An eye opener. I'll never look at a fast food restaurant the same way again.

I'm never eating fast food again. Not that I eat much of it anyway, since I try to eat mostly plant-based. But sometimes when you're super busy and tired, it's easy to hit that drive through.

Never. Again.

This book was horrifying and fascinating. Factory farming, the speed of the production line, the illiteracy and desperation of the workers who are quite often illegal immigrants (which the industrial meatpackers apparently damned well know), the literal shit that gets mixed into the meat and creates a ripe environment for e-coli -- just, no. Not eating that shit (har-har) again.

I recommend reading this book, or watching the movie made from it, so you know what goes into your food and how it's processed. All of it, not just meat. If you still want to eat it, that's your choice. Mine is that I'm done. It's grass-fed and organic for me, if I eat meat at all. I mostly don't anymore, but when I do, I'm making sure it's not factory-farmed and processed. Bleh.

This book was SO much better than I was expecting it to be! I mean, I went into it figuring I would learn something but I was NOT expecting it to be so entertaining and have so many facts and anecdotes that were literally jaw-dropping. There's a good amount of history in the book which I wasn't expecting but found really interesting. Fast Food Nation is hugely informative and eye opening and I truly truly recommend it to everyone.

I could easily give this book a 5 for its well-researched and informative content, its engaging pacing, its excellent mix of dry facts and gossipy tone. I literally couldn't put the book down since I picked it up from my sister's bookshelf.

I started reading with high hopes. I heard so much about the book and how it changes people's perception on fast food. I do not eat a lot of fast food but I enjoy my occasional burgers from Burger King, crave Chicken McNuggets from time to time and adore KFC with heaps of fries, rice and ketchup.

The book begins with the history of McDonalds which encompasses not only the corporate history but also the history of fast food and its supporting industries. So far so good. As I proceed, I find it hard to accept its two major themes: big corporations are the big bad wolf who feast on little people and the king of the pack is McDonalds.

Although the author writes that he doesn't say McDonald and the fast food corporations are the roots of all American problems, he essentially implies so throughout the book. That is not fair. The reason for finger pointing to McDonald and some unknown Carl Jr and Jack in the Box is not apparent in the book. Brand-wise, I wonder how KFC fare in all these debacle although tacobell, owned by the same company, gets an honorary mention. Consumerism-wise, what about those insatiable American appetites?

Another strong message is that the big corporations sell cheap food, by taking advantage of suppliers and their poor, illiterate workers, not from the goodness of their hearts but for humongous profits. Fair enough. But he goes on to argue that the marketing tactics employed, though necessary, are unethical. I am not comfortable with this statement. Since when have we all lost our cognitive power and freedom of choice? When an advertisement says that drinking insecticide is good for us, won't our instinct warn us otherwise? If the kids insist on eating McDonald to collect the latest figurine from Nemo, where are the parents with conscience who will firmly tell them no when a no is warranted?

I have no problem with presenting selected facts to support a theory or argument. But I have problem with authors who do not explore or conveniently neglect the other side of the equation. One particularly disturbing fact-massaging is his argument that fast food restaurants are favourite crime targets and the crimes are mostly inside jobs. On the same page, he mentions that fast food industries have high labour turnover and can afford only to hire people with questionable background. Now, is it chicken first? Or egg?

The author offers obvious solutions in the epilogue. One of the most irritating ones is proposing that free-roaming cattle rearing is the way to go. He conveniently avoids these questions: How can he reconcile the math of vast overhead to maintain the land, huge labour cost (we want our workers to be paid and insured well), and small customer base (transporting meat to all over the country is bad!) with affordable prices? Aren't these organic, grass-fed beef normally sold in chic upscale supermarkets? Is he suggesting no-child policy to curb the population and to make way for those healthy, happy cows?

The book doesn't stop me from anything. Prior to reading, I already know that these fried foods are not good for my health and moderation is key to all my eating activities. I enjoy reading the book but feel misled by its content. The problem with the fast food nation is not the cheap end-product at high social cost but the lack of common sense and excessive gluttony of its consumers.

