Why go home and cook a proper, healthy meal when one can purchase something from McDonald’s Dollar Menu? From Dandy Donuts across the street to Chifil-a, the temptation to eat fast food lies on every corner. 

The inexpensive prices prove to be enticing for many consumers. These low-priced foods beg the question of what are you really paying to eat. Some say grade ‘F” meat. 

In a report on the cleanliness of fast food restaurants conducted by MSNBC in 2005, the best restaurants had the least amount of critical health code violations and the worst fast food chains had the most amount of critical health code violations. As of 2005, the cleanest fast-food chain was Jack in the Box, which averaged 45 critical violations for every 100 health inspections. McDonald’s ranked first in unhealthy fast food chains, Arby’s third, Kentucky Friend Chicken fifth, Dair Queen tied with Sunway at sixth, and Taco Bell ranked ninth. 

Critical violations are considered violations that could potentially be harmful to a customer making him or her sick. McDonald’s averaged 126 critical violations for every 100 inspections; hand washing was their most commonly cited violation.

“Sometimes we don’t use gloves when preparing food,” said senior Nathaniel Denson cashier at Dairy Queen off Flat Shoals Road. “ As a result, our hands may come in contact with a customer’s product.”

Often times the best perspective of how clean a restaurant is comes from the employees themselves. Certain fast food stores engage in acts they know are not permissible, such as lowering certain food products to become stale and still selling them to the customer.

“The nastiest thing that I’ve seen happen was an ice cream cone drop and the worker picks it up and still reuses it,” said Denson, who’s worked at Dair Queen for four years. “We have a lot of stale ice cream cones, The bananas we have look spoiled, but we still sell them to customers when they order a banana split.”

Incidents such as these are not uncommon when working behind the counters of fast food restaurants. Despite working at the restaurant and witnessing these things, the employees of the restaurant continue to eat there.

“What I see have no effect on how much I eat there,” said Brett Jackson, an employee at a local McDonald’s. 

Jackson advises others not to eat there because it can be unsanitary. Although he dished out that advice, he continued eating there ever after seeing a rat run across the kitchen floor.

“You can only trust your food if you see it being made,” said Denson.