Haight Project

On our trip to the Haight, we visited two very different restaurants: Zazie and McDonald's. The way we decided to eat at these places seemed innocent enough. Like most things in ESF, the decision was made during a casual conversation thrown in between an intense literary analysis of our reading of the week. David was telling us that we had some extra money in our class fund due to a mistake with the Castro dinner, and suggested that we go somewhere nicer for dinner. Almost everyone was immediately on board, though we decided to drop by McDonald's for dessert to honor our original up plan. Someone said we should go to Zazie, and we felt that because of Zazie's dedication to seasonal, local, and human dishes, it would be an appropriate last field trip for the class.

Zazie is located in Cole Valley. Cole Valley is filled with cute (if not somewhat yuppy) shops and restaurants, overpriced health stores, and classic San Francisco architecture. The average person on the street is usually dressed in nice clothing, whether hip or classy, is carrying some sort of attractive bag to carry their belongings, and looks somewhat intellectual. These are the sort of people who shower everyday, are on successful career paths, and care about their health. Because of their decent salaries, they can buy health food from the overpriced health stores and have leisure time to exercise and read. These are the people who are eating at Zazie. These are the people who can afford to eat cows who were raised with an ocean view and seventeen dollar plates of pasta. Walk down a couple of blocks and you get to McDonald's.
The people hanging around Haight and Stanyan are colored with the grime of the street. They look unhealthy and most likely are if they are eating at McDonald's. McDonald's is so cheap that you can get a whole cheeseburger with change you find on the street. The cows that went into the burgers at McDonald's didn't have an ocean view, but that never comes to mind. Nothing at McDonald's really looks anything like an animal, as Michael Pollan mentioned in The Omnivore's Dilemma. However, the food's appearance isn't the only reason you never think about the cow's view. Consider these two lifestyles:

1. Your family doesn't have a lot of money. You spend your money where you can get the most for your dollar. You can't afford college and have to work long hours, after which you go relax with friends or go to sleep. You don't have much leisure time to spend participating in outdoor activities or reading about healthy lifestyles.

2. You were raised by a family who is well-off. You go out to dinner on occasion to try new things. You go to college where you are constantly questioned about your views and forced to examine them. You have some leisure time and spend some of it in the school gym.

In our country, the poor people are the overweight ones. They spend most of their time working, which in a natural world would keep them in shape because the "work" that exists in the natural world is that of survival: catching, hunting, growing, collecting your own food. We've created office jobs and grocery stores which take us completely out of that cycle and it's killing us. Unless we have the money to buy "whole" foods, we are going to buy what we can afford. Unless we have time and money to exercise, we are going to be sedentary because we do not need to move in order to survive. We have become the equivalent to the great dane living in a tiny studio in New York whose owner is always out of town. We need health articles to tell us the sun gives us vitamins. We are living an artificial and inefficient lifestyle.
In my opinion, it's strange and unnatural that someone with less money can afford to eat a fattening and inhumanely produced cheeseburger from McDonald's, but cannot afford to buy the ingredients for a nutritious home-cooked meal made from local ingredients. Local ingredients take less gas to get to us, and yet because of the way the food industry is structured in this country, it is more expensive. Real food costs more than unnaturally produced food. Maybe this seems natural. Real food is, of course, more desirable, and thus more expensive. However, my question is: Why does fake food exist in the first place and how can we get rid of it? How can we reclaim our mammal-ness?