Stopping at McDonald's

Stopping at McDonald’s is my favorite part of a road trip. Yet if you said to me in the city, “Let’s go to McDonald’s,” I’d think that is the grossest proposition. McDonald’s “restaurants” in cities typically are dirty and unhappy. But on an outstretched lonely plane of highway, they are beacons of light and hope. They are rest havens of cleanliness, tranquility and homogeneity.

In Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollack describes it best when he says that fast food was not junk food when he was growing up. The same is true with me. It was actually considered a loving act, a wonderful treat when my parents gave me two bucks to go down to Burger King with my friends. We’d all pile in to the immovable booth with our burgers and fries, and in that sanctuary of hard plastic, we’d giggle our way through childhood. Therefore, fast food always holds a place in my heart; it reminds me of my youth.

Little by little, the foods of my yesteryear are being chipped away from my daily existence: white bread is bad for me, sugar is bad for me, drinking water from the tap without some sort of filtration is bad for me. Now even whole wheat and rye (gluten) are being phased out of my diet by nutrition experts. But I stand my ground on white rice. I won’t convert to brown rice, no matter how good it is for me. White rice reminds me of my mother’s cooking and the Cuban restaurants I grew up with, and I won’t be stripped of the last vestiges of my youth.

I know McDonald’s is bad for me. (Like I said, I read Pollack’s book.) And I know that despite their fancy and horribly misguided “All Natural” packaging, I’m eating highly, highly processed beef from poorly, poorly treated cows.

But still, the saltiness of the crisp fries, the softness of the bun, the cold sugar rush from the soda––I find all of it so comforting; and when I’m spiritually lost and physically burned out on the road, the golden arches signify home.