Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

Rating:
Summary: Six words to remember - There is S*** in the meat!
Review: I am not a vegetarian (yet) and actually worked at McDonalds as a teenager. I used to love working there as a kid. I have always enjoyed a Big Mac everyone now and then. While the nature of this book is not overly alarmist it is eye opening.

After reading about the practices in the MeatPacking plants, I am seriously considering becoming a vegetarian. That or becoming a gentleman rancher myself so that I can guarantee the quality of the food my family eats.

If anyone doubts the scenarios painted in this book - the evidence is all around. Go to your local fast food restaurant. Half of the people in the place can barely take your order and yet we trust them to follow safe food handling practices? The workers are trained in the preparation of food via pictograms. How are they supposed to know basics of food safety and health.

I'm off to the local WHole Foods to stock up on rice and tofu.

Rating:
Summary: They must have read a different book
Review: Normally, reviews on Amazon are on target. In this case I cannot understand the response from the first four reviewers. This is a hodge-podge book. Schlosser seems to convey that fast food is a grand conspiracy equal to the quality of Ida Tarbell or Upton Sinclair.

Indeed, he has some very interesting numbers. Indeed, fast food has changed many things including how people eat. But his attempts at causality are tennuous at best. He seems oblivious to larger trends in the economy which have happened in fast food but also in other industries.

He talks about the uniformity of the industry - yet seems to ignore the evidence outside the country where the fast food industry has varied to meet regional tastes.

I am not a big fast food fan - although I will admit to a fondness for In and Out (which he mentions in an interview) but give me a break - the world is not based on conspiracies.

Is there good from the employment that young people get in the fast food industry? Are the major companies responsive to consumer demand - is this industry driven by people in the industry or by consumer tastes (why in the world would each of the major chains work with menu variation if the industry drove the system)?

Has the industry driven out small meat producers or was Tyson already in the business and simply capitalized on the demands? If you believe the fast food industry drove the business you should look at surveys on the average time that Americans spend on meals - and their changes in eating habits. Look at your supermarket shelves - where some of the hottest trends are prepared foods - that is not to compete with Burger King but to respond to our changes in lifestyle. (Swedish Economist Stephan Linder - The Poverty of the Leisure Class - was much more insightful.

Rating:
Summary: Fast Food Nation
Review: I found lots of the information very interesting. However, Mr Schlosser showed his lack of understanding concerning the American consumer. His claims of profit motive only ignore the realities of our American economic behavior. The American consumer DEMANDS, PRICE, PRICE, PRICE. Any firm wishing to be successfull, McDonalds or anyone else, has to cater to the American unwillingness to pay. The mass market in this country wants everything from gasoline to food for pennies, ignoring value. How can any firm pay living wages, when the buying public will run to the shop down the street to save a nickle? Our retail society only knows how to compete based on price. Lower retails demand lower costs, whether it be labor or ingrediants. The retail industry and its suppliers are only giving the American people what they demand. I think the blame wasn't spread around to all the right places in this book.

Rating:
Summary: fascinating and fair, if overwrought
Review: With a subtitle like that, I was fully prepared for this book to be little more than a hysterical diatribe against the evils of fast food. Nor was my fear allayed by this defensive sentence in the Introduction :

I do not mean to suggest that fast food is solely responsible for every social problem now haunting the United States.

Disclaimers like that one usually indicate the opposite of what they say. But just a few sentences later comes a surprising admission which sets the tone for the whole book :

During the two years spent researching this book, I ate an enormous amount of fast food. Most of it tasted pretty good. This is one of the main reasons people buy fast food; it has been carefully designed to taste good. It's also inexpensive and convenient.

This is merely the first of many times throughout the book where Schlosser's fairness and honesty compel him to reveal facts that tend to undercut the polemical thrust of his arguments. This willingness to present both sides of the issues, combined with his prodigious research on the industry, makes for a book that, though the author clearly has a viewpoint that he wants to get across, also allows readers to make up their own minds, and provides the information necessary to make informed decisions. Though I disagreed with many of Schlosser's arguments, it was really refreshing to find an author who acknowledges competing views.

Here are some of the instances in which this contradictory dynamic crops up. One of the topics that he spends a good deal of time on is the pay levels in the industry, both for those who actually work in restaurants and for those who produce and process the food. He makes a big issue of the attempt by restaraunteurs to hold employees to minimum wage and not give them benefits, but at the same time he acknowledges that most of the workforce is made up of teenagers and :

Although some students...work at fast food restaurants to help their families, most of the kids take jobs after school in order to have a car.

Now, I'd acknowledge that a labor force of fathers trying to support their families on minimum wage would represent a social problem, but I won't shed a tear over teens who want their own cars. Not to mention that he goes on to note that :

Most of the high school students I met liked working at fast food restaurants.

