Fast Food is a Fix for Your Nostalgia, Not Hunger

Friday night in the Warhurst household meant one thing: greasy fish and chips wrapped in butcher’s paper. Photograph: Simon Belcher /AlamyTakeaway outlets that try to tempt us with healthy food are missing the point. For those of us old enough to know better, fast food is like a guaranteed warm, fatty hug from a long-lost friend. When I was a kid, Friday night meant fish and chips for dinner. The adults took the night off cooking and we would pile into the car, drive to the local shop and wait patiently with everyone else in town who had the same idea. We’d line up on plastic chairs against the greasy wall listening out for our name to be called until the butcher’s paper-wrapped parcel, already dotted with spots of oil, was finally passed over. We held the salt-dusted loot in our hands like long-lost treasure. To my immature tastebuds, a deep-fried piece of potato dipped in tomato sauce was the pinnacle of culinary excellence. It doesn’t take much to work out that nourishment is not the purpose of takeaway meals and fast food. When you’re a kid, it’s a magical treat. When you’re a grown-up, it works on another level. We go back again and again for another greasy burger or indeterminate hunk of fish, knowing full well how bad it is for us. But takeaway food is like a guaranteed warm, fatty hug from a long-lost friend. In every single bite. This is why I’m not surprised that a multinational burger joint manned by 16-year-olds who don’t know their way around a dishwasher, let alone a cooker, is struggling to sell their healthy options. I’m all for folk eating better, especially when obesity is growing as fast as the people experiencing it. But these takeaway places should stop trying to pretend they don’t do what they do do. No one goes to a takeaway joint for the healthy options. Most of us go to get – and eat, and be – what we know. Now there is talk of adding a range of ultra-trendy kale chips and kale shakes to the menu as well as encouraging customers to design their own bespoke burger. Such innovations are completely missing the point. I’m all for diversifying and educating people about the food they consume, but people seem to have forgotten the reason we go to a place like Hungry Jack’s We return time and time again to the same place as adults, even though the grub is more disappointing as the years pass. The burger looks the same, only smaller (and never as good as the picture). It tastes the same. It smells the same. By eating this food, we baby ourselves into feeling a bit better; at least until the regret kicks in and the empty calories wear off. It’s time takeaway establishments accepted their role as purveyors of nostalgia fodder, not food. Trying to tart up a menu with kale or quinoa or artisanal juices or any number of slow-releasing energy options at a place whose whole purpose is to provide a quick fix, really, doesn’t fool anyone. Fast-food joints take note – you are not our parents. We can prepare and eat healthy food on our own. Fast-food joints are our parents on a night off. That’s why we visit.