I remember someone who wrote an email full of expletive because, after reading this book, he felt McDonalds caused his children's addiction to the Happy Meals. Now I understand why he, like countless fans, was so readily bought: the book's theme is David vs. Goliath, its tone straight from tabloids, its information tasty morsels from the dark side of an otherwise wholesome industry. The book provides ammunition for people who prefer to absolve personal responsibilities. In short, this book is served the way people like it, regardless of its content.

I found the intersection of social/economic/agricultural/political history so interesting. I don't think the author is really arguing that we only eat organic, pasture-raised beef so much as arguing for informed, thoughtful consumers and the need to check corporate greed (for instance, being willing to implement more safety measures in slaughterhouses that would protect both workers and consumers). He never calls out Democrat politicians, but I'm sure plenty of Democrats have been swayed by corporate lobbying, too. His book would have been better if he'd simply called them "Congressman" instead of always identifying the political party.

This book had lots of great information and provided some "food for thought," but it's definitely dated. When the author talks about the Internet, for instance, he brings to mind the days when Alta Vista was the search engine of choice, and YouTube was years away from becoming a reality. Surely much has changed with the foods we consume, both good changes and bad.

The author's personal and political biases are on full display throughout the book, and I found this distracting. This was perhaps Fast Food Nation's greatest flaw.

Just finished Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Love your burger?, big fries?, large coke? all served in 2 minutes and tasting the same world over? How did it all happen? Well Eric Schlosser lays it all out starting with the birth of fast food, the first drive thru, and the first McDonalds. And the industry evolved to serve it to us. You'll feel what it's like at the giant meatpacking lines, the huge potato factories, and with the soft drink syrup sellers. Henry Ford started the assembly line and the fast food industry applied it to food with teenagers manning the stations with low wages, no benefits, and E. coli lurking everywhere. Hold on to your sesame seed buns for a ride through the darkest side of our fast food world. The typical American eats 3 hamburgers a week? - you won't after listening to this book.

Halfway through the book, I had a serious craving for Zaxby's.

This only goes to show how we need to be careful with what we eat and mindful of our cravings. At least I do... Eric Schlosser goes into some deep deep stuff that never really truly surprised me, but made me aware existed and are a far more serious problem that I would have ever imagined. The fast food industry has grown exponentially since its birth. It amazes me to see how far people will go for this materialistic need of money and fortune by putting aside the lives and well being of countless workers. We as consumers become part of the problem and then one with the problem. I feel like many of the issues Schlosser addresses just how serious and concerning and disturbing and uncomfortable and unethical (I hope you get the gist but many adjectives to describe how frightening it is) all of these problems are. The solutions he proposes are simple. It would take a lot of work to get there, and if we did, we eat more nutritious food but also become a lot greener. But I feel like his book doesn't propose those solutions very well. It mostly focuses on educating his readers about the problems we are facing.

Big corporations are basically giving you your food before you cook it. If there's a problem with it before you start cooking it, there's definitely going to be a problem after you cook it (hence him going into the E. Coli something, which can kill you as it has many other people). The biggest problem I feel like is the ignorance we as consumers have from it all. People are literally tearing themselves apart to work in slaughterhouses and packaging companies (I kinda forgot what it's called, but it's where they do stuff to your food before they give it to the restaurants) to get the little bit of money they need to maybe pay the rent or maybe feed themselves. It's horrifying that the government would let this happen and even more horrifying to know that us consumers blindly, blissfully ignore it (I hope I did those italics right).

Schlosser talks about a variety of things throughout the book with an impressively entertaining yet urgent tone. From the birth and growth of the industry, to how they advertise, to how they make their food, to how the business works, to what goes into the food (chemicals and oils and disease, he puts it all in!), to working conditions. It's crazy that he's able to explain it all pretty thoroughly, but one of the many aspects of the book that caught my attention was his explanation for as to why so many teenagers work at McDonald's (or in fast food restaurants in general). I know a few people who work in these restaurants and I've heard a variety of stories from people who used to do it (cuz, you know, teenagers talk... apparently McDonald's dump a lot -more than a lot- of sugar into the sweet tea, but i guess that's what makes it so tasty), and it's impressive how much it lines up together.

