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In recent years, the fast-food industry has started to heed these new demands. Billions of dollars have been invested in more healthful fast-food options, and the financial incentives justify these expenditures. About half of all the money spent on food in the United States is for meals eaten outside the home. And last year McDonald's earned $5.5 billion in profits on $88 billion in sales. If a competitor offered a more healthful option that was able to capture just a single percent of that market share, it would make $55 million. Chipotle, the best newcomer of the last generation, has beaten that 1 percent handily. Last year, sales approached $3 billion. In the fourth quarter, they grew by 17 percent over the same period in the previous year.

Numbers are tricky to pin down for more healthful options because the fast food industry doesn't yet have a category for "healthful." The industry refers to McDonald's and Burger King as "quick-serve restaurants"; Chipotle is "fast casual"; and restaurants where you order at the counter and the food is brought to you are sometimes called "premium fast casual." Restaurants from these various sectors often deny these distinctions, but QSR, an industry trade magazine - "Limited-Service, Unlimited Possibilities" - spends a good deal of space dissecting them.

However, after decades of eating the stuff, I have my own. First, there are those places that serve junk, no matter what kind of veneer they present. Subway, Taco Bell (I may be partial to them, but really. . .), McDonald's and their ilk make up the Junk Food sector. One step up are places with better ambience and perhaps better ingredients - Shake Shack, Five Guys, Starbucks, Pret a Manger - that also peddle unhealthful food but succeed in making diners feel better about eating it, either because it tastes better, is surrounded by some healthful options, the setting is groovier or they use some organic or sustainable ingredients. This is the Nouveau Junk sector.

Chipotle combines the best aspects of Nouveau Junk to create a new category that we might call Improved Fast Food. At Chipotle, the food is fresher and tastes much better than traditional fast food. The sourcing, production and cooking is generally of a higher level; and the overall experience is more pleasant. The guacamole really is made on premises, and the chicken (however tasteless) is cooked before your eyes. It's fairly easy to eat vegan there, but those burritos can pack on the calories. As a competitor told me, "Several brands had a head start on [the Chipotle founder Steve] Ells, but he kicked their [expletive] with culture and quality. It's not shabby for assembly-line steam-table Mexican food. It might be worth $10 billion right now." (It is.)

Chipotle no longer stands alone in the Improved Fast Food world: Chop't, Maoz, Freshii, Zoës Kitchen and several others all have their strong points. And - like Chipotle - they all have their limitations, starting with calories and fat. By offering fried chicken and fried onions in addition to organic tofu, Chop't, a salad chain in New York and Washington, tempts customers to turn what might have been a healthful meal into a calorie bomb (to say nothing of the tasteless dressing), and often raises the price to $12 or more. The Netherlands-based Maoz isn't bad, but it's not as good as the mom-and-pop falafel trucks and shops that are all over Manhattan. There are barely any choices, nothing is cooked to order, the pita is a sponge and there is a messy serve-yourself setup that makes a $10 meal seem like a bit of a rip-off.

Despite its flaws, Improved Fast Food is the transitional step to a new category of fast-food restaurant whose practices should be even closer to sustainable and whose meals should be reasonably healthful and good-tasting and inexpensive. (Maybe not McDonald's-inexpensive, but under $10.) This new category is, or will be, Good Fast Food, and there are already a few emerging contenders.

Veggie Grill is a six-year-old Los Angeles -based chain with 18 locations. Technically, it falls into the "premium fast casual" category. The restaurants are pleasantly designed and nicely lighted and offer limited service. The food is strictly vegan, though you might not know it at first.

Kevin Boylan and T. K. Pillan, the chain's founders, are vegans themselves. They frequently refer to their food as "familiar" and "American," but that's debatable. The "chickin" in the "Santa Fe Crispy Chickin" sandwich is Gardein, a soy-based product that has become the default for fast-food operators looking for meat substitutes. Although there are better products in the pipeline, Gardein, especially when fried, tastes more or less like a McNugget (which isn't entirely "real" chicken itself). The "cheese" is Daiya, which is tapioca-based and similar in taste to a pasteurized processed American cheese. The "steak," "carne asada," "crab cake" (my favorite) and "burger" are also soy, in combination with wheat and pea protein. In terms of animal welfare, environmental damage and resource usage, these products are huge steps in the right direction. They save animals, water, energy and land.

