George Ritzer's Sociological Odyssey, he scoops out the disturbing details on a sociological phenomenon called Mcdonaldization. Essentially, the name of this phenomenon means to imply that the United States is based solely on efficiency, speed, and rationality. The essay dishes out the driving forces of this idea of rationality in the United States: Efficiency, Predicatability, Calculability or Quantity over Quality, Substitution of Non Human Technology, and Control.
The article donates a section to each of these five categories and provides examples of each in our society. Efficiency is getting things done as fast as possible, which leads to the sacrifice of other aspects of production, such as quality. Predictablity is the idea of keeping production free of any dynamic variables so as to maintain a natural routine and consistency within the production, which in turn supports efficiency and quantity. Calculability or Quantity over Quality is exactly what is says it is. It is better for businesses to make more, poor quality products than for businesses to make fewer, good quality products, because people are willing to pay cheap prices for poor quality food. Substitution of Non Human Technology is in order to support the predictability of a business. By using robots rather than humans, each job done can be executed faster and thus more efficiently, so it creates a financial treat for the business. Finally, Control is the idea of knowing what is going to happen and how. The most important thing that businesses want to control is the people who are buying their product; They run their business to make sure people do what they want and that it is efficient and money saving for them.
Personally I find this sociological evolution to be a epidemic and extremely harmful to society. It seems to me that this is probably the cause of the huge issue of obesity in the United States. Not only that but with robots in the work force, jobs are lost and unemployment rates will rise. Finally, Being surrounded by this sociological way of life almost doesn't even allow consumers to make their own choice about whether or not they want to support quantity over quality, or quality of quantity. Eventually, nothing will have good quality anymore and the production system will yield nothing but garbage for less than a penny. Is that the sort of society we want to live in.
Does the "McDonaldization" of the United States have a spot on the list for why obesity is so prevelant in our country?
In terms of sociological evolution there must be a step that comes after this "McDonaldization"...where do scientists, sociologist, and people in general see where this is headed?
In my opinion your question on whether the culprate of the overweight population is the rationalization of consumption of bad foods cuts directly at the central issue. People tend to lie to themselves to keep the alusion of quick food is healthy food. When a person is unable to see that what they are doing is detremental they are unable to change.
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