Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser is an informative, non-fiction novel that captures the processes in the fast food industry. Schlosser opens up with a historical anecdote, beginning with Carl N. Karcher. Karcher is regarded as one of the fast food industry’s pioneers—a founding father. There are vivid depictions exploring the rural aspects of California, leading on to what shaped American culture and how the other pioneers participated in developing a fast food industry for the nation. Throughout the novel, Schlosser highlights the key aspects of restaurant chains, including market appeal (catering to the kids), and explaining the entire food making process from livestock to plate. He also incorporates the people involved in the procedure. …show more content…
There was a large emphasis on how fast food was “bad.” Schlosser included many statistics and studies to backup his claims. Schlosser stated that “Chicken Mcnuggets, which became wildly popular among young children, still derive much of their flavor from beef additives—and contain twice as much fat per ounce as a hamburger” (Schlosser 140). It is entirely true that fast food can be perceived as a source of large amounts of fat and calories. The author explained that the reason being for non nutritional fast food is because people like the taste of the additives in their meals. As a result, the company's processing the food will load it with flavor additives as well as unhealthy seasoning and oil, which in turn will lead to a high purchase rate and will profit the companies. With the low cost of poultry, fast food restaurants rely on chickens and fatten them to earn the restaurants as much profit as possible. Aside from the nutritional value, the way food is handled in the food making process is highly …show more content…
An industry molded to serve their their needs, to provide massive amounts of uniform ground beef so that all of McDonald’s hamburgers would taste the same—has proved to be an extremely efficient system for spreading disease” (Schlosser 196). Much of the workers in the slaughterhouses are illiterate, Latino (mainly illegal) immigrants desperately trying to support their families. The speed of the production line does not allow enough time for proper meat handling. As a result, some of the meat is dropped on the floor and placed back on the conveyor belt which ends up reaching consumers. There is a greater fear of not being able to catch up to the pace of the production line than getting many people sick. Especially considering consolidation within the fast food industry, the rapid production line is a model for slaughterhouses throughout the nation which leads to increasingly higher chances of food contamination (and people getting sick). Schlosser uses strong logistics to prove his key points, but also introduces the people who are affected by the
“The passive American consumer, sitting down to a meal of pre-prepared or fast food, confronts a platter covered with inert, anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and sanitized beyond resemblance to any creature that every lived (Berry 9).” This a great example that makes that makes us learn and think about when we eat a fast food product and also what it contains. This should a reason for us to be thinkful of the food products that we consume on a daily basis, and so do our
Section 1: Typically, we need a well-balanced meal to give us the energy to do day-to-day tasks and sometimes we aren’t able to get home cooked meals that are healthy and nutritious on a daily basis, due to the reasons of perhaps low income or your mom not being able to have the time to cook. People rely on fast food, because it’s quicker and always very convenient for full-time workers or anyone in general who just want a quick meal. Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation argues that Americans should change their nutritional behaviors. In his book, Schlosser inspects the social and economic penalties of the processes of one specific section of the American food system: the fast food industry. Schlosser details the stages of the fast food production process, like the farms, the slaughterhouse and processing plant, and the fast food franchise itself. Schlosser uses his skill as a journalist to bring together appropriate historical developments and trends, illustrative statistics, and telling stories about the lives of industry participants. Schlosser is troubled by our nation’s fast-food habit and the reasons Schlosser sees fast food as a national plague have more to do with the pure presence of the stuff — the way it has penetrated almost every feature of our culture, altering “not only the American food, but also our landscape, economy, staff, and popular culture. This book is about fast food, the values it represents, and the world it has made," writes Eric Schlosser in the introduction of his book. His argument against fast food is based on the evidence that "the real price never appears on the menu." The "real price," according to Schlosser, varieties from destroying small business, scattering pathogenic germs, abusing wor...
Over the last 50 years, the fast food industry did not only sold hamburgers and french fries. It has been a key factor for vast social changes throughout America. It has been responsible for breaking traditional American values and reinstating new social standards that specifically aims to benefit the industry’s growth. These social standards have inevitably changed the way the American youth respond to education and self-responsibility. Eric Schlosser, an author of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, excellently uses logic to present the tactics used by the fast food industry to cheapen and promote labor along with the social changes that occurred in the American youth as a result. Schlosser aims to dismantle and dissect
Fast food nation is divided into two sections: "The American Way", which brings forth the beginnings of the Fast Food Nation within the context of after World War Two America; and "Meat and Potatoes", which examines the specific mechanizations of the fast-food industry, including the chemical flavoring of the food, the production of cattle and chickens, the working conditions of the beef industry, the dangers of eating this kind of meat, and the international prospect of fast food as an American cultural export to the rest of the world. Chapter 1 opens with a discussion of Carl N. Karcher, one of fast food’s pioneers. Carl was born in 1917 in Ohio. He quit school after eighth grade and spent long hours farming with his father. When he was twenty years old, his uncle offered him a job at his Feed and Seed store in Anaheim, CA.