Boylan wanted to make clear to me that his chain isn't about haute cuisine. "We're not doing sautéed tempeh with a peach reduction da-da-da," he said. "That may be a great menu item, but most people don't know what it is. When we say 'cheeseburger' - or 'fried chickin' with mashed potatoes with gravy and steamed kale - everyone knows what we're talking about." He's probably right, and the vegetables are pretty good, too. The mashed potatoes are cut with 40 percent cauliflower; the gravy is made from porcini mushrooms and you can get your entree on a bed of kale instead of a bun.

When I first entered a Veggie Grill, I expected a room full of skinny vegans talking about their vegan-ness. Instead, at locations in Hollywood, El Segundo and Westwood, the lines could have been anywhere, even an airport Taco Bell. The diners appeared mixed by class and weight, and sure looked like omnivores, which they mostly are. The company's research shows that about 70 percent of its customers eat meat or fish, a fact that seems both reflected in its menu and its instant success. Veggie Grill won best American restaurant in the 2012 Los Angeles Times readers' poll, and sales are up 16 percent in existing stores compared with last year. The plan is to double those 18 locations every 18 months for the foreseeable future - "fast enough to stay ahead of competitors, but not so fast as to lose our cultural DNA," Boylan said. In 2011, the founders brought in a new C.E.O., Greg Dollarhyde, who helped Baja Fresh become a national chain before its sale to Wendy's for nearly $300 million.

Veggie Grill is being underwritten partly by Brentwood Associates, a small private-equity firm that's invested in various consumer businesses, including Zoës Kitchen, a chain that offers kebabs, braised beans and roasted vegetables. "For a firm like us to get involved with a concept like Veggie Grill, we have to believe it's a profitable business model, and we do," Brentwood's managing director, Rahul Aggarwal, told me. "Ten years ago I would've said no vegan restaurant would be successful, but people are looking for different ways to eat and this is a great concept."

I admire Veggie Grill, but while making "chickin" from soy is no crime, it's still far from real food. I have a long-running argument with committed vegan friends, who say that Americans aren't ready for rice and beans, or chickpea-and-spinach stew, and that places like Veggie Grill offer a transition to animal-and-environment-friendlier food. On one level, I agree. Why feed the grain to tortured animals to produce lousy meat when you can process the grain and produce it into "meat"? On another level, the goal should be fast food that's real food, too.

Much of what I ate at Veggie Grill was fried and dense, and even when I didn't overeat, I felt as heavy afterward as I do after eating at a Junk Food chain. And while that Santa Fe Crispy Chickin sandwich with lettuce, tomato, red onion, avocado and vegan mayo comes in at 550 calories, 200 fewer than Burger King's Tendercrisp chicken sandwich, the "chickin" sandwich costs $9. The Tendercrisp costs $5, and that's in Midtown Manhattan.

Future growth should allow Veggie Grill to lower prices, but it may never be possible to spend less than 10 dollars on a meal there. Part of that cost is service: at Veggie Grill, you order, get a number to put on your table and wait for a server. It's a luxury compared with most chains, and a pleasant one, but the combination of the food's being not quite real and the price's being still too high means Veggie Grill hasn't made the leap to Good Fast Food.

During my time in Los Angeles, I also ate at Native Foods Café, a vegan chain similar to Veggie Grill, where you can get a pretty good "meatball" sub (made of seitan, a form of wheat gluten), and at Tender Greens, which, though it is cafeteria-style (think Chipotle with a large Euro-Californian menu), flirts with the $20 mark for a meal. It can't really be considered fast food, but it's quite terrific and I'd love to see it put Applebee's and Olive Garden out of business.

