The burger used to be seen as one of life’s little pleasures: a pâté of meat between bread. It is fast becoming looked down upon as a dangerous sandwich and is described as junk food.

The young have been brought up to believe that eating hamburgers is cool, but its popularity is declining. Meat used to be one of the most expensive, precious and rare things, but now, a burger meal is one of the cheapest ways of eating. And as we hand over the money for a burger, we forget what it is really that we are eating: a living animal was involved.
 

The British must take the blame for the invention of the sandwich, but the hamburger is all American.

The burger started its life as early as the 1890s when Chicago became the center of the meat industry. The cattle industry was huge and soon became the dominant meat industry in America. As the industry grew, there were lots of small scraps left over and entrepreneurs wondered what to do with all those scraps of meat.

Grinding it all up and making it into a pâté seemed a great solution. In order to make the meat soft and edible, they then added lots of fat. Adding seasoning and putting it in bread made it saleable.

By the 1920s, the American street vendors developed the hot grill so that they could grill this cheap meat, and the vendors soon began to see opportunities. The hamburger industry grew up around the factories. Many of the factories worked 24-hour days and the vendors could offer a cheap hot meal to the workers coming off their shifts.

Hamburgers became a very popular food, and soon, hamburger chains and restaurants sprang up, which appealed to the young as outlets for new food that was easy to eat and affordable. Hamburger factories sprang up to make the hamburgers on assembly lines and make the taste consistent.

The idea of fast food had begun and was seen as big business. Hamburger chains soon spread across America and all over the globe.

We now have fast, tasty, affordable food, and the hamburger has played a huge role in changing our relationship with food in general and with meat

in particular.

When I was a child, my mother sometimes bought a chicken for a Sunday roast and we would all sit around the table to enjoy it. Leftovers would be made into sandwiches and the bones would then be made into chicken and vegetable soup. People used to eat around the table, and now, they eat on the run. Many people eat a huge volume of meat or chicken with one hand in the car or in the street.

As food and meat has become cheaper, it has less value to us. It has also changed the way we eat and many traditional foods are disappearing as a result. I have been known to have the occasional hamburger with my sons. Who hasn’t? I do not see fast food chains as the enemy, but it is important to be able to see beyond the advertising.
 

This is a great way to serve vegetables
 

 

 
In the New Year, I have decided to introduce healthy practices in the workplace for my staff. Can you give me some ideas and information to help me get this started?

—  Baseema
 
 
This is such a good idea and I am sure your employees will really appreciate it. You could make rota whereby staff take it in turns to bring in a different fruit as a mid-morning snack. There are lots of ideas. If you go to the Arden Healthcare website, you will find a section called Health Solutions for the workplace. There, you will find everything you need, and you can also follow me on Twitter for a daily health tip:

“@AlvaCarpenter”

— Alva