Finding fast food fad facts
QUESTION of the day: how much do New Zealanders spend on fast food/takeaways annually?
Search me, but given the official figure in 2012 was
$1.2 billion, we can safely assume the dollars would now, five years later, go a long towards paying off our national debt.
In short, the fast food phenomenon has pretty much changed our lifestyles forever and, many health specialists, nutritionists etc would argue, not necessarily for the better.
But the main reason for my query today is to invite readers to look back to the days when the fast food fad really began, especially in Dunedin, and I do so on behalf of Norman Edwards, who has sent me this email:
‘‘Hi Dave. A bit more nostalgia. I remember the opening of the first Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in Andersons Bay Rd. I don’t know what year it was but I do remember the excitement and the long queues of people keen to try this new phenomenon.
‘‘I remember being part of one of those queues with three kids and first sampling the chicken and coleslaw and potato and gravy. Haven’t been there for years. I believe it may have been the first international fast food outlet in the city?’’
Well, I have done some quick research and can’t come up with a specific date for the KFC opening but I do recall going there in the mid to late 1970s and becoming a big fan of the Colonel, as my waistline can testify!
And, if it was the ‘‘first’’ of the overseas franchises to come here, what were the others and when did they set up their outlets?
I do remember Georgie Pie having a relatively brief stint down towards Northeast Valley but what about another early arrival like Pizza Hut, which got here well before the likes of McDonald’s and Subway.
So, can anyone help Norman out with some more definite names, dates and details?
Nuclear testing protest
An entry in yesterday’s
‘‘Today in History’’ column caught the eye of Alexandra reader Noel White, who has emailed the following to say why:
‘‘Dave. Interesting to read in this morning’s ODT that it is 44 years since HMNZS Otago sailed for the Mururoa ‘protest’. I was a Chief Petty Officer on board, in the engineering department, and remember it well. I was in the engine room before we sailed, warming the turbines through and getting ready for sea when the then Prime Minister, Norman Kirk, came down the ladder.
‘‘As he had been a stoker on the harbour ferries many years earlier, I suppose he thought that our engine room would be similar, but couldn’t have been more wrong! — 30,000 horsepower against a couple of hundred for the ferries! He stood there for a couple of minutes, looking around, then said: ‘Too much for me’ and disappeared back up the ladder!
‘‘A fuss was made in the media at the time about the ‘Special Nuclear Allowance’ we were to receive for the trip. What wasn’t made known was that this ‘allowance’ was the grand sum of 18 cents PER DAY! After tax we each got about $3.50 for the 35day trip, and were so disgusted we all donated it to a Dunedin charity the ship supported.
‘‘I have wondered ever since who was the faceless Treasury civil servant who sat down and worked out that 18 cents a day was fair compensation for putting someone in possible harm’s way from radiation fallout, and that it should also be taxed! Needless to say, we all survived; it was just another deployment to us.’’
Incidentally, the website nzhistory.govt.nz notes: ‘‘Prime Minister Norman Kirk told the 242 crew of the Otago that their Mururoa mission was an ‘honourable’ one — they were to be ‘silent witness[es] with the power to bring alive the conscience of the world’.
Tank trap history
In yesterday’s column, about the area known as ‘‘Magnetic Hill’’, on Mt Cargill Rd, mention was made of a tank trap being built there too. This has prompted an explanatory email from Mike McCarthy, of Mornington:
‘‘My father worked for the Public Works Department as a bridge builder, having started on the road to Homer Tunnel in 1931. The project was closed down for the duration of the war and he was moved to Dunedin to build Public Works projects which included military constructions.
‘‘In 1970 he showed me one tank trap that he put in on the downhill side of going into Waitati. I could clearly see in the road surface the outline of two rails which would have held two very large concrete pipes filled with concrete. The pipes were held upright to the side and in the event of invasion would have been rolled across the road.
‘‘The spot on the road is a good one as there is a cliff on one side and rather a large dropoff on the other. No way round. At the end of the war the concrete pipes were pushed over the dropoff and presumably are still at the bottom of the gully.’’
Keeping the faith
My piece yesterday about silently willing our yachties to win back the America’s Cup struck a chord with Warren Jowett, of Kew, who writes:
‘‘Kia ora Dave. Thanks for not jinxing Emirates Team New Zealand. I was pleased to read that I wasn’t the only one who felt compelled to keep to the same pattern of behaviour each morning over the past few weeks. Mind you, I did have a sign that the win could be ours on Sunday. One of the hymns we sang at the 10am service at Knox Church was Shirley Murray’s Our Life Has Its Seasons with the following lines: ‘so there’s never a time to stop believing, there’s never a time for hope to die.’ It worked!’’