To quote the immortal Clara Peller : Where's the beef ?

Similarly, in a section on the unskilled, uneducated migrant workers who are being "exploited" by the meat packers, Schlosser notes that they get something like $10 an hour, whereas the average worker in Mexico and Central America, where many of these employees come from, makes $5 a day. Sure, it would be wonderful if these folks were getting rich working at the undeniably difficult and often dangerous jobs they perform, but, comparatively, they are getting a damn good deal right now.

In the scariest portion of the book, he details all of the potentially lethal microbes that have invaded the food supply, e. coli and the like. He goes to great lengths to show how inadequate the system is for inspecting meat and testing for these contaminants, and I'll accept every word he says. But he also concedes that when meat is cooked properly these microbes are killed and then points out that food irradiation will also destroy them and is safe, but that misunderstanding of the process and fearmongering has kept it from being widely adopted. Sounds like there are safe and simple solutions to even this most worrisome of issues.

Finally, in the least compelling portion of the book, he argues that fast food is bad because it's making us fat. No one can honestly take issue with his point that the fat content in fast food is ridiculously high, and that the enormity of portions is unnecessary. However, in arguing that fat consumption is a unique problem, he accidentally concedes one of the great achievements of the industry :

During thousands of years marked by food scarcity, human beings developed efficient physiological mechanisms to store energy as fat. Until recently, societies rarely enjoyed an overabundance of cheap food.

Okay, so there are some problems associated with an "overabundance of cheap food:" the whole world should face such problems. Moreover, assuming that you believe in evolution, shouldn't we expect this to be a temporary problem, one that will take care of itself as succeeding generations develop mechanisms which don't store fat ?

Perhaps the best effect of Schlosser's honesty is that when it comes time to make proposals for solving some of the problems he's raised, he's pretty reasonable. The best point he makes is that :

Nobody in the United States is forced to buy fast food. The first step toward meaningful change is by far the easiest: stop buying it.

I don't believe that his book makes the case that such a step is necessary. It does, however, enable the reader to better understand what goes on behind the scenes to get that Big Mac or Whopper into your hands. As he presents it, this information is always fascinating and it is often at least troublesome. The book is well worth reading even if you don't ultimately end up feeling compelled to boycott the Colonel.

GRADE : B+

Rating:
Summary: I finally learned what I had been eating (and why)
Review: I picked up this book the moment I saw it mostly because I've always known that fast food is "bad for you" - but I've been both afraid to know why and curious at the same time. After all, I've been hearing the other side of the argument my whole life. I've been pummeled by fast food ads - and eaten plenty of fast food - for a ridiculously long time. Why do I want to stay ignorant about it?

In his introduction to "Fast Food Nation", Schlosser says that he's interested in fast food "both as commodity and metaphor", and indeed, this well-written tome is as much an examination on the titular product as an able primer on the encroachment of large corporations into the lives of working Americans.

Those of you expecting an update on John Robbins' "Diet For A New America" will be disappointed. Schlosser has not crafted a scientific slam against fast food joints, but rather a thorough examination of their motives and histories, with a strong emphasis on the people - from both sides of the coin. The time he devotes to the personal stories of those whose lives have been forever changed by fast food - from the rags-to-riches tale of Carl Karcher to the tragic story of a big-hearted rancher named Hank - are largely what keeps "Fast Food Nation" both emotionally provoking and tangible throughout.

If this book were merely a saber-toothed diatribe against fast food corporations, it couldn't allow itself such concessions and would probably come across as socialist tubthumping to all but the converted. Instead, lengthy establishing essays on the history, ideologies, and present state of the communities and corporations discussed are a welcome introduction (and counterpoint to) the individual stories of struggle, greed, and survival.

While he makes no secret where his sympathies lie, Schlosser often reminded me more of Wendell Berry than John Robbins, as he bravely attempts to "tell it like it is" from more of a "pro-human" as opposed to an "anti-corporate" perspective. In doing so, the dehumanizing aspects of all global corporations (and the effects of NAFTA and the Telecommunications Act of '96) are supplied a provoking reference point.

By my standards, "Fast Food Nation" is a fine debut accomplishment for the author and a welcome book for our increasingly homogenized (and de-regulated) times. The story of fast food, a quotidian experience for many, has never seemed quite so impressive, scary, and profound. My education began here.

Rating:
Summary: You can still have it your way
Review: A fascinating, important book for everyone. Fast Food Nation doesn't take easy shots at the fast food and beef industry, it shows the whole story, shifting back and forth betweeen intimate details of real people (a meat packing plant worker, a franchise owner, several cattle ranchers), and the larger, global markets created by the fast food restaurants. The book achieves a kind of epic flow to it, full of interesting and infuriating information. Splendid reading.

