Unchained in America

In my last post, I listed the first six lessons I learned from living unchained. Here are the last four.

Lesson 7: Fast Food Franchises and Chain Restaurants Have Turned Mediocre Food into a National Norm

I think it was Stan Luxenberg in Roadside Empires: How the Chains Franchised America who said that fast food chains guarantee a consistent level of mediocrity.

I’ve been aware of how mediocre fast food and chain restaurants are for several years before we began our experiment in unchained living. So doing without them has been more than easy for me. I never ate much fast food anyway because I thought it tasted lousy. But I’d still eat it from time to time — until around 2004 or 2005. At that time, Lisa and I had our company that manufactured rubber art stamps and were driving to a convention in South Carolina (or some place like that). Normally, we’d stop at a roadside rest area and get some fast food for lunch. So we stopped and went to a Taco Bell. My taco tasted so bad that I threw it away after the first bite. Lisa’s food was bad, too, and she threw her meal away as well. We vowed then and there never to go to a fast food “restaurant” again.

From then on, whenever we travel and need to stop for lunch, we go off the road and find an independent restaurant or diner. We’ve discovered some great eateries and have had some wonderful food.

As an aside: Last year one of our friends told us that her friend works at a Taco Bell. The friend’s job each morning is to mix the meat slury that Taco Bell puts in its tacos. The friend got so disgusted at the sight of the slury that she refuses to eat at Taco Bell any more. (Yeah, yeah. I know. This is a third-hand story.)

Luxenberg also says that no chef will work for franchises because they stifle creativity. Good food isn’t what the chains and franchisors are after. They want food that can be cooked quickly and always taste the same anywhere in the country.

Unfortunately, many people have grown up on fast food and it’s become “comfort food” for them.

Lesson 8: Locally Grown or Raised Food Is Great and Buying It Helps Local Economies

I became aware of locally grown produce and locally raised meat, which taste better than industrially grown produce and industrially raised meat. Many people claim that industrial agriculture is the wave of the future. But it’s only been around since the 1970s — forty years. That’s not a long time. And the change came mainly because Nixon’s secretary of agriculture, Earl Butz, changed the way corn farmers were subsidized — which helped lead to the rise of industrial farming.

I learned about the difference between industrial food and organic food. I also learned the difference between industrial organic and “true” organic. And I learned that you have to be on your guard when you read pastorial stories about the organic food that’s raised and grown industrially. That “free range” chicken might just have access to an open door that it never goes out of because it’s been raised indoors for most of its short life. The more information can get, the more informed buying decisions you can make.

I learned that when you buy local food at Farmers’ Markets, you can keep more of your money in your community. I also learned, though, that “local” has become such a hot term that chains and global corporations such as Starbucks and Frito-Lay are laying claim to being local through expensive PR campaigns.

You also have to be on your guard to figure out what those PR campaigns mean when they claim to be local because “local” can have so many definitions. For me, “local” means being within 50 or 100 miles. “Local” also means that much of the money I spend stays in the community.

Lesson 9: We’re Citizens — Not Consumers

Until I began living unchained, I never questioned my role as consumer. But the more I learned, the more I questioned the “consumer” label. Finally, reading Stacy Mitchell’s Big-Box Swindle became my “a-ha!” moment.

I’ve come to realize that the bigwigs who run national and international chains and global corporations aren’t really interested in the communities their stores are in. All they’re interested is in the “bottom line.”

Owners of independent stores, on the other hand, are interested in their communities because they’re members of those communities. If a tax needs to be raised to support a local need, those independent store owners might vote for it even it it does mean increased taxes — because their community need it. The honchos who run the national and multi-national corporations, though, will oppose the measure simple because it will take away from their bottom line. After all, these guys need to keep their shareholders happy, not the members of the communities that their stores are in.

So-called “consumers” — people like me, who buy from stores — are citizens of towns and communities, too. If we want our towns and communities to survive, we have to support the businesses owned and operated by our fellow citizens. It’s a matter of self interest.

Lesson 10: I Liked Living Unchained

I liked living the unchained lifestyle.

I Liked Interactions with Shop Owners and Shop Workers

I enjoyed having personal interactions with shop owners and the people who work in their shops. Oftentimes in chain stores and chain restaurants, what interaction there is is impersonal. Lisa and I have established some nice friendships with local shop owners and staff both here and in other states.

I Liked Not Buying in to the “Consumer” Experience

Not being able to shop at chain stores meant that I would buy less “stuff.” Not being able to buy a lot of “stuff” made me become a more dispassionate observer of the shopping experience — and I became more aware of how shop-happy so many of us Americans are. We shop for many reasons. I think, though, that one of the main reasons is because we’re taught to shop at an early age, as part of our enculturation process. And our shopping enculturation is reinforced constantly every day by ads all around us — on billboards, in magazines, on television, at the movies, on the web sites we visit, on buses, at airports. Everywhere we’re bombarded by ads.

We also shop for many other reasons. For recreation. Because we’re depressed. Because we’re happy. Because we’re bored. Because we want the hottest new product. So we won’t disappoint the kids. I think, though, that many of us shop because we’re missing something inside ourselves that we hope to replace with physical objects. But once we get those “things” that we wanted so much, the emptiness returns and we go searching for other “things” to fill the void. I think that perhaps we need fill that inner void by being less materialistic and more spiritual.

For example, the best Christmas present Lisa gave me this year was a donation to our local animal shelter, Ark of Cleveland.

(Of course, even though we’ve gone there before just to look at the dogs and cats — but not to adopt. When we went there a week ago to give them the donation, we ended up adopting an adorable one-eyed kitten. We named her Mahitable, after my great great great grandmother, who was born in 1793 and founded, with the help of her husband, John Lutts, my branch of the Lutts family. I’ll put photos of Mattie on the Our Pets page shortly.)

I Liked Supporting Local Businesses and Helping My Community

I liked the fact that I was supporting local businesses. That feeling is tied in with my seeing myself as a member of my community instead of a consumer whose task it is to support the Gross National Product. (That’s a really heavy responsibility!) I liked supporting my community and keeping a lot of the money I spent inside the community.

I Liked the Independence

Shopping chain free made me more independent — and also more discriminating about how I spend my money. I’m less likely to be “sucked in” to buying something because of an ad. Shopping chain free has made me a more savvy shopper

Conclusion

So what my conclusion to all these lessons? Simply this: I liked living unchained and will turn the experiment into a lifestyle. This doesn’t mean I won’t shop at chains, though. I will if I can’t get something at an independently owned store of if I have to go really, really out of my way to get something. But for the most part, I’m going to stay unchained — and loving it.

See also:

• 10 Lessons I Learned from Living Unchained: Lessons 1-6

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 2:20 pm and is filed under Unchained Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.