Te Bahamas has enough US fast food chains

EDITOR, The Tribune.

WE ARE crossing a dangerous threshold. At risk is not only the nation’s veritable blood pressure, but Nassau’s sociocultural integrity.

With the impending arrival of yet another US fast food chain – this time an IHOP at the Mall at Marathon – the restaurant market finds itself ever more saturated with unhealthy, unaffordable, and un-Bahamian culinary establishments. These fast-food chains are not only rife with sodium and fat-stricken fare – it is no accident that obesity rates in The Bahamas have risen to a towering 80% in tandem with explosion of American fast-food chains in recent decades – but they threaten to soil the already tarnished sociocultural landscape of this country. Call it cuisine colonialism, call it an under-studied ill of globalism, or simply call it unfortunate, the proliferation of fast-food chains in Nassau is equal parts eyesore, equal parts public health emergency.

Every KFC, Wendy’s, Burger King, and Dunkin Donuts serves as yet another reminder of the regrettable cultural penetration exacted by the United States, an ally only insofar as our national and regional agendas reflect their own.

The overwhelming presence of fast-food chains in the capital not only stunts the emergence of alternative, potentially more attractive eateries but undermines our food sovereignty in both figurative and literal terms, fuelling a longstanding preference for foreign products rooted in coloniality.

I’ll be the first to say that adding a guava-based dessert does not make your business look more Bahamian, just desperate. Arguments might be made that I am not attributing enough agency to the Bahamian consumer, or simply overlooking the fact that the franchisees behind these chains are by and large Bahamian themselves, and I offer one rebuttal for both points: “what colonialism does is cause an identity crisis”.

ETHAN KNOWLES Nassau February 7, 2023