Current mood:	contemplative
Current music:	Masti - Chain Khuli Ki Main Khuli

McNation
The girl used to get in the bus bringing with her a whiff of ultra-chic. Knee length black pencil-skirt, crisp white cotton top or shirt, tall and oblivious of the rest of the bus trying to stare her out of her swanky-world. As a ritual, me and my friend would be gape enviously at this embodiment of un-crinkled western perfection with an Indian face sitting regally amidst the sweating masses in crumpled salwar or pant suits and unwieldy bags. And for the umpteenth time, my friend would whisper into my ear, "you know that girl in the corner seat, she works at McDonalds." For a moment both our minds would flit back to McDonalds at Sector18 in Noida, curvy colorful plastic chairs and tables, birthday parties, suave waitors.....ha....and this girl was the hostess/manager there. The colorful and swanky world of McDonalds, I tried to be a part of it whenever I went for an overnite stay at my friend's place in Noida, which was just a short bus ride away from one of the many 'Vihars' in Delhi where I lived at the time.

The image of this chic chick comes back to me occasionally when I think about the transformation the McDonald brand has undergone in my mind over the last few years. The glamor of the girl herself has also eroded significantly after I myself started wearing skirts and shorts. Hihi. Four years ago when I had walked into my first McDonalds in India, I thought it had the airs of a hip-urbane joint - although it was just fastfood. Two years before that KFC at Brigades had produced a similar reaction in me, although not to the same degree. N, who at the time had completed his third year in US would try to educate me about his impression of McDonalds in United States. How it was just a domineering fast food chain which had claimed a corner of almost every other street under its golden arches and where you'd go to grab a quick bite only if all the other restaurants were closed or if you didn't have enough money.

None of this would affect my unflinching loyalty to the Big Mac, not until I saw the McDonalds here, in US. What was it that made me change my mind? Was it the underpaid-over worked staff which was mainly teenagers or poor Latinos, or was it 'un-swankiness' of the whole outfit, or was it the synthetic taste of its burgers(which I could discern after having the real ones), or was it the stories of inhuman treatment of its workers and the animals that were processed into food? I guess, it is all of these combined and boy, it did hit me real hard. But with my kind of craving for fast food I can easily dismiss all these and go on eating junk foods since I am notoriously underweight. The final nail on the coffin of my realization was hit by this book - Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and as if to drive the fact home yesterday I heard on the news that obesity overtakes smoking as the number one killer of Americans. He..he..he..all the pieces are falling into place!

This is an excerpt from the book, "For most of the twentieth century, the Soviet Union stood as the greatest obstacle to the worldwide spread of American values and the American way of life. The collapse of Soviet Communism has led to an unprecedented "Americanization" of the world, expressed in the growing popularity of movies, CDs, music videos, television shows, and clothing from the United States. Unlike those commodities, fast food is the one form of American culture that foreign consumers literally consume. By eating like Americans, people all over the world are beginning to look more like Americans, at least in one respect. The United States now has the highest obesity rate of any industrialized nation in the world. More than half of all American adults and about one-quarter of all American children are now obese or overweight. Those proportions have soared during the last few decades, along with the consumption of fast food."

If you live in United States, it'd be worthwhile to have a go at Fast Food Nation, it really is a synonym for this country. If you are an information junkie like me anywhere on the globe, this is one book you don't want to miss. For ex. I did not know that 'natural flavor', as listed in the Ingrdients section on the package of a food item or a fruit-drink is not necessarily better than 'artificial flavor'. Schlosser cites the example of Almond flavor, which when it is naturally synthesized contains very minute traces of Hydrogen Cyanide and when it is artificially produced contains none of the harmful chemicals!