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Fast food restaurant

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A fast-food restaurant is restaurant characterized by quick food and minimal service. The food in these restaurants is commonly cooked in bulk in advance and kept hot, or reheated to order. Many fast-food restaurants are part of restaurant chains or franchise operations, which provide standardized foodstuffs to the individual restaurants.

Because of its great convenience, fast food is very popular in many modern societies, but is often criticized on grounds of alleged poor nutritional value of food (often contributing to obesity), expoitative advertising (especially directed at children), and environmental damage.

Although fast-food restaurants are often seen as a mark of modern technological culture, they are probably as old as cities themselves, with the style varying from culture to culture. Ancient Roman cities had bread-and-olive stands, East Asian cultures feature noodle shops, flat bread and falafel are characteristic of the Middle East.

Examples of modern fast-food restaurants are:

France

Hong Kong

Corporations


See also Fast food, List of restaurant chains, List of reference tables


other things to mention...

  • fast food is seen as destroying local styles of cuisine
  • mention Malbouffe, José Bové
  • recent court case in the US over obesity
  • this snip from Vegetarianism: It is more common to find instances of Scurvy, Vitamin C deficiency in people who subsist purely on a diet of fast food.