Now, I am a grumpy old man. Well, I’m not old, but I am a man, and I am grumpy. I once described myself as an “aspiring curmudgeon”, and have been “congratulated” by several on my success.
I don’t like ice in my water. I don’t see the point, except on exceptionally hot days when I walk through the door with sweat dripping from every pore, which does happen. I was once served ice water in the middle of winter in northern Michigan, after walking in from roughly 0 degree temperatures. Why? Habit.
But think this through. Drinking really cold beverages is vastly less painful through a straw. You can more easily sip, and perhaps it warms a bit on the way up. Further, sodas of all sorts taste better cold. Nobody would drink 16 ounces of warm or even room temperature Coke. It would be too syrupy, and would remind everyone that it consists mainly as a form of concentrated sugar.
Looking up the history of ice machines (quickly: I’m not going to spend all day on this), they seem to have become mass produceable around 1950, and we can assume their gradual expansion took a decade or two.
Now, it has long been my understanding that fast food exists in the main to sell sodas. Pepsi actually owned Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and Kentucky Fried Chicken outright for a good while, to guarantee that their products would be sold. It was spun off as Tricon, and is now Yum Brands.
Ice in water, we can assume, is the simple result of treating the rare person who just wants water the same way someone who wants a soda of some sort is treated. No matter what is going in the glass, treat it the same way.
So I wonder if the growth of fast food happened pari pasu with the growth of ice machines, their cost and availability.
From this perspective, we can view straws of any sort as the consequence of both fast food and carbonated sugar waters of various sorts. We can view them as the consequence of marketing necessity.
Imagine what would happen to fast food if they started serving Cokes in the sizes they served before mass refrigeration was possible. They were tiny.
So maybe we can blame some sizable portion of our obesity problem on plastic straws. I am being only two thirds facetious.
And I will wonder out loud with no possibility of speculating intelligently what the overall effect on our CULTURE of fast food has been. Are we more impatient? Has our taste in food declined, or rather, our ability to TASTE our food, rather than respond to some chemical concoction hatched in a lab to make us want more immediately?
When I say “Fast Food Culture” what does that mean to you? I get visions of plastic, and grease, and wrinkled paper, and people eating in cars, gulping their food.
America was not always an undignified place. We really weren’t.
But as a practical idea, what if more and more food places made both ice and straws explicitly optional?
What if it became trendy again to drink really small Cokes at room temperature, especially if they follow through on creating one with marijuana in it?
I am a free marketeer. I like private profit, so even though I think they have done some really shady things over the years, I would like to see a way out for Coke. Hell, maybe Coke, as a public relations initiative, could start to offer paper straws with every shipment of Coke?
As I have said, the American use of plastic straws is no threat to sea turtles. Most of the damage is being done by the Chinese and those around them.
But waste is still ugly and stupid. I don’t like it. There is something about enduring objects in our lives which stabilizes things. Otherwise, it is too easy to treat ideas and principles like the objects we use once then dispose of forever without a second thought.
I have a teapot and cups, and some chopsticks that I absolutely adore. I like the plates I eat on, and love my collection of coffee mugs. These enduring objects in my life make me happy. And who doesn’t remember similar things from their childhood? Nobody remembers plastic plates, forks and spoons, except in context. For me, church picnics come to mind. Perhaps there is a metaphor there somewhere.