Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
by Eric Schlosser
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Book Summary Information
Author: Eric SchlosserBrand: PBS
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-07-05
ISBN: 0060838582
Number of pages: 383
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
Book Review: This is a basic run-down of the book, but it really needs to be read in it's entirety to truely grasp what it is saying
Summary: 5 Stars
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser is a book about how America's diet, economy, workforce and landscape have been altered by the fast food industry's need for consolidation, uniformity and speed. This ambitious and devastating expose is a must read for anyone who is interested in the environment, worker's rights, animal rights, children's rights, food-safety, the workings of national and multinational corporations or just plain wants to know what's in their food.
Schlosser begins by discussing the origins of the fast-food industry, which has infiltrated every facet of American society over the last four decades. The industry has humble beginnings in Southern California where high school dropouts and iconoclasts opened a few small burger joints. These burger joints would later become some of the most recognized brands in the world. Their rapid growth was due largely to the McDonalds Brother's idea of applying the principals of the factory assembly line to a commercial kitchen. They called it "The Speedee Service System", the ethos of which is still at the core of the industry. Food is no longer prepared; it is assembled. This has de-skilled jobs, made workers interchangeable and allowed, among other things, for them to be paid minimum wage. Schlosser makes use of startling information, like the fact that due to pressures from the National Restaurant Association, the real-value of the U.S. minimum wage is now 27% lower than it was in the 1960's. He mentions that McDonalds is one of the most anti-union companies on the planet. Then he goes on to say that in 1999 the National Council on Chain Restaurants formed a new group to lobby against OSHA regulations. They called this new group the "Alliance for Workplace Safety."
Fast food workers are not the only ones feeling the pinch. Idaho potato farmers are forced to get bigger, or lose their businesses. Because frozen French fries have become a bulk commodity, prices of just a few cents difference per pound can be the difference between winning and losing a major contract. Giant processing companies do everything that they can to drive the prices offered to potato farmers down. While the amount of land devoted to growing potatoes in Idaho has increased, the amount of potato farmers has halved. Many small family farms have given way to just a few corporate farms that stretch for miles. America's agricultural economy is described as resembling an hourglass with farmers and ranchers at the top, consumers at the bottom and the giant multinational corporations that make all the profits in the narrow middle.
So why do the French fries taste so good? Before 1990 McDonalds fries were cooked in beef-tallow, giving them more saturated fat than the hamburgers. Amid criticism over the amount of cholesterol however, McDonalds was forced to switch to pure vegetable oil in their fryers. The flavor now comes from chemical compounds created by the highly secretive flavor industry. The formulas for flavor compounds and who the clients of the industry are is protected information. "Natural flavor" and "artificial flavor" are both man-made compounds created in the labs of companies like International Flavors and Fragrances, which also produces many perfumes. Flavors are created by blending scores of chemicals together. The F.D.A. does not require these flavor companies to disclose their ingredients so long as the company considers them to be "generally regarded as safe." Today, some of the biggest advances in the flavor industry are coming out of the biotechnology field.
Along with potato farmers, American ranchers are also rapidly disappearing. Because the fast food industry has encouraged the consolidation of the meatpacking industry, a few large corporations have gained a stranglehold on the industry and are able to use unfair tactics to drive down the price of cattle. The Reagan administration allowed the companies to combine without worry of anti-trust enforcement. Today, four meatpacking firms - ConAgra, IBP, Excel and National Beef - slaughter 84% of the nations cattle. When cattle prices start to rise, these meatpackers flood the market with their own captive supplies. As much as 80% of the cattle being exchanged come from these captive supplies, the prices of which are never disclosed. This creates a market in which ranchers never know the value of their cattle. A free market requires many buyers and sellers with access to accurate information and entitled to trade on the same terms. This does not exist in the cattle market.
Many ranchers fear that they will suffer the fate of the poultry industry, which is mainly controlled by eight chicken processors. The average chicken grower has been in the industry for fifteen years, remains deeply in debt and only earns $12,000 per year. In this industry also, the large processors will not disclose the terms of their contracts. The suicide rate among ranchers and farmers is 3 times the national average.
