by Ted Onulak

Created on: March 30, 2009   Last Updated: March 31, 2009

Even if you really love fast food, everyone agrees that it's not that good for you, either in terms of calories or nutrition. So here is the first cognitive dissonance we should explore. Why then do we eat it?

Before I get to my point let me make some full disclosures. I was born in 1955 to parents who came from Europe, where family meals and my Mom's pride in her cooking were sacred. We still had TV when I was young and Saturday morning cartoons, but only with commercials for the latest toys. But in those days, there were no food commercials yet.

I saw my first Mc Donalds Hamburger shop in 1965. A neighbor took me with her kids after a day in the park and her kids were literally bouncing up and down in their seats in anticipation.

We all got hamburgers, fries and drinks. The price of a plain hamburger was $0.19 if I recall. It was still a lot of money for me, as you could get a candy bar, a pack of baseball cards and a comic book for that much money.

When I bit into that burger I almost barfed! First, the meat was kind of chewy and secondly, it had ketchup and mustard mixed together, which I hated and they were covered with chopped raw onions, which I never cared for. My Mom would fry a little onion to cook the hamburgers, or add a little to the patty when she pressed the hamburgers from the fresh ground beef.

I felt bad, as I had been taught that you should eat all the food graciously at your company's house, but since we were in a car, I thought I might have a loophole. I told our neighbor that I really didn't like it and told her why.

She scraped off all the stuff and gave it back to me, but the bun was still saturated with mustard and ketchup. I took another bite or two, then wrapped it back up in the paper and stuck the half-eaten burger quietly in the trash. So, my first experience was not a pleasant one.

But funny things started to happen. There were McDonald's commercials on TV with a broadly grinning happy clown, living in a land of make-believe filled with bright colors and fun.

Beautiful playgrounds started to appear at McDonald's shops, complete with giant plastic Ronald McDonald's and Hamburglers and the rest. The boxes and wrappers were bright red and yellow and looked like they really came from a magical land. You could even get a meal with a small toy!

But, by now, I wasn't very impressed with hamburger clowns; on the other hand, I was mesmerized by the development of Annette Funicello from the Mickey Mouse Club transforming into a dark-eyed Italian

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>