Quick Service Restaurants have been serving swift and tasty meals since the 1930’s. The industry focuses on a high speed product with a low cost for the satisfying convenience of the valued customer. Behind every commercial, smiling employees serve their customers as they cheerfully claim to adore their job, famous logos line highways that serve as a friendly reminder of the familiar, and “now-hiring” signs deck the interior of hundreds of restaurants that beckon it’s beholders to become part of the great family that is the fast food industry. In fact, to the common eye, the industry seems optimistic, a venue of opportunity – at least for the meanwhile – and an environment of simplistic means. Hardly ever do you hear about the costs of bearing the franchised uniform.
Perhaps the largest threat to any employee behind the counter of a fast food restaurant is the paycheck. Thousands of workers struggle to survive on their minimal pay. According to an article composed by professor Lawrence Wittner, if congress had kept the minimum wage in line with inflation as stated under the Fair Labor Act of 1930, the current US minimum should be $10.74. Instead, today employees benefiting minimum wage receive $7.25 an hour, nearly two-thirds what it ought to be. This means that an employee with a family being paid minimum wage is considered well into the national poverty level. In contrast, as the minimally paid employees continue to suffer, their CEO’s income is increasing yearly. Because of this, “the United States now has the most unequal distribution of income in the industrial world” (Lawrence Wittner).
In a typical job, an employee working 40 hours a week would accumulate company benefits on top of their pay, but the fast food industry ...
... middle of paper ...
...ning unemployed, there is great fault behind the uniform, as there is with anything. The question is, to what extent is society willing to settle for?
Works Cited
Gordon, Claire. "40% of Fast Food Workers Think Their Jobs Might Make the World Worse" Aol Jobs. 22 February 2012. Aol. 2 February 2014 .
Rosenfeld, Steven . "Fast-Food Giants Make Billions While their Workers Use Billions in Welfare" truthout. 16 October 2013. Alternet. 2 February 2014 .
Wittner, Lawrence . "The Minimum Wage Should be Raised" The Blog . 10 November 2013. Huff Post. 1 February 2013 .
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...
Web. The Web. The Web. 1 May 2014. http://www.alternet.org/activism/fast-food-ceos-making-1200-times-workers-wages-have-no-idea-what-their-greed-does-employees?page=0%2C0>.
In Fast Food Nation, Schlosser goes beyond the facts that left many people’s eye wide opened. Throughout the book, Schlosser discusses several different topics including food-borne disease, near global obesity, animal abuse, political corruption, worksite danger. The book explains the origin of the all issues and how they have affected the American society in a certain way. This book started out by introducing the Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station beside the Colorado Springs, one of the fastest growing metropolitan economies in America. This part presents the whole book of facts on fast food industry. It talks about how Americans spend more money on fast food than any other personal consumption. To promote mass production and profits, industries like MacDonald, keep their labor and materials costs low. Average US worker get the lowest income paid by fast food restaurants, and these franchise chains produces about 90% of the nation’s new jobs. In the first chapter, he interviewed Carl N. Karcher, one of the fast food industry’s leade...
Gitterman, Daniel P. “Remaking A Bargain: The Political Logic Of The Minimum Wage In The United States.” Poverty And Public Policy 5.1 (2013): 3-36. EconLit. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.
Traub, Amy, and Catherine Ruetschlin. "Ten Reasons Why Fast Food Workers Deserve A Raise | Common Dreams." Common Dreams. Common Dreams, 29 Aug. 2013. Web. 18 Nov. 2013.
Sherk, James. "What Is Minimum Wage: Its History and Effects on the Economy." The Heritage
Wittner, Lawrence. "The Minimum Wage Should Be Raised." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 10 Nov. 2013. Web. 12 Mar. 2014.
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.
The New York Times bestseller Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal is one of the most riveting books to come out about fast food restaurants to date (Schlosser, 2004). Fast food consumption has become a way of life for many in the United States as well as many other countries in the world. The author Eric Schlosser an investigative reporter whose impeccable researching and bold interviewing captures the true essence of the immense impact that fast food restaurants are having in America (2004). Beginning with McDonald’s, the first fast food restaurant, which opened on April 15, 1955 in Des Plaines, Illinois to current trends of making fast food a global realization McDonald’s has paved the way for many fast food restaurants following the same basic ideal that is tasty foods served fast at a minimal cost (2011). Schlosser explains how fast food restaurants have gained substantial market share of the consumers; he also shows that by marketing to children and offering less unhealthful fare, that are purchased from mega-companies which are often camouflaged with added ingredients and cooked unhealthful ways, that these companies are indeed causing irreparable harm to our country (2004).
American pay more in fast food than one does on entrainment like movies, books, and music combined. In 1970, The United States spend around $6 billion on fast food and by the end of 2011 the amount was nearly doubled to $110 billion. Fast food is now found all over the places like hospitals, airports, and zoos. “What We Eat”, wrote by Eric Schlosser reflects on his research on the far-reaching effects of the American life. “What We Eat,” is a look into the rapid increase and popularity in fast food for the American people along with the physical and social consequence of the rapidly growth of the service economy.
According to Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, "Fast food has had an enormous impact not only on our eating habits but on our economy, our culture, and our values"(3). According to Roni Rabin on any given day, about one quarter of U.S. adults visit a fast-food restaurant. The typical American now eats about three hamburgers each week (2). Schlosser also writes that “thirty years ago Americans spent about six billion dollars annually on fast food. In the year 2000 they spent over one-hundred and ten billion dollars, more than on higher education, personal computers, or new cars (3). The reality of fast food is regarding the spreading and feeding of illness and disease; as well as the inhumane treatment of animals through modern meat farming practices. Our society imagines images of happy animals living on farms where the cows graze in lush green fields and the chickens run around as they please. This vision of free-roaming animals living out their days in sunny fields is very far from the reality. A majority of the animals that are raised for food live miserable lives in dark and overcrowded facilities. These facilities are commonly called "factory farms"(Maguire 5).
Pyke, Alan. "The Minimum Wage: Myths & Facts." Media Matters for America. N.p., 15 Feb. 2013. Web. 18 May 2014.
Fast food is one of the most controversial topics; most people tend to blame fast food industries because of their obesity or a disease they got, and never hold responsibility for their own action.
For millions, fast food restaurants are the source of positive associations with birthday parties, play dates and accessible comfort food. For others, they represent a lifeline meal on a busy day, or the secret to quieting a cranky toddler on a long trip because hurrying residents of cities have no time to cook a healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner. Fast food presents even in the lives of people who are trying
Bernstein, Jared. “Would Raising the Minimum Wage Harm the Economy?” The CQ Researcher 16 Dec. 2005:1069.