Tone: The author’s tone in Fast Food Nation is very informative with also an entertainment side. Throughout the book, Eric Schlosser is always giving facts about different things, but along with the facts comes excitement and entertainment. Eric Schlosser uses this strategy to keep the audience in check. In other words, to keep the person who is reading the book interested. Many authors use this kind of tone to their story because if they don’t, then people would stop reading their work, but instead, the reader wants to get to the interesting facts and keep on
‘Fast Food Nation’ by Eric Schlosser traces the history of fast food industry from old hot dog stands to the billion dollar franchise companies established as America spread its influence of quick, easy and greasy cuisine around the globe. It is a brilliant piece of investigative journalism that looks deep into the industries that have profited from the American agriculture business, while engaging in labor practices that are often shameful.
Schlosser, Eric, and Charles Wilson. Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know about Fast Food. Boston. Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Print.
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York: Perennial, 2002.
Fast food has changed farming, ranching, and meatpacking to an extent where it is nearly impossible to recover due to the amount of meat that is being consumed in the United States and the amount of meat that are required to prepare those products in America and other foreign countries. The author of Fast Food Nation stated, “Ranchers currently face a host of economic problems: rising land prices, stagnant beef prices, oversupplies of cattle, increased shipments of live cattle from Canada and Mexi...
In the book Fast Food Nation: The Darks Side of the All-American Meal, Eric Schlosser claims that fast food impacts more than our eating habits, it impacts “…our economy, our culture, and our values”(3) . At the heart of Schlosser’s argument is that the entrepreneurial spirit —defined by hard work, innovation, and taking extraordinary risks— has nothing to do with the rise of the fast food empire and all its subsidiaries. In reality, the success of a fast food restaurant is contingent upon obtaining taxpayer money, avoiding government restraints, and indoctrinating its target audience from as young as possible. The resulting affordable, good-tasting, nostalgic, and addictive foods make it difficult to be reasonable about food choices, specifically in a fast food industry chiefly built by greedy executives.
From a study completed by Chicago-based Research International USA completed a study called “Fast Food Nation 2008. The panel consisted of 1,000 respondents of ages 16-65 who provided their inputs with an online survey which was conducted between March 13 through 2008. Which was based on results on fast food restaurants like McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s are gaining popularity even through the economic hardship and recession. Marketing strategy has become more of influence on kids and young American’s. As population grows and the demand increases of fast food restaurants are expanding their stores to capturing more consumers. Fast food chains are also willing to change their menus to continue to gain and retain repeating customers. With each generation that passes, brings fast food chains into more homes and continues impacting lives.
Often people buy a book at a bookstore after reading the first few pages to make sure that the book is interesting enough to continue reading at home. That is why Amazon has a “Click to LOOK INSIDE!” button on each book. It is the most important part of a whole book in order to catch potential readers. One would expect that both In-N-Out Burger and Fast Food Nation must have strong hooks at the beginning since they were both New York Times bestsellers. Although they both focus on the fast food industry, there is quite a contrast in the way they are written. In the prologue of In-N-Out Burger, the author Stacy Perman writes not about the hamburgers or the company, but mainly about the phenomena that the burgers caused. On the other hand, in the introduction of Fast Food Nation, the author Eric Schlosser splits it into two different parts, a story about Cheyenne Mountain Base and a quick overview of fast food industry. Throughout the prologue of In-N-Out Burger, Perman successfully gets the attention of the readers by describing the facts in detail, which makes them want to turn the pages for further reading. On the contrary, despite Schlosser’s concise and precise narrative, the introduction of Fast Food Nation does not seem to make the readers want to read more due to his unsuccessful analogy and composition of the chapter. The introduction of In-N-Out Burger definitely draws more attention of the readers than that of Fast Food Nation due to the rhetoric and composition.
“Out of every $1.50 spent on a large order of fries at fast food restaurant, perhaps 2 cents goes to the farmer that grew the potatoes,” (Schlosser 117). Investigative journalist Eric Schlosser brings to light these realities in his bestselling book, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Schlosser, a Princeton and Oxford graduate, is known for his inspective pieces for Atlantic Monthly. While working on article, for Rolling Stone Magazine, about immigrant workers in a strawberry field he acquired his inspiration for the aforementioned book, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, a work examining the country’s fast food industry (Gale).
To fully understand Fast Food Nation, the reader must recognize the audience the novel is directed towards, and also the purpose of it. Eric Schlosser’s intention in writing this piece of literature was to inform America of how large the fast food industry truly is, larger than most people can fathom. Schlosser explains that he has “written this book out of a belief that people should know what lies behind the s...
Works Cited Schlosser, Eric. A. Fast Food Nation. N. p. : Harper Perennial, 2001. Print.