The plethora of fast-food restaurants such as McDonald’s typify
the recent change in eating habits. That they are antiseptic,
depersonalized, a gastronomic atrocity, as critics have
complained, is basically true. Some critics have declared that
the fast-food restaurants have caused changes in eating habits,
but it seems more likely that they simply reflect the
fundamental changes that have taken place in society as a whole.
Traditional social rituals have declined, and the new rituals
that are replacing them—rituals based on automobiles,
television, technology, and efficiency—cut across previous
religious affiliations, ethnic loyalties, and class allegiances.
A meal at McDonald’s can be looked upon as having some of the
character of a social or religious ritual. Rituals occur in
designated places, marked by distinctive emblems such as the
cross above a church, and at prescribed times, such as the
sabbath. For a patron of McDonald’s, the eating rituals occur
under the Sign of the Double Golden Arch and at the