eat". Sebelum menuliskan cerita ini, saya sering mendengar slogan ini
di berbagai media massa kemudian saya sempat mencari-cari apakan benar
slogan ini benar-benar terjadi pada kenyataan. Setelah beberapa waktu,
saya menemukan kebenaran dari slogan ini ketika saya membaca sebuah
buku berjudul Fast Food Nation yand ditulis oleh Eric Schlosser.
Singkat cerita, buku ini menceritakan detail fenomena munculnya
makanan golongan cepat saji di dalam kehidupan modern di Amerika. Pada
awalnya makanan cepat saji muncul di Negara Amerika, kemudian makanan
cepat saji sangat cepat menyebar dari Amerika ke seluruh penjuru
dunia. Argumen tersebut diceritakan pada bab 10 buku ini yang
menceritakan sebuah kota bernama Plauen yang terletak di Negara
Jerman. Setelah Perang Dingin berakhir, salah satu produk restoran
cepat saji ternama menjadi pihak yang membangun bangunan baru pertama
di kota Plauen. Bangunan baru pertama di kota Plauen bukanlah
infrastruktur penting seperti pasar ataupun rumah sakit, melainkan
sebuah restoran cepat saji.
Setelah saya membaca buku tersebut lebih lanjut, saya menyadari
pentingnya makna slogan "you are what you eat", terutama setelah
membaca kutipan cerita di bawah ini:
"ON JULY 11, 1997, Lee Harding ordered soft chicken tacos at a Mexican
restaurant in Pueblo, Colorado. Harding was twenty-two years old, a
manager at Safeway. His wife Stacey was a manager at Wendy's. They
were out to dinner on a Friday night. When the chicken tacos arrived,
Harding thought there was something wrong with them. The meat seemed
to have gone bad. The tacos tasted slimy and gross. An hour or so
after leaving the restaurant, Harding began to experience severe
abdominal cramps. It felt like something was eating away at his
stomach. He
was fit and healthy, stood six-foot-one, weighed two hundred pounds.
He'd never felt pain this intense. The cramps got worse, and Harding
lay in bed through the night, tightly curled into a ball. He developed
bad diarrhea, then bloody diarrhea. He felt like he was dying, but was
afraid to go to the hospital. If I'm going to die, he thought, I want
to die at home.
The severe pain and diarrhea lasted through the weekend. On Monday
evening Harding decided to seek medical attention; the cramps were
getting better, but he was still passing a good deal of blood. He
waited three hours in the emergency room at St. Mary-Corwin Hospital
in Pueblo, gave a stool sample, and then finally saw a doctor. It's
probably just a "summer flu," the doctor said. Harding was sent home
with a prescription for an antibiotic. Tuesday afternoon, he heard a
knock at his front door. When Harding opened it, nobody was there. But
he found a note on the door from the Pueblo City–County Health
Department. It said that his stool sample had tested positive for
Escherichia coli 0157:H7, a virulent and potentially lethal foodborne
pathogen."
Cerita tersebut menceritakan salah seorang pelanggan restoran cepat
saji mengeluhkan nyeri perut dan diare berdarah. Setelah diselidiki
lebih lanjut, pelanggan tersebut mengetahui bahwa penyebab sakit
perutnya dikarenakan taco yang dia makan di restoran cepat saji.
Cerita tersebut menunjukkan kualitas makanan yang dimakan dapat
menentukan kondisi kesehatan seseorang. Cerita ini membuktikan slogan
"you are what you eat" dalam kehidupan sehari-hari.
Daftar Pustaka
Schosser, Eric. 2002. Fast Food Nation: What the all American meal is
doing to the world. London: Penguin Books.
Artikel ini ditulis oleh Alvin Kurniawan 41150004
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