vegan. My ex went vegan for environmental reasons. Some people do it primarily for their own health. Some just plain aren’t fans of meat and animal products, through either taste or texture or both.

        But you’re probably right about the correlation with a lack of empathy. When it’s considered “masculine” to not care about hurting others, a lot of folks who only know about the “animal cruelty” aspect probably won’t consider any deeper reasons. They and their ilk stick to surface-level appearances, making it not only important that they keep eating meat, but that they make a big deal about it whenever around someone who doesn’t eat meat.

        • aramis87@fedia.io
          1·
          21 days ago

          The Internet Archive is partially down (the way back machine is working most of the time, but media collections are offline). However, the post refers to Archive Today, a different site that is still up, and commenters inside the thread list other options like 12ft.io and browser extensions.

  • doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    2·
    21 days ago

    So the Republicans get a lot of fast food from a lot of places, while the Democrats seem to avoid major chains altogether, and when they do get fast food they go for restaurants that (in my opinion) are the most extremely overpriced and worst value (chipotle, panera).

    The Republicans also seem to have a particular fixation in chick fil a, which is not surprising given that they campaign more in the south, CFA is typically a bit cheaper than other fast food, and it’s not maligned by Republicans like it still is by many progressives.

    • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
      4·
      21 days ago

      I prefer restaurants and stores without religious flavoring.

      Also yeah, I guess I do tend to prefer the overpriced options if I have to eat out: they tend to have the choices that most resemble nutrition. I guess if the purpose is calories per dollar, maybe their value is lower.