Fast, cheap, good: pick two
When it comes to our food system, the current U.S. tariff situation facing the country has forced consumers to ask themselves questions about how they will buy groceries depending on where they are produced or grown.
It’s a moment to reflect more broadly on beliefs and assumptions about what and how we eat and on the actions we take in order to do that.
First off, of course, people will make decisions that best suit their family’s needs. That only makes sense.
However, re-evaluating your approach to food and eating can be healthy at the same time it can be enlightening: what do I support when I purchase food? Where is the food coming from? What quality it is? Who are the farmers, producers and workers involved? Is this a local business?
Visiting a restaurant has the same implications. People often ask on various social media platforms: “Where can I get a cheap meal? An inexpensive burger”?
That seems simple enough, but when you start thinking about it the issue is a fairly complex one, to which I will add a saying: “You can have it fast, you can have it good, you can have it cheap: pick two.”
The little ditty, perhaps most commonly used in business management, is variously referred to as the “iron triangle” or the “triple-constraint triangle.”
For everyone from project managers to industrial designers to software developers, the triangle (also taking the form of a nifty Venn diagram) is a signifier of the struggle between those often-opposing forces of quality, speed and cost which are always aligned with the food we eat.
Let’s consider just a little bit of the history of the ubiquitous “fast food.”
Cheap and fast food was available in North America and especially the United States – pennies for a hamburger – as early as the 1920s, but its full-blown impact, interestingly, coincides with the ascent of wider North American car culture.
The post-World War II era’s booming economy saw automobiles became more affordable and more widely produced.
As journalist and food activist Michael Pollan has stated, at about the same time, supper became a moveable feast as it shifted from the dining room table at home and onto the road.
Pollan notes in his various books and explains quite well that as the network of roads and highways evolved and intensified, restaurants popped up at basket-weaves and highway interchanges.
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[Photo/Pearson Street Smashburgers]
