A doughnut, or as it is often called donut, is a kind of fried dough baked or pastry meal. The doughnut has become well-known and beloved in numerous countries and cooked in an assorted model. This sugary and delicious snack could be made at home; however, the most prominent favored type of doughnuts acquired in confectioneries, shops of cooking and pastry businesses, shopping centers, food stalls, and authorized specialty markets. Doughnuts are customarily deep-fried and covered with powder dough, and commonly either have a form of a torus or are without a hole in the middle.
Moreover, mostly all donuts contain different fillings and toppings. Donuts have rather contradicted records; moreover, there are several theories about its creation. One of the hypotheses implies that the doughnuts were devised by the Dutch colonists in North America; this theory could be confirmed by the referring to donuts as “one kind of oliekoek (a Dutch word meaning ‘oil cake’), a ‘sweetened cake fried in fat’” (Mullins 31).
This explains the extreme popularity of donuts and its value for the American nation. According to Paul Mullins and his book ‘Glazed America – A History of a Doughnut’, the first donut commented in a handbook for housewives appeared in 1803 and was added to the recipes of the United States as an added material at the end of the book. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the donut completely resembled modern dessert not only in shape but taste as well and was considered to be a distinctive food of the Unites States.
The most consumed doughnuts in the United States are produced and sold by Dunkin’ Donuts; the name of this company has already become a proper name. America Is a nation of fast food and coffee, which is why most of the working class prefers to eat something fast and cheap while going to work or during the coffee break. Moreover, the United States is a nation of independence, freedom, and admission; for this reason, the Dunkin’ Donuts have got a privilege to offer a wide variety of doughnuts for the Americans in agreement with their needs and desires.
“Age group can be analyzed as subculture because they often have distinctive values and behaviors. American teenage population has been gaining affluence and fluctuating in size” (Ogden 810). The doughnuts are extremely popular among the teenagers because of its low financial value and high-quality ratio. Moreover, the teenage group favors donuts because of its easy availability, commodity, and the ability to give a feeling of fullness. Furthermore, in the nowadays lifestyle, teenagers tend to eat more outside the house because of the parents’ business at their workplace, and donuts meet their financial situation and limited budget.
Another class of people, which are expected to consume dunkin’ donuts, was already mentioned above: it is the class of working people. As the American nation regard itself as an active and restless country, most likely Americans will prefer their meals during the working day to be fast, timely, accessible and in the low price range. Americans like thing that are fast and easy, requiring minimal personal or economic sacrifice, regardless of whether they buy it at supermarket or fast food franchise (Crandall 190). Dunkin’ donuts allow the workers to consume doughnuts on their way to the office, in the car, or even in the subway, in their pursuit of the fast lifestyle.
Despite the fact that the marketing approach towards junk food is very much alike for the assorted chains of fast food and the production of doughnuts is often facing a lot of challenges and competitions, it still and all stands at the top of the rate of the most consumed fast food in the United States.
Social aspect. The research of the people who consume donuts has revealed the following results. The proportion of the consumers from upper class makes fourteen percent from all; the quantity of donuts consumed by the middle class makes thirty-two per cent; people from the working class make almost thirty-eight percent, and the last group – the lower class – makes a little over sixteen percent of all consumers of doughnuts. To be precise, working class contains Americans who are contingent densely on their family in order to receive financial and moral encouragement (Ritzer 47).
Doughnuts represent a type of food that could be consumed in motion, so the people are able to conserve time and power in order to accomplish more in their work and acts. Moreover, as it was said before, doughnuts present an image of an excessive excellence but the low expense of pastry, which is produced in order to draw the attention of the fast-living crowd to it. As a result, every person that belongs to any social class of the United States is able to buy it.
The impact on the health of donuts’ consumers received a general recognition as severe and almost irreversible. One donut usually consists of a lot of sugar, fats and various other harmful components, which could contain more than three hundred calories in a single piece of pastry. As a result, a person who consumes doughnuts on a daily basis could face such problems as weight gain, heart conditions, high blood sugar, and lack of nutrients. “According to a 2008 report published by the Hong Kong Consumer Council, doughnuts have more trans fats than chocolate, peanut butter chocolate bars and even chips. A single doughnut will meet a maximum allowance for trans fats for the whole day, and the truth is that people rarely eat just one doughnut.
Trans fats can increase the cholesterol and triglycerides, and increase a risk of heart disease” (Ogden 811). This is one of the causes why the American nation is exposed to the problem of obesity and the health problems connected to it.
The donuts are distributed through the little shops, “every location of which is strategically placed and designed with these customers’ preferences in mind. Because these purchases are so convenience driven, the locations can be placed close together without cannibalizing business” (Malhorta 21). However, if the doughnut shop would be placed in the urban districts of different areas, the time the consumer is willing to spend on walking towards the shop varies greatly.
For example, this time probably will be quite contrasting in San Francisco and Miami. For this reason, doughnuts are distributed massively throughout the country in order to meet the interests of the consumers; thus leading to causing more health problems. Obesity is a major population health issue with vast health consequences for individuals and society, and not without reasoning. Various researchers delineate a discouraging picture and even more premonition future for the public health. The predominance of this issue has increased in two times among the grown-ups and minors during the past twenty years (Cunningham, Kramer, and Narayan 405).
Works Cited
Crandall, Christian. “The Liking of Foods as a Result of Exposure: Eating Doughnuts in Alaska.” The Journal of Social Psychology, 125.2 (1985): 187-194. Print.
Cunningham, Solveig, Michael Kramer, and Venkat Narayan. “Incidence of Childhood Obesity in the United States.” The New England Journal of Medicine, 370.1 (2014): 403-411. Print.
Malhorta, Naresh. Basic Marketing Research: Integration of Social Media, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2010. Print.
Mullins, Paul. Glazed America: A History of the Doughnut, Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2008. Print.
Ogden, Charles. “Prevalence of Childhood and Adult Obesity in the United States, 2011-2012.” The Journal of American Medical Association, 311.8 (2014): 806-814. Print.
Ritzer, George. Essentials of Sociology, Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, 2015. Print.