Globalization of American Food: Fast Food

Fast food is not new. Around the world people have historically eaten “fast foods” that are inexpensive, often purchased on the street, can be eaten by hand, and can be eaten on the go. For example, edomae sushi, the kind of sushi most common today, began as a street food sold from carts in Tokyo, then called Edo. Numerous societies have featured similar kinds of “fast foods.” Many of those locally originated foods have spread throughout the world leading to a cross-fertilization that has heightened eating experiences all over the world and certainly in the United States. But the fast food central to the globalization of American food is food is an industrial model, such as McDonald’s. This new model of the globalization of food has implications that differ significantly from early movements of “fast food” around the world.