Overall, it is a great read, and I highly recommend it. I think that one of our greatest weaknesses is being blind to our surroundings and not know the true consequences for our actions. No one is the bad guy. People just want to make their money, but their greed, our ignorance, and time creates a concerning problem for our health (and those of who work and I guess the animals too, I forgot to mention them). I also want to point out that Fast Food Nation was published in 2005, and Schlosser had addressed that this industry grows like no other with its ideas and advertisements. The industry has had almost another two decades to grow. I'm genuinely curious to know if fast food today is any different than it was then (even if it wasn't too long ago), and how we as consumers have or have not changed, especially with the coping of the pandemic from everyone.

So yeah. That's my lengthy review. i hope you enjoyed if you read it all :p

Intellectual synchronicity: I recently listened to a Marketplace report on education, economics, and an interview with  Kelly and Zach Weinersmith on augmented reality (although that latter part could have been in a Freakonomics podcast), coincidentally shortly on the heels of finishing Fast Food Nation. Each source resonated strongly with Trevor's synopsis of Global Auction, which conveniently popped up in my email inbox around the same time.

In reviewing the dilemma of higher-ed economics (ever-rising tuition costs, ever-lowering degree utility and value, etc.) Trevor points out that "the whole point of capitalism is to find ways to drive down costs and to simplify work processes to the point of banality for the vast majority of workers." In that vein, I would consider the recent augmented reality enhanced construction helmet referenced in the  Soonish author talk as an example of productivity-accelerating/expertise-displacing new technology. The helmet makes use of graphic how-to overlays to give the worker realtime communication intended to reduce error, minimize injury, and thereby speed the construction process.

Now Schlosser's book has this whole chapter on how the industry custom-built some idiot proof kitchen technology, initially to ensure consistency of its output from one location to the next, but ultimately because doing so resulted in a fabulous side-effect, namely, that it enabled franchisees to eschew training costs in favor of a disposable, and in many cases [English-]illiterate workforce... in turn keeping labor costs low and deterring unionization. In effect, by moving the kitchen expertise from the staff to the equipment, McDonald's and their fast food fellows could reduce the workforce to meat robots.

While the Weinersmiths weren't asked to make the connection with fast-food industry kitchen automation in the interview, I think the implications of the technology to the need for a skilled workforce are clear. The more repetitive and consistent the tasks/problems, the easier it is and more sense it makes to replace people with algorithms to address them. Look, you could use nanorobots to collect nectar and mass-produce honey on an industrial scale, but why would you? Bees are an existing, inexpensive, renewable resource. What's the point at which that becomes true of people? And what becomes of education, then?

This is a practical concern for me right now as my kids are rapidly approaching college age. What's the best use of our collective investment of time, effort, and money to safeguard them from obsolescence? How much should go toward whatever constitutes practical expertise and how much toward signifiers of class and networking to cheat (er... fully participate) in the system?

If Schlosser's work offers any indication, we might start off by steering clear of the fast food industry and those businesses with which it is in vertical alignment. Line workers are overworked, underpaid, and untrained. Managers frequently find themselves in the line of fire of armed robberies. Franchise owners are exploited by greedy, unscrupulous franchisors seeking to milk the most money from each territory. Suppliers scrape for the microprofit residuals of repeated bidding wars and requirements contracts, and their sad sack workers struggle as much for survival as for survival wages -- especially in the slaughterhouse and meat packing industries, whose dysfunctional, unhygienic workplace abuses have barely changed since  the Jungle days of Upton Sinclair. Add to all this the uglification of America contributed by the fast food industry's contributions to the negative feedback loops of urban sprawl, widespread obesity, and rampant, cookie-cutter, consumerist culture, and well… obvious efficiencies aside, left unchecked, highly industrialized, assembly-line practices rarely present a pretty picture.

