Exporting Burgers, Fries, And Diabesity The Spread Of...

Exporting Burgers, Fries, and Diabesity: The Spread of Fast Food to Asia Imagine a world where fast food isn’t considered a cheap, last-choice alternative when you need something quick and convenient. Instead, it’s a luxury item, a high-class experience with chic interior dà ©cor and excellent service in a clean, well-lit environment. All the top celebrities frequent these restaurants—Jennifer Lawrence endorses McDonald’s on TV commercials, while LeBron is featured on billboards holding a bucket of KFC chicken wings. In this world, only the middle and upper classes can even afford to eat at fast food restaurants, and when they do, everyone around them knows of their high economic status. This scenario may seem like a ridiculous impossibility†¦show more content†¦It would be impossible, for example, for an Indonesian factory worker to eat at KFC on a regular basis, given that the price of one meal is double his daily salary. When the elite in these countries eat in an air-conditioned Pizza Hut surrounded by a chic shopping area, the taste of the food is only part of the reason. The larger motivation for frequenting these establishments is more important: in Asia, eating at an American fast food restaurant is a clear display of wealth and status. Modern food tastes in Asia are shifting towards a more westernized diet, and the ultimate consequence is health. We live in a world that displays a startling phenomenon: according to World Health Organization, one billion of the world is malnourished, and another billion—many of whom live in developing countries—is overweight (Pingali 1). Over 300 million of the world s population is clinically obese, an d the economic consequences of related illnesses are staggering (Pingali 1). In Asia, the proliferation of American fast food, stemming from the popularity and perceived superiority of western culture, has led to severely negative health consequences, including the rise of obesity and type II diabetes in Asian countries. Because this increase in health problems is especially dangerous for many countries already-weak healthcare systems and thus a strain on their economies, stricter government regulation in Asia to transform