Fast Food Nation
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser was overall an alarmingly convincing tale. Schlosser’s ability to subtly drop facts regarding the negative aspects of the fast food industry that so profoundly swayed the reader wa extremely effective. Schlosser did not come out and state his opinion bluntly at any time throughout the novel. Instead, he would incorporate the right facts here and there to persuade the reader to feel the same way about the fast food industry that he felt: negatively.
The reader is first introduced to Schlosser’s opinion about the fast food industry in the early pages of the book. At no point does Schlosser deny how widespread the fast food industry has become: “Fast food and its consequences have become inescapable, regardless of whether you eat it twice a day, try to avoid it, or have never taken a single bite.” (5). However, he later states that he does not necessarily think that these “consequences” are good ones. Each chapter of this book dealt with a different aspect of the fast food industry- everything from affairs in slaughterhouses to children sick with E-coli to the effects of McDonald’s being built in China. The constant in the book, the most undeniable aspect of Schlosser’s writings, was the fact that fast food and its “nation” has irreversibly revolutionized America and Schlosser uses rhetorical devices to make the reader question: Was this a change for the better?
Researchers at the University of Stony Brook comment on America’s susceptibility to becoming a “fast food nation:” “In a society that functions at a high speed, fast food has quickly been adopted as the preferred food of choice” ("Stony Brook University- The Heart Links Project"). However, they later go on to note that ...
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...evant a few years after it was published, which shows that his message did not resonate with the American public.
Fast Food Nation is an informational yet persuasive novel carefully crafted by Eric Schlosser to reveal to the American public all of the truths about the fast food industry, and through his honest explanations backed up with researched facts and figures, Schlosser effectively conveys to the reader all of the issues associated with America’s fast food industry.
Works Cited
Haw, Bill. "Inside the Slaughterhouse." PBS Frontline: Modern Meat. n. page. Web. 2 May.
2013.
"The Dangers of Eating Fast Food." Stony Brook University- The Heart Links Project. (1999): n. page. Web. 2 May. 2013. .
"'National' E. coli outbreak probe looks to fast food." CBC News. (2013): n. page. Web. 2 May.
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...
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
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...
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York: Perennial, 2002.
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.
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).
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).
Fast Foods. Health.mo.gov, 14 Sept. 2012. Web. The Web. The Web.
One of the most shocking books of the generation is Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. The novel includes two sections, "The American Way" and "Meat and Potatoes,” that aid him in describing the history and people who have helped shape up the basics of the “McWorld.” Fast Food Nation jumps into action at the beginning of the novel with a discussion of Carl N. Karcher and the McDonald’s brothers. He explores their roles as “Gods” of the fast-food industry. Schlosser then visits Colorado Springs and investigates the life and working conditions of the typical fast-food industry employee. Starting out the second section, Schlosser travels to the western side of Colorado to examine the effects presented to the agriculture world in the new economy. Following Schlosser’s journey across the nation, he leads everything up to slaughterhouses and the main supply of income for fast food franchises – the meat. After visiting the meat industries in America, Schlosser explores the expansion of fast food around the eastern hemisphere – including the first McDonalds in Germany. Throughout Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser presents in his point of view and informative tone, a detailed disscussion of the conditions using various examples imagry and flowing diction/syntax to help support and show his audience the reasoning behind the novel.
Over the last three decades, fast food has infiltrated every nook and cranny of American society and has become nothing less than a revolutionary force in American life. Fast food has gained a great popularity among different age groups in different parts of the globe, becoming a favorite delicacy of both adults and children.
Works Cited Schlosser, Eric. A. Fast Food Nation. N. p. : Harper Perennial, 2001. Print.
American culture is changing dramatically. In some areas it’s a good thing, but in other areas, like our food culture, it can have negative affects. It is almost as if our eating habits are devolving, from a moral and traditional point of view. The great America, the land of the free and brave. The land of great things and being successful, “living the good life.” These attributes highlight some irony, especially in our food culture. Is the American food culture successful? Does it coincide with “good living”? What about fast and processed foods? These industries are flourishing today, making record sales all over the globe. People keep going back for more, time after time. Why? The answer is interestingly simple. Time, or in other words, efficiency. As people are so caught up in their jobs, schooling, sports, or whatever it may be, the fast/processed food industries are rapidly taking over the American food culture, giving people the choice of hot