The industrialization of cattle raising and meatpacking has completely altered how beef is produced. The European Union will no longer accept beef from the United States due to the U.S.'s use of bovine growth hormone. Cattle are fattened using anabolic steroids. Each of these cattle creates 50 pounds of urine and manure each day creating huge pools of excrement called "lagoons."
Furthermore, meatpacking has become the most dangerous job in the United States. Some plants slaughter up to 400 cattle per hour (that's approximately half a dozen every minute) and send them down a single production line, carved by untrained workers desperate not to fall behind. These workers, who are typically illegal immigrants, are pressured not to report injuries and to immediately report to work - even in the case of severe injuries. Congressman Tom Lantos, whose subcommittee conducted a major meatpacking inquiry, called IBP "one of the most irresponsible and reckless corporations in America." IBP has been caught lying time and time again, has been called "unethical" by the Supreme Court and has been found to have extensive mob ties. What's worse, IBP is hardly unique in the industry.
All of this is not only unethical; it can make you sick. Due to the need for speed and the use of untrained workers on the kill floor, it is not uncommon for an animal's stomach contents or manure to be spilled into its carcass. The potential that just one of these cows is sick is extremely high given that they are being fed dead pigs, horses and poultry as well as waste products from poultry plants such as old newspaper that has been used as litter. This contaminated meat is then ground up and combined with the meat of thousands of other cows. That's right - there is poop in the meat.
Similarly to how AIDS is spread by having multiple sex partners, E.coli is spread by this huge admixture of animals that comprises most ground meat. The new centralized system of food processing has led to a new kind of outbreak that can potentially sicken millions of people at a time. E.coli is actually made worse with antibiotic treatment, which causes the bacteria to release its Shiga toxins. These Shiga toxins are the toxins responsible for making you sick. It is believed that the E.coli bacteria have been made more dangerous by the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in cattle feed. Research has also found that many of the pathogens found in contaminated meat can lead to long-term ailments such as heart disease, neurological problems and kidney damage. This can occur from a contamination that one does not even realize they were exposed to. It is important to note that due largely to the meatpacking industry being a major financial supporter of the Republican Party, meatpacking executives, not the USDA, determine when to recall contaminated meat.
Of course, all of this has huge implications for the New York City food system where fast food can be found on every corner and many people do not have access to healthier foods. According to Poppendieck and Dwyer, people who live in low-income neighborhoods are particularly susceptible to the draws of fast food. Poor neighborhoods have few supermarkets and have to rely predominantly on small stores that charge high prices and fast food chains. They give the example of a mango that, if purchased at a regular supermarket cost 67 cents. At the bodega however, it cost $1.79, which is shockingly close to the price of a full meal at a nearby McDonalds. In fact, of the 217 restaurants in East Harlem, the majority are fast food joints.
Fast food companies and their partners make huge profits off of poor people; those people being both their customers and their employees. Fast Food Nation is a relevant and compelling book about this ubiquitous industry. In harrowing detail, Schlosser systematically dismantles its various aspects and brings some clarity to an otherwise hidden world.
Summary of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled American cultural imperialism abroad. That's a lengthy list of charges, but Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning.
Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from California's subdivisions, where the business was born, to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike, where many of fast food's flavors are concocted. Along the way, he unearths a trove of fascinating, unsettling truths -- from the unholy alliance between fast food and Hollywood to the seismic changes the industry has wrought in food production, popular culture, and even real estate.
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 thriftiness a second thought. Fast food is so ubiquitous that it now seems as American, and harmless, as apple pie. But the industry's drive for consolidation, homogenization, and speed has radically transformed America'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. Quickly, however, he moves behind the counter with 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 flavor company) and "what really lurks between those sesame-seed buns." Eater beware: forget your concerns about cholesterol, there is--literally--feces in your meat.
Schlosser's investigation reaches its frightening peak in the meatpacking plants as he reveals the almost complete lack of federal oversight of a seemingly lawless industry. 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 introduce E. coli and other pathogens into restaurants, public 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 behavior," he writes. Where to begin? Ask yourself, is the true cost of having it "your way" really worth it? --Lesley Reed
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