Fast Food Nation has that greasy, delicious taste of muckraker ambience, but it is just too well written, too comprehensive, and too well researched to be tarred lightly with that label.
Eric Schlosser delves deep into the history, practices and culture of America's love-affair with fast food, and the lasting impact (both economic and otherwise) that the obsession creates. Schlosser's pen is wide ranging, from the cattle farms, feedlots and agribusiness of yesterday, today and tomorrow to fast-food's impact on labor practices and the meat-packing industry (guaranteed to make you view vegetarianism with a more sympathetic eye). His comprehensive tome examines the history and development of fast-food, including such varied and little known subtopics such as the taste-enhancing chemists (housed quietly in the New Jersey industrial strip) that add the final filip to the industry's special sauces. Very little escapes his gaze, including elegant factoids such as the profit margins on soft drinks (very, very high, particularly when you "supersize" your drink) to internal McDonalds' discussions on the brand merit of keeping the golden arches (The gist is that they resemble female breasts (there is a serious brand Oedipal thing going on there, trust me...)).
Like so many other people, I spent my time in the fast food industry - both as a customer and as a teenage burger flipper, so reading Fast Food Nation, I found I could identify and recognize quite readily many of the labor practices and processes that Schlosser examines. I still recall with a bit of a shudder the time one of the fry handlers pulled a full basket out of the boiling shortening without allowing the excess oil to run off. I just happened to be cleaning the small freezer below when he lifted the dripping, steaming basket over my head and bare arms, liberally pouring hot oil on me. I ended up with only painful but light burns on my arms but it was the manager's callous disregard for the accident that stuck in my mind. He wanted me to finish my shift...
Schlosser's horrifying and telling examination of the meat-packing industry culminates Fast Food Nation, looking at the industrialization of the meat industry, the severe economic and health impacts on society, and the labor practices and the ever-increasing pace of work on "the Killing Floor". This is great investigative journalism, well-written and uniformly fascinating.
Fast Food Nation is a book that, very probably, the McDonald's and Taco Bell's of the world, do not want you to read. It makes you think too much about the real social cost of your Happy Meal. You will never eat a burger again without wondering, so if you really, really love your Big Mac, maybe you should skip this book.
Article comments
1 - Tom Johnson
Not a comment on your review, which was great, but a comment on the book: I don't see why this is so shocking to most people. I read it and not once was I surprised at anything he related, except for the back-stories of the various restaurants. I thought the in-depth discussion of how french fries came to be what they are today was intriguing, but the supposedly horrible details of the meat-plants did nothing for me. Maybe I'm the only one that assumed that getting food out of animals was going to be bloody and disturbing, I don't know. I sure can say that it didn't change my eating habits one bit. If anything, where people need to be concerned is within the restaurants themselves. As you point out with your own nasty incident (I found that far more disturbing than anything in the book,) it's the people who run those places who don't seem to care about health and safety.
I would urge anyone who found this book interesting to check out Ruth L. Ozeki's My Year of Meats. Fiction it may be, but it portrayed the horrors of the meat-packing industry much better and stronger than Fast Food Nation did. Not for the squeamish, but it does have a good sense of humor and an intriguing story.
2 - Mark Saleski
for more scary stuff about food and pathogens check out Spoiled
3 - TDavid
The following link in the article is coming up 403 forbidden (for me anyway): http://www.olen.com/food/book.html
4 - Deano
The "horrific" element is not found so much in the slaughter of the animals (well maybe if your a vegetarian, but I'm not under any illusions about where my steak comes from), but in the impact that the fast food industry has had on the industrialization of the killing floor.
The fast food operations have actively and consistently lobbied against improved health and safety practices in the meat-packing industry, while pushing for lower product costs, faster production and more uniform product. The end result is the industrialization of the meat industry with the development of larger feedlots, copious and indiscriminate use of antibiotics in food animals (resulting in resistant pathogens), a faster "throughput" in the slaughterhouse, and huge pressure on the packing plants to cut costs - and the price is paid in meat quality and worker safety. Yes the food industry doesn't have to do it, but you know as well as I do that business is business and in the long-run, they will do exactly what the major fast-food companies want in order to keep operational.
