Bacon Cheeseburgers and End-user License Agreements

I went to Town Hall microbrewery/restaurant in Minneapolis and “decided” to eat a bacon cheeseburger with fries. The more I think about all the processes that must work together to bring that food on the table, the more I think about how my decision to eat that cheeseburger signifies my endorsement (be implicit or explicit) of those very processes. Choosing what and how to eat shapes the ethical, economic, and political implications of eating itself. The implications of eating a bacon cheeseburger, for example, touches upon all three realms of social discourse (the ethical, economic, and political), and understanding these implications more deeply helps to bring my endorsement of them to the front of my consciousness—whether I agree with that endorsement or not. It is here that the complex relationship between the three realms of discourse work together to highlight the ways in which the freedom to choose what to eat is complicated by the forces that work to bring us food as we know it.

The question is then, what does freedom to choose really mean? It is becoming clear that to choose what to eat is also to endorse the processes used to produce it. The problem here seems to be of a paradoxical nature: the very act of choosing is an expression of our agency, yet when we choose what to eat, we are forced to surrender our agency and accept the terms and conditions of how that food got on our plate. That is to say, while we may choose to eat KFC over Subway based on taste preferences, we are also committing ourselves to the endorsement of KFC’s food prossesses whether or not we agree with them. We may not be as free to choose as we would like to think. Of course this problem is not inescapable or infinitely far-reaching. There are those whom grow their own food and develop their own food production processes. They seem to hold on to their agency, but their actions cannot be immune to questions of ethical, economic, and political implication. While the tension between freedom of choice and its affect on individual agency may not always take this shape, it is a problem that deserves attention and exploration. My decision to eat a bacon cheeseburger with fries symbolized my endorsement of what many would call a violation of animal rights; furthermore, from an economic standpoint, my decision to buy a bacon cheese burger not only signified my participation in capitalist economy, it also helped to perpetuate certain economic and industrial processes—again regardless if I myself am a supporter of these processes. While I may not have a solution for this dilemma, I hope to provide some insight of how this dilemma operates. Understanding ethics, economics, and politics as inextricably linked to food may help us to think about how and why we eat a bit differently, and in the process, provide us with a new way of seeing (and eating).

Perhaps the most immediate and pressing issue regarding my decision to eat a bacon cheeseburger is the issue of its ethics. Animal rights activists vehemently and artfully attack those who eat meat. Pollan covers their argument extensively in his chapter, “The Ethics of Eating Animals”. The basic idea is that human and non-human (animal) interests, according to Peter Singer, demand equal consideration. The common denominator between humans and animals is their common interest in avoiding pain (Pollan, 308). Therefore, to eat a bacon cheeseburger is to refute or ignore this claim altogether. However, I thought I just wanted a bacon cheeseburger; animal rights was the last thing on my mind. My decision to eat the burger, ostensibly, was based on hunger; it was not an (intended) ethical statement. Unfortunately this is not the case. Consider for a moment the nature of End-user License Agreements. Agreements of this sort appear usually during the installation process of a particular piece of software. They take the form of those long, wordy, and confusing agreements in which we must click the box that states, “I have read and agree to the terms and conditions of the license agreement” in order to use the software. We almost never read them; we almost never understand their substance or what the implications of our agreement are. In many ways, this form of contractual agreement is analogous to our decision making process when it comes to eating animals. Each time we do, we are checking the box that says, “Yes I have read and understand the terms and conditions of animal rights”. Except in this case, we are allowed to utilize the software even if we don’t agree to the terms and conditions. The real problem is that this contract exists even when we are not properly equipped to read it. I do not wish to take this analogy too far, but the point is, this is something I did not give any real thought until this blog assignment. That does not mean that the contract did not exist; I was simply not aware of it. Food and ethics have been married together regardless if we accept this relationship as legitimate or not.

My decision to consume a bacon cheeseburger also bears strong economic and political implications. For one, my consumption requires monetary exchange, and these funds mark my active participation in a capitalist economy. Secondarily, I have no control over how these funds are to be used, but it is fair to infer that they work to perpetuate the processes utilized to bring that burger to the table. I may be free to choose to purchase and consume the burger, but that freedom comes with restrictions and constraints. The freedom to choose is great as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far; unless I raise my own cow and pig, produce my own bread, and grow my own lettuce, onion, and tomato, I have little freedom to choose what I eat. I am instead forced to choose one set of economic/political/agricultural/industrial processes over another, and I have little control or impact on the processes themselves (as with the End-user License Agreements). For example, I choose to eat French fries. I love French fries; they are crispy, salty, and fatty, and these are all good things. However, that decision also signified my endorsement of our food industry as hooked into a fossil fuel economy. We use fossil fuels to produce the corn that is used to make French fries. Here’s an alarming statistic: the food industry is responsible for 17 percent of carbon emissions, while the automobile industry is responsible for 18 percent. Is my decision to eat French fries also a decision to perpetuate global warming? In a way, yes. This is not to say that if we eat French fries we are attempting to destroy the Earth’s ecosystem, but it does speak to the ways in which economics and politics are connected to food—sometimes with severe implications—whether we like it or not.

We may choose to eat because we are hungry or because we are have a particular craving; that said, each time we purchase a meal off a menu we are endorsing and perpetuating the processes used to create that food. My decision to eat at Town Hall restaurant yielded an agency paradox, presented me with an ethical end-user license agreement, and helped to perpetuate the processes that contribute to global warming. I just wanted a burger, buts it’s far more complicated than that.