In Culver City, I visited Lyfe Kitchen (that's "Love Your Food Everyday"; I know, but please keep reading). Lyfe has the pedigree, menu, financing, plan and ambition to take on the major chains. The company is trying to build 250 locations in the next five years, and QSR has already wondered whether it will become the "Whole Foods of fast food."

At Lyfe, the cookies are dairy-free; the beef comes from grass-fed, humanely raised cows; nothing weighs in at more than 600 calories; and there's no butter, cream, white sugar, white flour, high-fructose corn syrup or trans fats. The concept was the brainchild of the former Gardein executive and investment banker Stephen Sidwell, who quickly enlisted Mike Roberts, the former global president of McDonald's, and Mike Donahue, McDonald's U.S.A.'s chief of corporate communications. These three teamed up with Art Smith, Oprah 's former chef, and Tal Ronnen, who I believe to be among the most ambitious and talented vegan chefs in the country.

According to Roberts, Lyfe currently has more than 250 angel investors who "represent a group of people that are saying, 'We've been waiting for something like this.' " The Culver City operation opened earlier this year, and two more California locations are scheduled to open before the year is out. New York locations are being actively scouted, and a Chicago franchise is in the works.

When I visited the Culver City operation, shortly before its official opening, I sampled across the menu and came away impressed. There are four small, creative flatbread pizzas under $10; one is vegan, two are vegetarian and one was done with chicken. I tasted terrific salads, like a beet-and-farro one ($9) that could easily pass for a starter at a good restaurant, and breakfast selections, like steel-cut oatmeal with yogurt and real maple syrup ($5) and a tofu wrap ($6.50), were actually delicious.

Lyfe, not unlike life, isn't cheap. The owners claim that an average check is "around $15" but one entree (roast salmon, bok choy, shiitake mushrooms, miso, etc.) costs exactly $15. An "ancient grain" bowl with Gardein "beef tips" costs $12, which seems too much. Still, the salmon is good and the bowl is delicious, as is a squash risotto made with farro that costs $9 - or the price of a "chickin" sandwich at Veggie Grill or a couple of Tendercrisp sandwiches at Burger King.

How in the world, I asked Roberts and Donahue, can they expect to run 250 franchises serving that salmon dish or the risotto or their signature roasted brussels sprouts, which they hope to make into the French fries of the 21st century? Donahue acknowledged that it was going to be a challenge, but nothing that technology couldn't solve. Lyfe will rely on digital order-taking, G.P.S. customer location - a coaster will tell your server where you're sitting - online ordering and mobile apps. Programmable, state-of-the-art combination ovens store recipes, cook with moist or dry heat and really do take the guesswork out of cooking. An order-tracking system tells cooks when to start preparing various parts of dishes and requires their input only at the end of each order. Almost all activity is tracked in real time, which helps the managers run things smoothly.

Lyfe isn't vegan, so much as protein-agnostic. You can get a Gardein burger or a grass-fed beef burger, "unfried" chicken or Gardein "chickin." You can also get wine (biodynamic), beer (organic) or a better-than-it-sounds banana-kale smoothie. However, I fear that Lyfe's ambition, and its diverse menu, will drive up equipment and labor costs, and that those costs are going to keep the chain from appealing to less-affluent Americans. You can get a lot done in a franchise system, but its main virtues are locating the most popular dishes, focusing on their preparation and streamlining the process. My hope is that Lyfe will evolve, as all businesses do, by a process of trial and error, and be successful enough that they have a real impact on the way we think of fast food.

Veggie Grill, Lyfe Kitchen, Tender Greens and others have solved the challenge of bringing formerly upscale, plant-based foods to more of a mass audience. But the industry seems to be focused on a niche group that you might call the health-aware sector of the population. (If you're reading this article, you're probably in it.) Whole Foods has proved that you can build a publicly traded business, with $16 billion in market capitalization, by appealing to this niche. But fast food is, at its core, a class issue. Many people rely on that Tendercrisp because they need to, and our country's fast-food problem won't be solved - no matter how much innovation in vegan options or high-tech ovens - until the prices come down and this niche sector is no longer niche.

