Fluorescent yellow light spills through night fog in hazy clouds. A thick red roof adorns four brick walls as you draw closer. Images of the vicious slaughter and ruined lives hover around such a gaudy, unsightly building. Shouts and screams carry across the lot. Your car gets closer and closer until you can almost touch the rough walls out the window, but instead you are met by a box. Without warning, it emits a noise as you register it to be a human voice. 

“Hi, welcome to McDonald’s, how can I help you?” 

This is the future of food. This is fast food. 

Until this past summer, I had always considered fast food establishments to be just another grab-and-go kind of meal – when road trips passed rest stops, when tutoring and band were 30 minutes apart, when I forgot to make lunch that day. After viewing the Netflix documentary “Food Inc.,” that view has massively changed.

Not only did director Robert Kenner capture footage of mass killing machines for pigs, chickens, and cows alike, he also managed to capture the astounding social atmosphere that clings to the shiny windows and plastic chairs. Most appallingly, in the latter half of the documentary, a section titled “The Dollar Menu,” the interview with a low-income family captured fast food’s most upsetting aspect: money. 

In the 10 years since “Food Inc.” first came out, America’s cost-conscious, deal-seeking, soul-sucking capitalist influence has inflated itself to become 10 times as cutthroat (no pun intended), rapidly increasing this family’s problem.

The Gonzalez family, with their daily working lives, is forced to go to a market where a head of broccoli is “too expensive” and the youngest daughter is not able to buy a pear. Meanwhile, the signs advertising four sodas for (get this!) five dollars are the ones that they are unwillingly drawn to. To make matters worse, the father was diagnosed with diabetes a few years prior, a condition where medication costs up to $200 every month; in this toxic world of glorified salt, fat, and sugar, the great irony is that he has no choice but to buy cheap, unhealthy food in order to pay for his much-needed insulin. 

We cannot continue to live in a world where a cheeseburger costs less than a head of broccoli. 

It is no wonder that the corporate wasteland is littered with Whopper wrappers. It is no wonder that America is becoming increasingly overweight. It is no wonder that speed is ranked over sodium.  

Who cares if you’re unhealthy … if it’s fast?  

You should. America’s obesity rate is off the charts, and more than a third of Americans born after 2000 will develop early-onset diabetes. Much like former first lady Michelle Obama realized, it is not only our adults who are the ones with increasing health problems caused by the poor decisions of our nation. Should primary-colored corporations focused on sales, sales, sales run the wellness of a country of growing children so starved for Happy Meals and Junior Whoppers? And if their parents’ incomes are lower than average, can we allow this to be the only option? 

In the modern day, as economic classes are packaging themselves into increasingly separate spheres, the options for improvement are low as it is. Employment bias, economic stagnation, and stunted social mobility are all factors in the way America treats its poor. Allowing the few food options to be ones that make their lifestyles even more difficult is only adding fuel to the fire that grills these greasy patties.  

We are fattening our impoverished citizens the same way we fatten cows for the burgers they are forced to consume. 

Instead of allowing our “cheat days” to become “cheat years,” why can’t we consciously decide to end America’s obsession with hurting its health? Why do we need to be complacent with what corporations slap in our hands for every meal of the day? Why can’t we possess the self-control to admit that the extra pounds in the mirror were conscious, daily decisions? Why can’t we shake ourselves free when we notice the consequences on our bathroom scales? 

Instead of monopolizing puddles of grease as outlets for the average American stomach, why can’t the government instead allow more funding for wellness centers that advertise nutritional awareness? Why can’t they distinguish welfare checks from fast food receipts? Why can’t America bring their impoverished community to the discussion table instead of the dinner table? Why can’t America swallow their pride to save its citizens? 

Instead of purchasing a quarter-pounder with cheese, instead of getting a large fry, instead of getting that large “diet” soda, why can’t we steer ourselves away from drive-thrus and toward a healthier future? 

Why? Because America is the country that willingly chooses efficiency over exercise. Because the wealthy allow the poor to drown in grease. Because status is now a reflection of what you eat and not what you earn.

Because broccoli has become a luxury, and burgers have become a last resort.