5 - Mark Saleski
i think it was mcdonalds (i might be a little sketchy on the details...it was either them or burger king) who finally put their foot down and demanded zero tolerance of fecal matter in the ground beef they purchased.
the sad thing is that somebody had to die (and other just get sick) from eating tainted beef before the edict was made.
6 - Natalie Davis
"Not a comment on your review, which was great, but a comment on the book: I don't see why this is so shocking to most people. I read it and not once was I surprised at anything he related"
Exactly my thought, Tom. Schlosser's work, however, was very well-written and researched, as I suspect you would agree. And many people -- you know how informed the supersized general public is -- will be surprised, sad to say.
7 - Mark Saleski
i thought Reefer Madnesss was pretty good too. the discussion of migrant workers was pretty enlightening...especially given the recent walmart/alien worker thing.
8 - Tom Johnson
i think it was mcdonalds (i might be a little sketchy on the details...it was either them or burger king) who finally put their foot down and demanded zero tolerance of fecal matter in the ground beef they purchased.
Well, they have a lot of explaining to do, because they're still shitty burgers. (Cue rimshot.) Thanks folks, I'm here all week . . .
9 - Natalie Davis
ba-DUMP-bump-TING!
10 - Deano
Actually I think it was the Jack-in-The-Box resturant chain and, to their credit, they have forced all their meat suppliers to implement much stricter quality control and inspections (stricter than the FDA requires by the way) by refusing to purchase from firms that do not comply. This is the sort of action that McDonalds and the majors could have easily taken years ago but instead lobbied against...
11 - Tom Johnson
Does anyone remember the rumor that Jack In The Box hamburger meat was really horse meat? I remember that going around as a kid, so that was sometime in the early-mid 80s. I knew there was a reason I never liked their burgers . . .
12 - Natalie Davis
I remember that quite clearly. In the dang near one-horse town in which I grew up, we had a JITB where the high-schoolers would hang out, drink beer, and down those shitty burgers. Myself, I wasn't cool enough to hang out with them. Not that I minded -- their burgers reeked. I did like the Breakfast Jack, though, which was way better than the Egg McMuffin.
13 - Tom Johnson
In the dang near one-horse town in which I grew up, we had a JITB . . .
I guess if the horse went missing, you knew where to look for it! (rimshot again, please.) Oh, my side! I've got a million of them.
14 - Natalie Davis
ba-DUMP-bump-TING!
Glad to be of service. :)
15 - Jim Carruthers
The reason "Reefer Madness" isn't as comprehensive as "Fast Food Nation" is because it is repackaging of three magazine articles, sort of like "live" double albums for contractual obligation.
There was an interesting feature in the New York Times Magazine about two years ago where the writer bought a steer and chronicled its journey from feedlot to slaughter.
Pollan bought a steer and follows it from calf to a box of steaks. Farming has become a industrial machine which turns petroleum into hamburgers and uses an economic logic gone insane.
One interesting fact which isn't in Schlosser's book (though he got the insane economics of how hamburgers are made out of petroleum nailed) is the reason why cattle need antibiotics. Since they are fed corn, which they can't digest properly (though it makes them gain weight quickly), the bacteria in their stomachs become toxic (and come out in their shit and into your water supply which we saw in Walkerton, Ont., killing 11 people), so unless they get antibotics, they will die from their diet, which is a rather apt metaphor for a fast food diet.
Also dishearting, so to speak, in FFN was the chapter on Subway, while their food is better for you than most chains, their franchise system is basically a pyramid scheme. So when you win, you still lose.
16 - Sidney Louis Schlosser
Hmmm.... I thought it was quite interesting ;).
17 - donna
not sure how old this sight is, but seeing how jack-in-the-box is making a come back, I have told a few co-workers about when i was a kid growing up in chicago, i lived a few blocks from a jack in the box and remembering that it was closed because it was discovered that they were using horse meat. been looking for something to back it up. But I do remember. seeing these kind of sights gives me reassurance that i am not looney. thnx
18 - Joe
I remember that horsemeat rumor. Early to mid-seventies. I was in N. CA when I was a kid and heard it.
19 - jim
i too grew up in chicago in the 70s and remember the jack in the box horse meat connection. i remember it being more than just a rumor; i vaguely remember seeing it on the news/tv.