Seniors and fast food

As a Hong Kong Chinese, I did not associate seniors with fast food until about 10 years ago, when I moved into an apartment from which, if I needed to get to the train station fast, I had to take a short cut through a McDonald’s.

Every morning I made that trip, the scene never failed to amaze me—lots of seniors having breakfast at McDonald’s. Maybe it is a myth, after all, that Chinese people are particular about food. My—or our, if I can claim that I represent a certain segment of our society—belief used to be that Chinese seniors would not like fast food. They preferred congee to burgers, jasmine tea to coffee. But, obviously, I learnt something new when I moved into that apartment.

When I was taking a course for my doctoral program, my professor told me that she had been to Hong Kong and that both she and her husband were totally surprised to see that McDonald’s was such a favorite spot for children in an Asian city. She predicted that this generation of Hong Kong youngsters would have the same kind of cardiovascular problems as those in her country, the United States.

When I saw the large number of seniors having breakfast at McDonald’s, I remembered what she had said and thought, not only will we have a generation of young people with cardiovascular problems, we will also have a generation of seniors with those problems, as in Western countries.

I remarked about this to a friend, and she suggested it could be the free coffee refill that attracts seniors. This may be one of the reasons, but probably only one. To this day, although not so amazed as before, I am still puzzled. Maybe one day, I will do a survey on this, trying to find out seniors’ perceptions of fast food, and why they patronize these restaurants.

My speculation is that fast-food restaurants treat everybody the same. Our seniors enjoy the same kind of “freedom” as anyone else. They can sit for as long as they like, in spite of buying little, and not be driven away or given strange looks by waiters and waitresses. They don’t have to abide by the rules of a regular restaurant. This, then, is a good aspect of fast-food chain restaurants. They are a place for any age group; there is no age discrimination.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.