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Today brought two great pieces of news for fans of real food. Brian Browdie at Quartz writes: "Coca-Cola said today it earned $2.1 billion in the third quarter, down 14% from a year ago. Revenue fell about a half-million dollars, to $11.98 billion." In another story at Quartz this morning, Max Nisen wrote about McDonald's, which is hurting even worse than Coke: "Sales were down 5% from the same quarter last year, dropping from $7.3 billion to a shade under $7 billion. Comparable store sales were down 3.3%." This is the most drastic dip since the recession, but McDonald's has been flat or sinking for two years straight. This is, of course, great news for America. Sure, we still consume way too much junk food, but our fast food consumption is trending down.

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Whenever I write about shitty national fast food chains, some dimwit rages at me in the comments or over e-mail about my elitism. "Subway is cheaper than your fancy independently owned sandwich shops," they'll say, "so you're basically turning your back on poor people because you like hippie food." To which I say: bullshit. This is exactly like Walmart. These companies are exploiting tax breaks (and artificially low minimum wage laws) to make their meals affordable. You're paying more for those meals in other ways—federal support for the low-paid workers, schools suffering from their poor corporate citizenship, and so on.

If you'd like to educate yourself about why Coke's failure is good news for us all, you really ought to read Michael Moss's excellent Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us. (I reviewed the book on its publication last year, but it's now out in paperback.) Moss talks to the son of a Coca-Cola executive who witnessed firsthand Coke's atrocious actions to get kids hooked on their soda in Latin America. It's the kind of book that changes behavior in its readers; not very long after reading Salt Sugar Fat, I quit my heavy Diet Coke habit for good. If this book were more widely read, Coke would continue suffering huge losses for many years to come.