Rating:
Summary: Your last trip to McDonald's
Review: You'll never look at fast food--or beef--the same way again after reading Schlosser's methodical evisceration of the fast food and meatpacking industries. Extremely comprehensive and well reported, the book assesses the impact of the industry at each stage of the process. From the devastation of small ranchers and the corporatization of American agriculture, to the growth of massive meatpacking companies, to the dangers faced by workers and the revolting conditions in meatpacking plants, to the health risks posed by nearly universally tainted beef, Fast Food Nation is a devastating indictment of a part of our society we all too often take for granted.

My only criticism would be that he sometimes conflates the fast food industry and the meatpacking industry. While the two are clearly closely related, he sometimes blames the ills of the meatpacking business on the fast food business without showing the link. That said, Schlosser's criticisms of both industries are very valid and have tremendous relevance for any person who eats fast food or meat in general.

Rating:
Summary: Before your next meal, read this book
Review: Every American, and increasingly everyone in the world, should have available to them the information presented in this excellent book about the methods of the fast-food industry. This is not a vegan or vegetarian slam against beef and poultry producers. Instead, it is a look at how the large fast-food industry has transformed our nation, and is transforming the world, as we enter a new century. Readers will love Schlosser's easy writing style, even as they grapple with what his information tells us about the food world around us. This is an especially important book for every parent. Even if parents do not take their children to the restaurants mentioned, they will surely find the information about what is happening in schools and on TV important to the life of their family.

Rating:
Summary: I am a Citizen of a Fast Food Nation
Review: Eric Schlosser's damning indictment of the fast food industry is a calmly reasoned, well documented polemic against the entire armada of interests that fall under the rubric of the corporate food industry, including fast food restaurants, suppliers, complicit politicians and their hamstrung government agencies, in addition to a culture of sprawl that has provided fertile hunting grounds for these predators.

The author carefully takes the reader through three years of his own research, clearly articulating what must have been quite a journey for him: from the roots of the fast food culture in Southern California, to its current standard bearer in Colorado Springs, Colorado, to the people who transformed french fries from hand cut, hand cooked potatoes to the robot-controlled frozen monstrosities now consumed by the ton at fast food outlets around the world. He even includes a graphic description of a tour he took of a real live meat packing plant.

This purports to be a book about food. It is also a book about the changing nature of our society, and Schlosser introduces a number of the new faces of that change. We meet some of this country's young, bright high school students too exhausted from 40 hour a week jobs to do their homework properly, we meet some old fashioned ranchers trying to return to a sustainable ranch culture, we even meet the pioneers of the fast food industry itself. These pioneers are, ironically, some of the most interesting characters of this tale; they are iconoclasts with high school educations (or less) who persevered with classic American hard work and gusto. Indeed, they probably have more in common with their lowest paid employees than they do with their own senior executives, who are largely guys with MBAs from privileged backgrounds.

"Fast Food Nation" has deservedly become a manifesto for those who blame corporate America for creating a food industry seemingly devoid of ethics and common decency, an industry which has aggressively thwarted even mild attempts at government regulation, even while accepting huge government subsidies for services not rendered to the American economy.

The most significant criticism of the book is its anecdotal style. There are a lot of anecdotes, but they are backed up with cold realities. There is one man, for example, who was asked to sign a liability waiver giving up the right to sue his meat packing plant employer after an accident. He had to sign the waiver with the pen in his mouth; the accident had destroyed his hands, and if he did not sign, his hospital bills could not be paid. This is a graphic anecdote to be sure, but it illustrates the concrete point that the industry has callously lobbied to gut workers' rights to fair compensation, a point Schlosser amply substantiates independently of this story.

I am a dieter, so I picked up this book for my health. What I discovered was an irrefutable link between the dangerous, addictive products that I have (stupidly) crammed down my throat for years, and a corporate culture of greed and cynicism. If you are overweight as I am, you can no longer separate your condition from the toxic food environment which this industry has deliberately foisted upon you. Our fast food nation did not arise organically; it did not arise by chance: it arose by design, and this book contains the proof.

Rating:
Summary: Appalling. Read it and weep.
Review: Since many other reviewers cover the more repulsive details of Schlosser's book, I will stick to pointing out something I think deserves even more attention: one of the themes of the book is that the fast food industry has its tentacles in EVERY aspect of Americans' lives. Changing this goes far, far beyond bypassing a Big Mac...boycotting fast food is not the same thing as boycotting the fast food industry, when industry practices have made the USDA powerless against meatpackers, advertisers target children as consumers, and schools are taking money for corporate sponsorship.

This a fantastic book and it touches on a lot of areas that I don't normally think of relating to fast food, such as the plight of abused migrant workers in the slaughterhouses and the economics of teen labor. Everybody should read it, even if you never eat fast food, because you're affected too.