In Defense of Fast Food

You can tell that you eat a lot of fast food when you know exactly what your total will be, with tax, before the scratchy drive-through speaker announces it. I'm what they call in the industry a "heavy user"—that's actually a real term for repeat customers—and it's not because I'm fat. To me, the words "Do you want a combo?" mean "Good morning." But please, don't judge me. I have three really good reasons for my devotion to the "food" at restaurants with signs 40 feet in the air: it's cheap, it's filling, and it tastes good.

But one bestseller after another warns us that if we keep eating all of this plentiful, delicious, cheap food, something really bad is going to happen. Recent documentaries like Food, Inc.make all those patriotic farmers who provide us with this bounty look like Bernie Madoff in overalls.

Fast food has become the whipping boy of politicians—and editorial writers, too—on a par with cigarettes and lawyers as a menace to society. It turns out that some of that state-imposed nannying might not be having its desired effect. A study of fast-food consumers in low-income neighborhoods in New York City showed that they actually ate slightly more calories after it became mandatory for restaurants to post nutritional information. Maybe the postings reminded the customers of a tasty item they'd forgotten about, or maybe they just didn't care. Maybe they were relieved to find that the food actually had fewer calories than they imagined, so they ordered even more.

Well, rest easy, fellow heavies. You won't find any of that scolding here. I come to praise Ronald, not to bury him. In fact, I think it would be great if some brilliant entrepreneur would open a single fast-food restaurant that brought in the best items from all of my national-chain favorites so I wouldn't have to drive around so much. I would even volunteer to design the menu and share it free with the world in exchange for a lifetime of supersize-me privileges.

My menu's guaranteed to make your mouth water and your blood slow to a thick, rich, McFlurry-like consistency. If I were on death row I'd ask for this as my last meal, and all of my fellow death-row buddies would be so jealous when the smell wafted down the cell block that they would order the same thing, too. It's that good.

Our feast begins with the soup du jour, an innocent amuse-bouche served steaming in a big yellow paper cup. Of course, I'm talking about Wendy's chili with cheese. We'll pair that with a Biggie Coke. No ice, please; it leaves less room for Coke. Yes, I know Wendy got all PC a few years ago and dropped the "Biggie" name, but that doesn't mean I have to. I like writing it and I like saying it: Biggie. Biggie. Biggie. No matter what they call it, they sure didn't shrink their cups when they dropped the name. In fact, the current large now weighs in at 40 ounces and is capable of giving you a rotator-cuff injury when you lift it to put the straw into your mouth. The cup holds nearly three and a half cans of soda … including the cans.

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