Convenience Vs. Consciousness: The Reality Behind McDonald’s Drive-Through And Your Food Choices

everything you need to know about drive-throughs, in 1 quick read.

💡 Today in Good To Know, I’ll share how fast food convenience shapes our habits, health, and family dynamics. From McDonald's drive-through history to the hidden truths about corn-based ingredients, this article explores the true cost of convenience. Learn how these choices impact our lives and why we must rethink what we eat. If this sounds interesting, then please continue reading! 

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When I travelled from Seattle to San Diego with a group of friends in 2019, I put on 7kg in 5 weeks. Looking back at the photos, I realise how fat my face was. I blame the fast food, which saturated my environment and stomach.

Fast food is designed to be quick, easy, and perfect for consuming on the go.

You’re not meant to spend 90 minutes enjoying your food at a McDonald’s.

You order.

You inhale the food.

You leave.

All in under 15 minutes.

But you crave the food again because the experience didn’t last long enough. So, you accidentally stumble into the McDonald’s again. At the end of the week, you wonder how you ended up going to McDonald’s 4 times in 7 days.

Fast food is convenient because it eliminates any need for cleaning, making it perfect for consumption in the car.

The Birth of Convenience: How Drive-Throughs Changed How We Eat

The first drive-through service was in the 1940s, with In-N-Out Burger first using a two-way intercom system to order fast food. Any innovation is exciting because it is novel. This was creative because it allowed customers to place an order directly from their cars, without moving a muscle.

In the 1970s, drive-in restaurant sales began to decline.

So, McDonald’s opened their first drive-through in 1975 in Sierra Vista, Arizona. The original reason was to serve military members who were not permitted to leave their cars while wearing fatigues.

Convenience sells.

Convenience is what every consumer wants, and the food industry has spent decades learning how to make our lives easier. In return, they fatten their wallets.

The fast food experience is one of the most effective forms of convenience.

Customers can order, pay, receive, and eat their meals from their cars.

Today, I’m going to share 3 ways in which food companies have steered consumers to live more convenient lives, using the drive-through as the case study. We’ll be looking at this through the following ways:

1. The Convenience of the Family

2. The Convenience of the Car

3. The Convenience of Food Ingredients

Let’s dive straight into it.

Fast Food and the Fragmented Family Meal: How Convenience Redefined Togetherness

Did you know that 1 in 3 American children eat fast food daily?  

Drive-throughs have revolutionised dining cultures.

Traditionally, families would gather around a table and consume the same meal as one. When I am at home with my family, this is how we eat. Many families today eat meals separately; whether cooked at different times because of unaligned schedules, eating in the car on the go, or eating on the sofa in front of the TV.

Eating is no longer a mindful practice.

It’s just something we do because we’d die if we didn’t eat.

The drive-through model emphasises speed, convenience, and choice.

Drive-throughs are convenient for families with different food preferences. Every family member can order something different. Each item can be purchased as one standardised item to cater to each family member’s taste, smell and visual cues. So, eating is no longer about enjoying the same meal together. It’s about eating what you want, and if it so happens that someone else is eating the same meal as you, then you can enjoy it together.

Food corporations have rightly put the consumer at the centre of the dining experience, giving each person the power to decide what they want to eat.

There’s always one person who wants a salad.

Don’t worry, fast food restaurants also conveniently cater to that one person who’s on a diet but doesn’t want to upset their children and not take them to McDonald’s. Cleverly, offering salads removes mum’s excuse not to take their children to McDonald’s because she wants to watch her weight.

Now, a child can just say ‘But you can just take the salad!‘. Mum has no comeback.

In 2000, McDonald’s introduced the McSalad Shakers, which were served in plastic cups for convenient mixing and consumption. Although it was discontinued in 2003 (no surprise, because no one goes to McDonald’s and orders the salads — which are also more expensive), this example serves to highlight an important point.

Denying the Denier: Fast food restaurants like McDonald’s took the power out of the health-conscious consumer by offering salads so that every other family member who wanted to go to McDonald’s could.

The food industry has successfully dismantled families into separate entities.

Each person can be marketed to as an individual.

Fast Food on Wheels: How Cars Became Dining Rooms

Did you know that 19% of American meals are eaten in the car? 

This is crazy! I can count on one hand how many times I’ve eaten from a car.

The drive-through enables us to consume quickly and cheaply without leaving our cars. This is convenient for the fast-paced, busy lifestyles we live today.

Straight from the office chair, to the car seat, and back to the office chair.

Our work has become more important than our health. However, there’s no point in being professionally successful if you’re not going to enjoy the fruits of your labour and die from a heart attack because you have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes from all the fatty food you consume.

