Fast Food Nation: What the All-American Meal Is Doing to the World |
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Eric Schlosser
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Pages: 400 (Paperback)
ISBN: 0141006870
Pub: Penguin Books Ltd
Pub date: 2002-04-04
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 11025
Editorial Review:
Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser's disturbing and timely exploration of one of the world's most controversial industries, has become a massive bestseller in America and rightly deserves to be so this side of the pond. On any given day, one out of four Americans opts for a quick and cheap meal at a fast-food restaurant, without giving either its speed or its cheapness a second thought. Fast food is so ubiquitous that it now seems harmless. But the industry's drive for consolidation, homogenisation and speediness has radically transformed the West's diet, landscape, economy and workforce, often in insidiously destructive ways.
Eric Schlosser, an award-winning journalist, opens his ambitious and ultimately devastating exposé with an introduction to the iconoclasts and high school dropouts, such as Harlan Sanders and the McDonald brothers, who first applied the principles of a factory assembly line to a commercial kitchen. However, he rapidly moves behind the counter to the overworked and underpaid teenage workers, onto the factory farms where the potatoes and beef are grown, and into the slaughterhouses run by giant meatpacking corporations. Schlosser wants you to know why those French fries taste so good (with a visit to the world's largest flavour company) and "what really lurks between those sesame-seed buns". Eater beware: forget your concerns about cholesterol, there is--literally--faeces in your meat.
Schlosser's investigation reaches its frightening peak in the meatpacking plants as he reveals the almost complete lack of regulation. His searing portrayal of the industry is disturbingly similar to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, written in 1906: nightmare working conditions, union busting and unsanitary practices that introduced E.coli and other pathogens into restaurants, schools and homes. Almost as disturbing is his description of how the industry "both feeds and feeds off the young", insinuating itself into all aspects of children's lives, even the pages of their school books, while leaving them prone to obesity and disease. Fortunately, Schlosser offers some eminently practical remedies. "Eating in the United States should no longer be a form of high-risk behaviour", he writes. Where to begin? Ask yourself, is the true cost of having it "your way" really worth it? --Lesley Reed
Reader Reviews:
Still want to eat fast food? (0/0 people found this helpful)
Still want to eat fast food after reading this book? I don't think so! Amazingly in depth study of the origins, industry, manipulations and consequences of the giant multinational corporations.
Take heed, the information on just how many cows contribute to the average burger patty is truly disgusting, not to mention the rest of the unlisted ingredients!
Frightening truths (15/16 people found this helpful)
Schlosser's exposé of the fast food industry makes for terrifying reading. Now that I am aware of the appalling corporate trade practices, I have been sure to avoid McDonald's (except in order to get hold of the complete Happy Meal collections of Hannah Montana and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles- the mantelpiece would have seemed bare without them). However, it is equally worrying to learn about the produce found in major supermarkets. Chicken is frequently known to contain as much as 40% additives. If you ask me, 'chicken' should be just that and it should NOT involve added protein. It is for this reason that I must politely decline Uncle Bruce's invitations to dinner. Since I caught a glimpse of him through the kitchen window (engaged in the final throes of 'injecting' a chicken) I have felt little urge to join him for a Sunday roast.
You are what you eat! (0/0 people found this helpful)
This book should be included in high school educational reading all over the world.
It not only traces the history of origins and expansion of world-changing gigantic fast-food chains, but it gives a clear and well researched insight of how things work behind the scenes today.
In a reader-friendly, sometimes witty way Eric Schlosser takes you on a tour of a meal containing strawberry-less artificially flavoured shakes, meat-flavoured fries and contaminated hamburgers. Schossler also hits hard on the low pay and low security employment policies often endorsed by fast food chains and their suppliers, the most astounding of which are the slaughterhouses.
My only objection: health issues linked to the nutritional composition of many fast-food meals could have been deepened.
This book is great. You won't be able to stop thinking about it next time you bite into your burger...if ever you will want to eat a burger again!
Best non-fiction I ever read in my Life! (0/0 people found this helpful)
Every human eats. Food comes from somewhere. How do you beat the business of meal supply, and tempting humans to eat your food? And which country is the best at business, and spread it everywhere? Read it. I didn't initially realize I was 4 years behind release when I picked up this book.No matter. I did not put it down until it was finished.
Enjoy this book? I'm lovin' it! (1/2 people found this helpful)
Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation is a superb case study of the history, politics and socio-economic impact of the fast food industry, not simply an anti-McDonald's diatribe.
Schlosser looks at the hard empirical facts but enlivens his text with illuminating first-hand accounts of life in an American slaughterhouse, or workers at the other end of the food-chain, working in a Mcdonald's 'restaurant' (one of the many surprising facts of this book: in one year (and not an exceptional one), more people were killed on the job working for fast food franchises than police deaths in action). Some chapters detail how the natural flavour is removed from the food and drink and then reinserted chemically, flavours and smells synthetically developed by industries based in New Jersey; other chapters might depict the impact of huge mutlinationals on independent farmers, how the intensive agribusiness has destroyed traditional farming techniques.
This superb book reminded me of a Hollywood action movie: each chapter contains some startling information and just when I thought that the next chapter couldn't beat the previous one, it contained even more eye-popping (and sometimes stomach-churning) events. The book was never dry, never too bogged down in statistics and in some chapters, particularly the, "What's in the Meat" section, almost read like some visceral Chuck Palahniuk-style shocker.
More than just sensationalist, Schlosser's book traces the genesis of the fast food industry to non-conformist, go your own way, American pioneers whose iconoclastic business techniques eventually ended up transmuting into crushingly conformist behemoths, stifling independence of spirit and regional variety.
This is a great book, not a heavy academic study (though it is bursting with research and references); if the film Supersize Me is about what happens to fast food when it enters your body, Fast Food Nation concerns what happens to the food before it gets into your system. Unlike the burgers, you'll savour this book.
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Books -> Subjects -> Society, Politics & Philosophy -> Social Sciences -> Cultural Studies
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