It was this idea that led me, a few years ago, to try to start a fast-food chain of my own, modeled after Chipotle. I wanted to focus on Mediterranean food, largely on plant-based options like falafel, hummus, chopped salad, grilled vegetables and maybe a tagine or ratatouille. I wanted to prioritize sustainability, minimize meat and eliminate soda, and I'd treat and pay workers fairly. But after chatting with a few fast-food veterans, I soon recognized just how quixotic my ideas seemed. Anyone with industry experience would want to add more meat, sell Coke and take advantage of both workers and customers to maximize profits. I lost my stomach for the project before I even really began, but recent trends suggest that there may have been hope had I stuck to my guns. Soda consumption is down; meat consumption is down; sales of organic foods are up; more people are expressing concern about G.M.O.s, additives, pesticides and animal welfare. The lines out the door - first at Chipotle and now at Maoz, Chop't, Tender Greens and Veggie Grill - don't lie. According to a report in Advertising Age, McDonald's no longer ranks in the top 10 favorite restaurants of Millennials, a group that comprises as many as 80 million people. Vegans looking for a quick fix after the orthodontist have plenty of choices.

Good Fast Food doesn't need to be vegan or even vegetarian; it just ought to be real, whole food. The best word to describe a wise contemporary diet is flexitarian, which is nothing more than intelligent omnivorism. There are probably millions of people who now eat this way, including me. My own style, which has worked for me for six years, is to eat a vegan diet before 6 p.m. and then allow myself pretty much whatever I want for dinner. This flexibility avoids junk and emphasizes plants, and Lyfe Kitchen, which offers both "chickin" and chicken - plus beans, vegetables and grains in their whole forms (all for under 600 calories per dish) - comes closest to this ideal. But the menu offers too much, the service raises prices too high and speed is going to be an issue. My advice would be to skip the service and the wine, make a limited menu with big flavors and a few treats and keep it as cheap as you can. Of course, there are huge players who could do this almost instantaneously. But the best thing they seem able to come up with is the McWrap or the fresco menu.

In the meantime, I'm throwing out a few recipes to the entire fast-food world to help build a case that it's possible use real ingredients to create relatively inexpensive, low-calorie, meat-free, protein-dense, inexpensive fast food. If anyone with the desire can produce this stuff in a home kitchen, then industry veterans financed by private equity firms should be able to produce it at scale in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the price. You think people won't eat it? There's a lot of evidence that suggests otherwise.

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Yes, Healthful Fast Food Is Possible. But Edible?

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In recent years, the fast-food industry has started to heed these new demands. Billions of dollars have been invested in more healthful fast-food options, and the financial incentives justify these expenditures. About half of all the money spent on food in the United States is for meals eaten outside the home.

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McDonaldization - The process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more sectors of our society.

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Restaurants have been around in some form for most of human civilization. But they usually catered to travelers. As far back as ancient Greece and Rome, inns and taverns generally served food to people who had a reason to be away from home. This trend continued until relatively recently. Although taverns and coffee houses were popular places to gather and share beverages in the 17th century, the idea of eating out for fun didn't take off in Western society until the late 18th century.

Although McDonald's was the first restaurant to use the assembly-line system, some people think of White Castle as the first fast-food chain. White Castle was founded in 1921 in Wichita, Kansas. At the time, most people considered the burgers sold at fairs, circuses, lunch counters and carts to be low-quality. Many people thought hamburger came from slaughterhouse scraps and spoiled meat.

White Castle's founders decided to change the public's perception of hamburgers. They built their restaurants so that customers could see the food being prepared. They painted the buildings white and even chose a name that suggested cleanliness. White Castle was most popular in the American East and Midwest, but its success helped give hamburger meat a better reputation nationwide. So, like cars, White Castle played an important part in the development of fast food.

The McDonald brothers opened their redesigned restaurant in 1948, and several fast-food chains that exist today opened soon after. Burger King and Taco Bell got their start in the 1950s, and Wendy's opened in 1969. Some chains, like Carl's Jr., KFC and Jack in the Box, existed before the Speedee Service System, but modified their cooking techniques after its debut. McDonald's, which started it all, is now the world's largest fast-food chain.

