We Have No Donuts

The decline & fall of American fast food — killing the planet and everyone’s wallets

Amy Sterling Casil

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A two-level counter and display with sprinkled donuts, bright pink cups, and other gift items from Dunkin along with a cash register
Dunkin counter in Germany by creativemariolorek, licensed from Adobe Stock

We shouldn’t eat fast food. Everyone knows that factory-made, theoretically uniform, ultra-processed foods are bad for them. A growing number know that fast food is also bad for the environment. Many people think that fast food and factory food business models are bad for workers. With ever-escalating prices and sinking quality, it’s hard to say what fast food is good for these days.

Oh! That’s right: shareholder profits.

The Del Taco Debacle

One of our favorite restaurants, Crab & Fin in St. Armands Circle in Sarasota, isn’t fast food. This fine dining establishment has friendly, welcoming bartenders, including one who spent quite a bit of time in Southern California. Whenever we’d go in, he’d mention that construction was proceeding at the new Del Taco in Bradenton. We told him we’d visit whenever it was open, but it seemed like it took forever —

Finally, last August when Bruce was in the hospital waiting for his cervical spine surgery, I visited one of the two Bradenton Del Tacos.

I used to always find Del Taco to be acceptable fast food in a pinch. First, they had several tacos that weren’t totally processed (Tacos Del Carbon…

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Amy Sterling Casil

Over 500 million views and 5 million published words, top writer in health and social media. Author of 50 books, former exec, Nebula nominee.