Jonathan Meades :: Fast Food
If you want a more erudite look at the same topic as Fast Food Nation or Supersize me, look no further. And if you watch till the end you will get to see the legendary deep frying of a Mars Bar.
Another Jonathan Meades classic, whereupon he looks at fast food from its mid 19th Century origins when Sephardic Jews in the East End of London took the tradition of deep frying in olive oil to what became the first fried fast food: fish and chips.
The problem was that in the UK, only animal fats rather than high temperature olive oil were available, leading to the tradition of soggy, dangerous, Anglo Saxon food that now plagues the US. The combination of primogeniture (land ownership passed to the first born) and flattish landscape created conditions where farming was the dominion of the few and therefore there was no tradition of peasant food production or ultimately cooking and gastronomy through Protestant meanness. Again this is something which has come to a head in recent years in the US, where the farming population has reduced to an insignificant amount in the last few decades.
The food we eat today is the food of amusement parks, MSM (Mechanically Separated Meat) hot dogs and burgers cooked at high temperature to kill the bacteria from the excrement. Food is something we consume on our lap while watching celebrity pseudo chefs show how to do something most of us don’t intend to practice – cook.
The most telling point in this film is where he asks young children where meat comes from, and none of them know. This is documentary making at its best. A political subject is shown artistically and in historical context, with simultaneous passion, wit and logic rather than alienating rage.
Link