According to the National Restaurant Association, American sales of fast food totaled $163.5 billion in 2005 [ ref]. The industry is growing globally as well. Total sales for McDonald's grew 5.6 percent in 2005, and the company now has 30,000 franchised stores in more than 120 countries [ ref and ref].

However, McDonald's - and fast food in general - does not always get a welcoming reception around the world. McDonald's restaurants have been attacked in several countries, including the United States, China, Belgium, Holland, India, Russia, Sweden and the U.K. Protestors have accused McDonald's and other chains of selling unhealthy food, marketing aggressively to children and undermining local values and culture.

See the links below for more on nutrition, fast food and related topics.

Related HowStuffWorks Articles

More Great Links

Sources

"McDonald's Settles Beef over Fries." CBS News. 6/5/2002. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/06/05/national/main511109.shtml

"McSupersizes to be Phased Out." CNN. 3/3/2004. http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/03/02/mcdonalds.supersize.ap/

Adamy, Janet and Richard Gibson. "Flak over 'Fast Food Nation.'" The Wall Street Journal. 3/18/2006.

Case, Tony. "Fast Food." Brandweek. 5/1/2006.

Coghlan, Andy. "Fast Food Awash in 'Worst' Kind of Fat." New Scientist. 4/12/2006. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19025565.000.html

Coghlan, Andy. "Fast Foods Trick the Body." New Scientist. 10/25/2005. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18024181.500.html

Frumkin, Paul. "CSPI Eyes More Trans Fat Suits after KFC." 6/26/2006.

Gosline, Anna. "Why Fast Foods are Bad, Even in Moderation." New Scientist. 6/12/2006. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn9318&feedId=online-news_rss20

Hellmich, Nanci. "Food Websites Tempt Kids." USA Today. 7/20/2006.

Jakle, John A. and Keith A. Sculle. "Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age." Johns Hopkins University Press. 1999.

Jeitschko, Thomas D. "Do You Want Fries With That? An Exploration of Serving Size, Social Welfare, and Our Waistlines." Economic Inquiry. July 2006.

Lappe, Anna. "Time to Turn the Tables on 'Big Food'." New Scientist. 7/15/2006. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19125601.600.html

MacArthur, Kate. "Cheeseburger in Paradise." Advertising Age. 7/172006.

MacArthur, Kate. "Fast-Food Rethinks Marketing." Advertising Age. 6/30/2003.

Martindale, Diane. "Burgers on the Brain." New Scientist. 1/2/2003. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17723804.800.html

McGirt, Ellen. "Thank You for Eating, Driving and Smoking." Fortune. 7/24/2006.

Motluk, Alison. "Supersize Me." New Scientist. 10/30/2004. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18424715.700.html

New Scientist. "A High with Your Fries?" New Scientist. 1/2/2003. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17723800.100.html

New Scientist. "Dangerous Fast Food Fats Show Global Variation." 4/22/2006 . http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19025483.300.html

New Scientist. "Six Years of Fast Food Supersizes Monkeys." 7/17/2006. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19025565.000.html Pea, Donecia. "Fast Food Industry Providing Healthier Options." Shreveport Times. 1/26/2006. http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060726/NEWS05/60726017

Schlosser, Eric. "Fast Food Nation." Perennial. 2002.

Severson, Kim. "Fast Food Alarm is Supersized." New York Times. 5/10/2006.

Spurlock, Morgan. "Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America." Putnam. 2005.

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Restaurants have been around in some form for most of human civilization. But they usually catered to travelers. As far back as ancient Greece and Rome, inns and taverns generally served food to people who had a reason to be away from home. This trend continued until relatively recently.

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Explore the past, present and future of McDonald's and the fast food industry.

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1. How did the early workers of fast food restaurants feel about their positions and their employers? Was it a safe and pleasant place to work?

2. What was the quality of the meat, vegetables, and breads served in this early era of fast food? How does this compare with the fast food quality of today?