The current fast food that we have is inexpensive when you buy it, but the long-term costs of eating it and the long-term costs to society, are much too high. This cheap food, when you add up all the total costs, is much too expensive.

Students can do experiments and investigate for themselves what's going on in restaurants, in our food system, and begin a process of learning.

Fast food is inexpensive, convenient, and it tastes good. I'm all in favor of that. My problem is how heavily processed it is - how full of salt, fat, and sugar it is.

When you go into a fast food restaurant, you may just think about how good your meal tastes while you're eating it. But you're not thinking about all the consequences that come from that one purchase - the consequences for your body, the consequences for supporting this company and how it's treating it workers, all the way back to the farm where the potatoes were grown, or the ranch where the cattle were raised.

Today the U.S. government can demand the nation-wide recall of defective softball bats, sneakers, stuffed animals, and foam-rubber toy cows. But it cannot order a meatpacking company to remove contaminated, potentially lethal ground beef from fast food kitchens and supermarket shelves.

Kids have no idea when they're drinking soda what they're really drinking, and a lot of them are stunned when they learn that drinking a Big Gulp is like taking a big jar of sugar and just pouring it down. There are 50 teaspoons of sugar in a 64-ounce Big Gulp.

We can have Americans eating affordably and eating in a way that's sustainable.