On the other hand, they have resulted in a darned tasty french fry. The secret? Beef fat flavoring. (Originally, beef fat itself, but the imperatives of market outreach to vegetarians and Hindus lead to more indirect approaches.) The peek inside flavor biochemistry makes a fascinating rest stop along the highway of enterprising depravity the author travels. Schlosser's book is mostly journalistic dynamite, with only thin slices of nonsense. Cherry-picking one exception to his otherwise even-handed text, chew on Schlosser's introduction to the wondrous workings of Willy Wonka's laboratories (author's metaphor, not mine):

The New Jersey Turnpike runs through the heart of the flavor industry, an industrial corridor dotted with refineries and chemical plants…. The [International Flavors & Fragrances] plant in Dayton[, NJ] is a huge pale blue building with a modern office complex attached to the front. It sits in an industrial park, not far from a BASF plastics factory, a Jolly French Toast factory, and a plant that manufactures Liz Claiborne cosmetics. Dozens of tractor-trailers were parked at the IFF loading dock the afternoon I visited, and a thin cloud of steam floated from the chimney. (pages 120-1)

While settings are important to a narrative, this description appears to me to be an attempt at guilt by association, an irrelevancy fallacy. For example, I'm a big fan of the work done at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, notwithstanding that their campus sits just down the road from a shooting range in an industrial park across the street from a strip mall packed with seedy eateries and a dry cleaners.

I consider myself a futurist, a person right at home with the idea that -- as the author is quick to observe -- technology is neutral. The innovation that feeds delicious, ready-to-eat burgers to time- and cash-strapped college students can, but need not also bleed corruption. The author offers a solid 30+ pages of ways forward toward a cleaner, healthier, humane and pathogen-purified product, the entirety worthy of serious consideration (heck, the implementation of only a few helped take down an e-coli outbreak). Schlosser's epilogue alone is a must read for its optimistic, constructive, and practical suggestions to curb the darker aspects and influences of fast food industry and culture. Taking into account the fact that this book has been in print for a full generation, I would not be surprised to learn that some of these reforms are by now well under way. Yet until I can be certain of that, I'll think it best to steer the kids away from all the scary clowns.

So I was eating a Big Mac at a McDonald's in the town where I was going to college, while reading this book, when a woman walked over to me and asked me what I was reading. I showed her the cover of the book. She asked me what it was about. I said it was about fat people in a fat nation. She was horrified with my response. (Let me tell you that I played football in college, and I've always had a few extra pounds on me: 5'10" 240lbs.; I was strong-side linebacker.) Anyways, she went on to ask why I would be reading this book in a McDonald's. I really didn't have an answer to her question; it just happened to be the one I grabbed before walking over for a burger. I should have asked her why she was so unsettled that I was reading this book while enjoying a Big Mac and chocolate shake, but I didn't. I shrugged and said it was a good book and she went away.

That was almost ten years ago; I've modified my eating habits. I guess as you get older the old metabolism decides to stop working at full capacity. I had all but forgotten about this book until I read a review of one of my GR friends, Nancy. After I read her review, I was reminded of how much I really like the book. Yes, it is sensationalistic journalism at its finest, but it does make some good points. And even with all the scare tactics thrown in the book for good measure, the book does raise awareness to exactly what we are putting in our bodies when we decide to eat fast food, and how the animals are treated before being slaughtered for our consumption.

(On a side note, there happens to be a section about meatpacking plants, and the one in the town I grew up in is mentioned by name. Hurrah Midwest!!)

Read the book. But make sure that you know just what exactly is be spotlighted. Like any piece of investigative journalism, the reader has a responsibility to think about the facts after being exposed to them.

Man, I'm kinda hungry.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

This classic about the fast food industry is now 20 years old and a bit dated. But the conditions it describes haven't changed much.

Very interesting - good perspective on all sides of fast-food