A popular trend I’ve noticed is people going to drive-throughs, ordering a meal, and reviewing meals straight from the driver's seat.

I don’t even want to know how much these guys are making from their videos. What a way to make a living, and to be honest, I’d do the same if I could. I just value my health too much to live this lifestyle.

The chicken McNugget liberated the chicken from the fork and the plate.

Our cars have been engineered to enable easy eating of fast food.

• 4 cup holders are installed in almost all vehicles, giving each family member somewhere to place their half a gallon of Coca-Cola.

• Fast food can be consumed with one hand directly from the box. Perfect for the driver who can steer and eat simultaneously when you need to get somewhere quickly.

• If it’s warm and you don’t want to fry in the heat of your car, the roof of the car can be lowered to allow for eating in the fresh air (I know not all cars are convertible, you can just push a button to lower the windows).

These are just some examples to show how fast food can be consumed from the comfort of your vehicle. Except for the salads which are sold, every single meal from a fast food drive-through can be eaten with one hand.

From Farm to Fast Food: How Corn Dominates What We Eat (and Even What We Drive)

What in the eyes of the omnivore looks like a meal of impressive variety turns out to be the meal of a far more specialised kind of eater. But then, this is what the industrial eater has become: corn’s koala. — Michael Pollen

Over the summer, I read the book ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma‘ by Michael Pollen.

The big takeaway is that most of the food we eat has corn in it.

🔎 Just have a look in your cupboard and see how many of these ingredients you find on your packaged products. 

Individual Ingredients 
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Dextrose
- Maltodextrin
- Corn Starch
- Corn Flour
- Corn Oil
- Citric Acid
- Xanthan Gum
- White Vinegar

Packaged Goods
- Breakfast Cereals
- Baked Goods
- Packaged Breads
- Processed Meats
- Chips
- Crackers
- Gum 
- Candy
- Ice Cream 

Michael Pollen teamed up with researchers at the University of Berkeley to figure out how much of the carbon in a McDonald’s meal came from a corn plant.

These were the results of the experiment.

• Soda — 100% corn.

• Milk Shake — 78% corn.

• Salad Dressing — 65% corn.

• Chicken Nuggets — 56% corn.

• Cheese Burger — 52% corn.

• French Fries — 23% corn.

So, I’ve given enough examples of how much of our food is derived from corn.

And it should be no surprise that the #1 crop in terms of production hectares in the US is….

CORN

In 2023 alone, 92 million acres of corn were planted in the US. That’s about the size of Germany, or roughly 1.5 times the size of the UK. Corn is a primary energy source for McDonald’s chickens as it’s high in carbohydrates (to fatten the chicken up) — and because corn is readily available.

Now, for agribusinesses who process corn into 45 different McDonald’s items, producing and distributing corn is both profitable and convenient. On the other hand, consumers who sacrifice their health for convenience do not benefit from this exchange. Consumers need to become more aware of what they’re eating.

Did you know that a chicken McNugget contains over 40 individual ingredients?

Just look at this shopping list of ingredients in a little nugget!

If we follow logic, the more raw materials which go into producing something, the higher the selling price should be. However, in the food industry, it doesn’t work like this. Real ingredients are replaced with synthetic materials which are fairly easy to produce en masse.

Why do you think food products like dates or walnuts are more expensive when sold individually, as compared to energy bars which contain these ingredients?

McDonald’s food is so cheap because they’re not selling real food.

Instead, they’re selling food made with ingredients like sodium aluminium phosphate, thiamine mononitrate and niacin. I’m sure you’ve also never heard of these ingredients before, and they definitely shouldn’t be in our food.

So, the next time you order fast food just think about what you’re eating.

Oh, and since 40% of the American corn crop goes to ethanol production (which is a component of gasoline), your cars are also eating corn.

But your car’s health doesn’t matter as much as your own, you can buy a new car.

You can’t buy a new you.

Why It’s Time To Rethink Fast Food

The story of fast food is one of convenience — transforming how we eat, interact, and see food. Drive-throughs have made eating faster, more portable, and easier to access. But there’s a cost.

Convenience disconnects us from mindful eating, fills our meals with synthetic ingredients we’d only find in a laboratory, and permanently impacts our health. A chicken McNugget is less a food and more an industrial product optimised for efficiency, not nourishment. While the food industry thrives on the production of cheap and addictive foods, the cost is passed on to the unknowing consumer in the form of hidden health risks and eventual death.

Looking back, the weight I gained wasn’t only physical — it was a reminder of how easy it is to fall into the trap of cheap, tasty, and convenient food. It’s time to rethink how we eat, valuing real, nourishing food over fleeting ease.

Stefano

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