“Beefspace” Plots Fast Food Chains
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Every month is dedicated to _____ awareness, and each of those months has a day highlighting something even more specific. However, from day to day, one of the major issues on the tip of everyone’s tongue in the U.S. is “obesity.” You may not believe in global warming or the existence of extraterrestrials, but you don’t have to be a scientist to know that obesity is a widespread problem in the U.S. You just have to look around and count the number of seriously overweight folks versus the number of fit ones. Seriously, just look around. That’s exactly what Stephen Von Worley did.
The expert data programmer had an idea, and his finished product borders somewhere between art, technology, and social issues. According to Huffington Post, Von Worley took a map of the United States and plotted the points of every fast food chain in the nation. To distinguish which chains were which, he assigned a color to plot each restaurant.
Von Worley went on to describe the process and coloring coding as such, “The colors now represent the three most influential chains at each point, weighted by cumulative force at a 4:2:1 ratio, where black is McDonald’s, red Burger King, yellow Wendy’s, magenta Jack In The Box, periwinkle Sonic, cream Dairy Queen, green Carl’s Jr., and cyan Hardee’s. Together, you can think of these tweaks as elegantly exposing the subtle contours of market dominance, then splattering them with the individual restaurant locations.”
What you’re seeing is a map of the major chains and their specific density in the U.S. It’s just a simple idea, but one that speaks volumes as to why the U.S. is in the health state we’re currently in. While fast food chains aren’t the only reason, they do make up a major portion of these concerns. If there’s one upside to seeing this map, one could argue that it looks kind of beautiful. Kinda?
