Rating: 
Summary: You'll never eat Mickey D's again
Review: Schlosser has assembled quite an interesting read here. All parts are equally informative from Carl Karcher's history to the slaughterhouse workers to the tripe billions of people are served worldwide, you'll find this one hard to put down!
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting But Condescending
Review: This book is a very interesting read with lots of fascinating details but I just could never get comfortable with the condescending tone of it. I just imagined this snide author looking down on the great American middle class and it's taste in food.
Rating:
Summary: Like "The Jungle," but not just a Gross-Out Expose'
Review: This book has been compared in other reviews to Upton Sinclair's turn of the last century work, "The Jungle," but, like Sinclair's work, this one is more than just an attempt to expose the more sickening aspects of the fast food industry. The author does an excellent job of exposing the devastating socio-economic impacts of corporate farming. However, he doesn't sink to the level of political diatribe. He examines his subject through the eyes of people that the reader can identify with and care about. As an aside, being from Pueblo, Colorado, I was intrigued to discover that a large portion of this book centers on people in and around Colorado Springs.
Rating:
Summary: Ohmygoodness!
Review: After reading Fast Food Nation, I'm not sure if I want to eat out ever again. I don't even know if I even want to eat at all. While I know that's not possible, I am much more aware of what really goes on behind the meat that I eat. I agree with Schlosser that McDonald's has such an impact on the agricultural world. If McDonald's could work with Congress to enact and enforce the working conditions in slaughter houses, perhaps our meat would be much safer to eat, and the employees would be safer. Forget diets, try reading Fast Food Nation. A truly excellent read!
Rating: 
Summary: A bit slanted but worthwhile reading
Review: Mr Schlosser lays out the history of the fast food restaurant in an interesting and somewhat personal manner. The book is revealing in terms of portraying the thorough integration of food production from the farmer right up to the counter top. This is actually the scariest part of the book, showing the nature and size of the corporate power behind food industry. It should come to no one's surprise that these corporations are amoral (as opposed to immoral) in their search for ever greater market share and consumer dollars. Mr Schlosser makes a good point about the economic/political power these conglomerates have attained. What keeps this from being a 5 star book is Mr Schlosser's obvious left wing bias. He frequently brings up the Regan administration and its short-comings in regulation (and over deregulation). He is almost maudlin about traditional family farms. He has a tendency to write in a way to create an emotional effect out of proportion to the available facts. (example: of 700 persons reported ill from Jack in the box food, four died. THe author spends time describing in detail the painful deaths of two children. But the deaths represent 0.6% of the persons who were ill enough to seek medical attention.) There are long details of some of the lives of workers in the meat packing factory and oddly gruesome stories of fast food robberies. While this puts a face on the statistics, it is a bit overdone. If you can deal with this bias, there is still a lot here worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Great Read
Review: Unlike Upton Sinclair's THE JUNGLE, to which it is often compared, FAST FOOD NATION comes at you with facts, numbers, and statistics. It doesn't feel like a story, but like complete and 100% fact. I, personally, found the descriptions of the big business more desturbing than the descriptions of the food itself (though that wasn't pretty, either.) I highly recommend this read whether McDonald's is your favorite restaurant or your a died-in-the-wool vegan who wouldn't touch a Big Mac with a 10 foot pole.
Rating:
Summary: Extremely comprehensive, insightful, disturbing...
Review: If you can read this and eat another bite of fast food again then you didn't understand what you read. Schlosser examines the impact the fast food industry has not only on our waistlines, but on our economy. It forces you to address the part YOU have played in the mangling of body parts, deaths of innocent animals, and low wages of low-income America. Well done!
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but dry...
Review: I enjoyed this book, even it's disturbing elements. However, there are a few things missing from it. First, it never seems to give solutions to fix these problems without collapsing the economy or instantly replacing elements of American Culture. Nothing really applicable or realistic. Second, many of the items talked about, seem to be 'so what' items. Some of the food processing items talked about, don't mention that food today, has less contaminants than 50 or 100 years ago. Given it will kill you without the chemicals, but many of us do not want, nor are able to return to the agricultural life style of the past. Finally, there was very little positive credit given to the innovators in the industry. Not the mega-tycoons and multi-billionaires, but to the scientists and creators of some great things. Many items to process food in the home (electric grills, food choppers, microwaves, etc.) were first perfected in the fast food kitchens. In conclusion, I'd have to say, I'll think twice - then really count the costs when I go out to fast food.
Rating:
Summary: Mmm, Mmm, Mmm
Review: I don't think this book intended for us to stop eating fast food...just to be more aware the next time you go to a McDonalds. Just reading this book made me hungry for their french fries! Despite that they are frozen! Going to a fast food restaurant four to five days a week should be avoided, and that once a week is much better. I was glad the author was quite honest about having a lot of fast food when writing this book and loving it. So enjoy reading this book, but don't think of it as a diet/health/anti-fast food book!
Rating:
Summary: An eye-opening read!
Review: This is a fascinating read! Schlosser does a superb job looking 'behind the scenes' of each aspect of our fast food culture: the franchise beginnings, the employees, the meat factory workers, the food producers, and the animals that end up for sale at our fast food establishments. He provides a litany of statistical data that reads surprisingly smoothly - not a dry list of numbers at all. Schlosser's easy style makes reading the book a pleasure and effortless - I found I could not put the book down. Although it is quite clear where Schlosser stands in this debate, he provides the evidence in a clear, cogent, and fair manner. His afterward in the paperback edition does an especially fine job of standing up to criticism - which no book is without. The data and anecdotes in the book are told with a particular agenda in mind, but Schlosser does a fine job combining the evidence and stating his own reservations and limits with his data. The solution to the problem is obviously not cut and dry, but for the general fast food eating public, this book will provide some astonishing information on the fast food industry. I haven't eaten fast food since - I just can't bring myself to do it. This is a great read - the literary style is light enough to read on the beach, and yet the subject matter is so compelling as to draw you in completely: I enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone.
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