Downtown Plano, Texas (cue "Good Bad and the Ugly" theme). Photo posted to Flickr by Bill Hammond.
The money blog Bundle.com crunched some spending numbers for the 100 largest cities in the U.S. to find out which ones spent the most on fast food, and which ones went for burgers (and tacos) most often, adjusted for population.
Throw the criteria together and you get some interesting results. Here are the top 10 fast-food cities in America:
1. Plano, Texas; 2. Madison, Wis.; 3. Wichita, Kan.; 4. Akron, Ohio; 5. Fort Wayne, Ind.; 6. Kansas City, Mo.; 7.; Chandler, Ariz.; 8. Raleigh, N.C.; 9. Baton Rouge, La.; 10. Omaha, Neb.
The website only looked at the following fast-food chains: McDonald’s, Wendy’s, KFC, Taco Bell, Subway, Pizza Hut, Arby’s and Burger King.
Pizza Hut explains the presence of Wichita on that list. The chain originated in that city, the city of my birth, and I’m pretty sure a city ordinance requires people to eat there. If you try to make pizza at home, they come and serve you a citation. I may be wrong about this, but it’s plausible.
As far as the top two cities on the list, What the H? Plano, just outside Dallas, is about as sleepy and charming as anywhere. I mean, look at it! You expect a tumbleweed to go rolling by, and an Ennio Morricone song to being playing spontaneously. But Planonians spend 2.3 times the national average on fast food.
And Madison? That place is a running mecca, and being healthy is so ingrained into its fabric that Men’s Health magazine’s healthiest man in America lives there. But the city conducted 2.06 times the national average for number of fast-food transactions. (See Bundle’s infographic.)
The cities lowest on the fast-food list were Boston (No. 100), Philadelphia (99) and North Hempstead, N.Y. (98).
How did California cities fare? Here they are, according to the full list. Remember, the higher the city is on the list, the fast-foodier it is.
13. San Jose; 44. Modesto; 54. Anaheim; 60. Stockton; 64. Santa Ana; 73. Fresno; 74. San Diego; 77. Sacramento; 79. Chula Vista; 80. Riverside; 81. Long Beach; 83. San Bernardino; 85. Bakersfield; 91. San Francisco; 92. Los Angeles; 96. Oakland.
More on fast food:
What’s the fast-food capital of America? is a post from: Healthy Living - The Orange County Register
