Not Lovin' It Anymore (Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser)

Member Name: Tricia24

Product:	Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser
Date:	19/04/04 (346 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Will put you off junk food for life!

Disadvantages: Possibly rather one sided, Can not be sure how the facts in the book relate to the UK fast food industry

Britain is getting fatter according to numerous recent publications and shock TV documentaries. Apparently we eat more fast food than any other country in Europe. But we are still nowhere near as fat as America. I believe one half of Americans are now overweight or obese. This situation has resulted from a massive shift in lifestyle involving eating more and worse foods and exercising less. And the prime culprit is fast food.

My own personal experience of driving through America is being able to find nothing but fast food joints for lunch. Driving into a small town or a drive in shopping centre it is often all that?s on offer. And the sheer variety is amazing. Okay we have McDonalds, Burger King, KFC and Pizza Hut but they also have numerous diners like Wendy?s and Denny?s, loads of fried chicken places, Taco Bell?s, In And Out Burger, Carl?s Jr etc. The only reasonably healthy option (and I use the term healthy loosely) is Subway.

Eric Schlosser took it upon himself to write an exhaustive account of this all-embracing unavoidable fast food industry. The result is a fascinating (and horrifying) study covering a wide range of issues and subjects. The book is not a narrative but the juxtaposing of the many different aspects that together make up an argument. Schlosser himself admits, ?It was hard. In trying to tie together all these different threads there was a huge risk that it would be a total mess? (powell.com ? author interviews).

?Fast Food Nation? developed from a two-part article Eric Schlosser wrote for Rolling Stone. Schlosser had previously written a variety of articles on other current affairs issues including ?Reefer Madness? on the American underground and ?Marijuana and the Law?. The research
for ?Fast Food Nation? took Schlosser about three years and the result has been a best-selling book and a great deal of praise. The Observer wrote ?Fast Food Nation has lifted the polystyrene lid on the global fast food industry?it could even change the way we eat?.

The basis of Fast Food Nation is an examination of how fast food companies have risen up in the last couple of decades and engulfed not only the USA but also the whole world. Originating in southern California in the 1940?s fast food companies quickly franchised themselves across the globe and have had a profound impact on health, lifestyle, politics and agriculture.

Schlosser starts his epic task with an explanation of the rise of the fast food giants. He concentrates on Carl N. Karcher who started off running a hot-dog cart in Anaheim (near LA) but ending up founding Carl?s Jr (huge in the States but unknown in the UK) and Richard and Maurice McDonald, who, as you can guess, started a restaurant called McDonalds in San Bernardino. In the 1940?s fast food restaurants were drive-ins and employed carhops to take orders and deliver food. The McDonalds brothers however soon came up with a whole new concept ? speedy service. It involved a simplified menu, waiting in line for food and eating by hand rather than with cutlery. The idea soon caught on because it allowed fast food restaurants to lower food prices, offer quick service and cut back on staffing costs because the jobs were now low skill. From these humble beginnings Schlosser documents how fast food joints spread across the country via entrepreneurs like Ray Kroc (McDonalds) and franchising. Nowadays fast food chains are so widespread that they have had a profound impact on the way America eats. ?What we eat has chang
ed more in the last forty years than in the last four thousand,? Eric Schlosser writes. To illustrate this point he gives some scary statistics including the fact that every month 90% of American children visit McDonalds alone.

Schlosser then moves on to describe the inner workings of the fast food industry. The system of franchising as a method of expansion is explored as is the advertising of fast food, most dubiously to children. The restaurant industry is also America?s largest private employer. Relying on vulnerable groups in society such as youngsters and immigrants fast food companies pay low wages, fiercely resist any attempts at unionisation, create and maintain minimum skill jobs and have a high turnover of staff.

The following section documents what impact the phenomenal growth of the fast food has had on society. Fast food companies spearhead enormous operations worldwide. The food at restaurants such as McDonalds and Burger King is standardized to taste the same wherever you buy it and requires the mass production of burgers and fries. Schlosser investigates how the food is produced on a massive scale and what goes into the food i.e. ?natural favouring? to make it taste so nice. Mass production of beef and poultry as well as price fixing by the large companies has had a profound effect on the agriculture, landscape and population of the American Midwest.

The final section, which is again about the mass production of foodstuffs, is what had the greatest impact on me. Schlosser offers a gruesome description of a modern slaughterhouse where wading through ankle depth blood is a normal working condition. Even worse he describes the life of the employees at meatpacking warehouses. Coming from a country with reasonably strong health and safety I found it hard to believe such nightmarish jobs existed. Both the workers on
the production line and cleaning teams, mainly immigrants who speak little English, face enormous pressure from above and routinely suffer horrific injuries and not unusually death. Finally Schlosser explains how all the rubbish that finds it?s way into your burger ? including the dead animals that are fed to the cattle and the excrement that contaminates the meat on the production line ? poses numerous health risks including severe and often lethal food poisoning caused by E-coli and salmonella and also the more recent risk of v CJD.

Overall ?Fast Food Nation? is a ?must read? book. It opens itself up to accusations of bias in that it contains not one positive fact about the fast food industry, however it is interesting to note that none of the fast food companies have challenged Schlosser on the specific facts contained in his book. Despite not being the type of thing I usually read about by in large I found the book easy to understand and utterly absorbing. And more importantly it really has changed the way I view fast food. I would defy anyone to read ?Fast Food Nation? and not be disgusted by both the companies? ethics and practices. I used to only eat a burger meal about once every three months and then it has always been a veggie burger. However I highly doubt I?ll ever have the urge again?.

Thanks for reading & I look forward to reading your comments. Triciax

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