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Hello, this is Six Minute English
from BBC Learning English.
I'm Phil, and I'm Beth.
Love it or hate it, there's no
doubt fast food is popular.
Are you a fast food fan, Beth?
Um. Not really, no.
I think sometimes it can be
quite convenient, obviously,
because it's quick, but not really.
Well, whatever you think about them,
fast food brands like KFC, Domino's
and of course the big one,
McDonald's, are incredibly successful.
In this programme, we'll be discussing
the global spread of fast food
from its beginnings in 1950s America.
As usual, we'll be learning
some useful new words and phrases.
But first,
I have a question for you, Beth.
Roughly how many fast
food restaurants are there in the UK?
Is it a) 4,000, b) 42,000,
or c) four million?
I'm going to go for b) 42,000.
OK, well,
later on, we'll find out the answer.
In the United States, cheap and easy
food like hamburgers, french fries,
and milkshakes have been popular
since the 1950s.
Listen as Adam Chandler,
author of the book Drive Thru Dreams,
which traces the history
of American fast food,
tells BBC World Service programme,
The Food Chain how it all got started.
At the heart
of the story of fast food is a very
'anyone can do this' sense.
A lot of the company founders
didn't have a college degree,
who didn't have a high school degree
in a lot of instances,
didn't come from money, were
oftentimes just people who were ready
to plug themselves into a system
that would work for them.
And it did.
It made opportunity very, very easy
in a time when that was a new part
of the of the American experience.
So it was the American dream
in a very small way,
that became the American dream
in a very big way.
The rise of fast food reflected
the rise of American economic power
after the Second World War.
When Adam says that this lies
at the heart of the story,
he means it's the most important part
of the story.
In the 1950s, when the famous brands
we know today were just beginning,
anyone with a
can-do attitude could sell fast food.
A can-do attitude
describes someone who is confident
and determined to fix problems
and achieve results.
Which is exactly what happened
at successful restaurants
like Kentucky Fried Chicken
and McDonald's.
For many, these fast food brands
symbolised the American dream -
the idea that anyone in
the United States can achieve success
through hard work and determination.
The success of KFC, McDonald's and
the rest wasn't limited to America.
Nowadays, you can visit two McDonald's
on opposite sides of the planet
and eat exactly the same meal.
But not every country opened its arms
in welcome.
The tiny island of Iceland, for one.
Andie Sophia Fontaine,
who used to work in McDonald's,
now edits The Iceland Review.
Here, she tells BBC World Service
programme The Food Chain
how McDonald's got a frosty reception
when it started selling burgers
in Iceland's capital, Reykjavik.
There's been a long standing
burger culture in Iceland.
They have their own take
on the hamburger,
wherein they'll use lettuce
and raw cucumbers
and a type of fry sauce - that's called
a shalpurborgari, or a shop burger,
and that's been around for ages.
Yeah, so McDonald's, they struggled
to try to maintain a market.
The final nail in the coffin
was the global financial crisis
in 2008/2009.
Iceland already had a long-standing
tradition of eating burgers -
a tradition that had existed
for a long time.
For example,
the shalpurborgari,
or shop burger, was a take on - or
variation of - the American hamburger.
McDonald's weren't as successful
in Iceland as they'd been elsewhere.
And the global financial crash of 2008
was the final nail in the coffin,
an event which caused the failure
of something
that had already started to go wrong.
To this day, there are no McDonald's
in Iceland, unlike Britain.
Which reminds me
of your question, Phil.
Yes. I asked you how many fast food
restaurants there are in Britain.
I asked you if there were 4,000, 42,000
or four million.
And of course, the answer is 42,000
so you were right,
well done!
OK, let's recap the vocabulary
we've learned,
starting with
'at the heart of', meaning
the most important part,
or the cause of something.
If you say
that someone has a can-do attitude,
you mean they are confident
to take action, fix problems,
and deal with new challenges.
The American dream is the belief
that everyone in the USA has
the opportunity to be successful
and happy if they work hard.
The adjective 'long-standing' means
having existed for a long time.
'A take on' something means a variation
or new way of presenting it.
And finally, the idiom 'the final
nail in the coffin' refers to an event
that causes the final end of something
that had already started to fail.
Once again, our six minutes are up,
but why not head over
to the BBC Learning English website,
where you'll find a worksheet and
quiz especially for this programme.
See you there soon.
Goodbye.
Vocabulary
Word 1 of 15convenient
word
0:23
"easy to use or do, requiring little effort or time."
More Listening Practice
About this lesson
Discover how fast food became a global phenomenon and what it means for our health and culture in this 6 Minute English episode.