The American fast-food chains that emerged in a big way in the early 1950s operated on the principle of bringing cheap meat to everybody. In societies which had never had enough meat the possibility of having hot beef and chicken, daily and at a low price, was a historic novelty. So, with every hamburger the ordinary man enjoyed not just the food, but a taste of the privilege that in the past had been confined to the upper class. New farming techniques made the price of meat much cheaper than in the past. And with cheapness came speed. A Burger King founder noted: «There are only two things our customers have, time and money, and they don’t like to spend either.» In the early 1950s, McDonald’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken began to take their modern form.

But the customers were not only eating and drinking health and privilege. They were, and are, eating and drinking «America». Outside America, what was being consumed was a symbol of the power and wealth of the USA. In eastern Europe, for example, the McDonald’s hamburger now performs a different function from the one it performs in America. In Russia it is not the food the poor can afford. On the contrary, it is the food of rich people. According to a report in the Washington Post, McDonald’s has few restaurants outside Moscow because there are still too few capitalists to eat the product.

In a way the fast-food chains represent a kind of order. They utilise he attractions of replication and common ritual, the comfort of places where staff and customers know their roles, where there is no uncertainty, few choices, everything is familiar and already known. The same is true of products such as Coca-Cola. When they tried to change the usual formula the company soon discovered that Coca-Cola drinkers did not want to change their habits. People needed reassurance that some things would always stay the same and the company quickly produced Classic Coke again. Perhaps, soft drinks and meat chains offer a notion of community that must have some connection with the sacramental food traditions of the past.

PART ONE: READING COMPREHENSION

1. Answer the following questions without copying from the text.
a) Why did fast-food chains become popular in the beginning?

b) What is the author of the text trying to suggest with the sentence: «They were, and are,
eating and drinking ‘America’»?

c) What is it that customers find reassuring in fast-food restaurants according to the
author?

  PART TWO: WRITING
Choose ONE. Write about either 1 or 2.

Option A: Write a letter addressed to any of the American fast-food chains arguing that
in Catalonia they should offer natural products typical of the Mediterranean diet instead of
exporting their cultural and eating habits. Tell them why you do not like their food. Do not
use your real name.

Option B: A group of young people are trying to decide where to go for dinner on a Friday
evening. Write their conversation including various types of people and their different
attitudes to food (a vegetarian, a meat-lover, an obsessively healthy eater, one with little
money...).

3. Vocabulary

Explain next words in English, write the phonetics and also an example: health, wealth, to perform, staff, reassurance.