There are some shady rhetorical techniques used in this book. I particularly mean the chapter that begins with the little boy who dies after eating at a fast food restaurant. At the chapter's opening is a picture of the boy. It's sad. Then the chapter tells the story. Schlosser builds up a load of pathos to prove his point that fast food is so awful it kills children. Then, in a cursory statement, Schlosser divulges that the boy had other problems and died of a cause unrelated to the food he ate. What?! The book is loaded with these kinds of flaws. Which is sad because I think the thesis is important. That food is awful. And the situation must change.
I taught a research and writing class with this book, and most of my students were at first appalled by Schlosser's finding. Then, after we analyzed his rhetorical techniques, they were appalled by Schlosser. In the end, no student took Schlosser's thesis seriously. We didn't exactly throw a fast food party, but I think everyone would have eaten the food had we done it.
That does not mean the book has no value. It explains the fascinating history of the fast food industry. That, in itself, got this book three stars on my ratings.

Somewhat outdated, so some of the statistics and practices may be wrong, but it is still a fascinating read on account of what is described in terms of human behavior.

I grew up with McDonald's, Pizza Hut, KFC and pretty most chains that now you can find globally. This book gave me a very good insight towards the fast food industry we have, how the food industry has changed with the introduction of fast food, the power of lobbying with the mass large firms in U.S. and many others.. It shed so much light on how this humongous industry functions and how it became what it became

What intrigued me throughout this read was how disgusting firms can be in protecting themselves and in their quest for seeking more profits. And I guess this doesn't apply to just food but to many other industries in the world.

And the chapter on meat, meat packing and the diseases.
I squirmed at every page of it but boy, it was like reality slapping in my face. I'll never look at meat the same way again.

Definitely a good read.

Some pretty shocking information. Reading about the cattle production reminded me too much of "The Jungle" It was very gross :(

Perhaps I am hard to shock. Perhaps it's a case of me having worked in the food production sector, as well as in food safety and in customer service. Perhaps I'm just a cynical bugger already, but this was mildly interesting as opposed to rocking my world in any sense

The author attempts to do a Naomi Klein 'No Logo' on the subject of 'Super Size Me' (which this precedes). It's well researched and generally comes over as convincing and properly grounded. By this I probably mean that the bias is subtle and not forced down the throat of the reader - the later sections on microbiology (about which I have expertise) contained a number of inaccuracies and assumptions which made me expect that the earlier chapters had also been slanted in the same manner. However, the key messages are pretty sound, and it was an interesting - albeit possibly now fifteen years further worse down the line in some areas and fifteen years better in others - read.

I just found some of the criticisms of the industry a little assuming. Lots about the dangers (obesity, working conditions) and not so much about the benefits (convenience, employment) and an almost complete lack of acknowledgement of free will and choice. Yes, it's not great that kids are exposed to adverts, but there is money for schools from these companies. Teenage staff are poorly paid and have a hard introduction to working life, but if they didn't have these jobs they wouldn't earn a bit of money and get a bit of independence. Fast food businesses puts huge demands on food processors who cut corners to keep it cheap, but that's because consumers put huge demands on fast food businesses to cut corners and keep it cheap. If you eat too much crap you will be unhealthy, but if you didn't know that then you deserve to get spotty and fat. There is such a thing as choice and this means parents can be responsible about what their kids eat, and be responsible about their own diets too.

"Откройте стеклянную дверь, почувствуйте поток холодного воздуха, зайдите внутрь и оглянитесь вокруг. Посмотрите на детей, работающих на кухне; посетителей, сидящих за столом; рекламу игрушек; цветные фотографии над прилавком. Подумайте о том, откуда появилась эта еда, как она производилась, что именно значит каждая покупка фастфуда, представьте себе этот «волновой эффект». Подумайте об этом. Или повернитесь и уйдите. Еще не поздно. Даже в стране фастфуда вы можете выбрать свой путь."

Schlosser takes us on a crash course in American history, and it all starts with McDonalds. At the same time that Ray Kroc was envisioning how McDonalds could change the world (and make him rich), Eisenhower was overseeing the construction of the superhighway system. Almost immediately, fast food restaurants began mushrooming on the edges of freeway entrances, and America was never the same.

Fast food isn't just unhealthy, its destroying our culture. Instead of looking around at our beautiful environment, we see mostly urban sprawl: gigantic neon signs, and cookie-cutter subdivisions. Not only does this loss of beauty affect our souls, our standard of living has gone down. Gone are many good jobs. Meatcutter jobs that were part of the middle classes are now mainly occupied by illegal immigrants who are so desperate they will risk losing their fingers (or their lives) in these dangerous, difficult jobs. And what has happened to the livelihood of farmers is a national shame.

Being that this book is 20 years old, there is reason for optimism. Slow food has become a movement. Organic foods are sold in every grocery store. But we still have to make the choice. The choice of what world we wish to live in. The temptations to stop for fast food are still there. But improvements that Schlosser was dreaming of are happening, more and more.

I recommend this book because these gory details and tragic histories could freeze into our brains and be a fit reminder to bypass these common and convenient foods and begin to make changes in our lives. The history of these companies is important to know. They cared about keeping their pockets lined, at the expense of their workers. At the expense of peoples lives.

Varför suger alla skolböcker

With a lot of research work thrown in Shlosser tells us where, what, how, why and the when of fast food... holding back nothing!
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H'e primary focus is/was the use of artificial flavorings and colourings.. additives. At the time a best selling bombshell of a book, but now it just feels that we're all better informed but those that love fast food live by 'you only live once'!
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7 out of 12.
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This book was sooo tasty I might buy another

I began reading Fast Food Nation under the impression that it would be something like a book version of the very frightening documentary Supersize Me. An analysis of just what fast food, especially fast food consumed day in, day out, day after day, year after year, can do to your body.

I was wrong. Schlosser does touch briefly on how a sustained diet of fast food can make you ill by pumping concentrated doses of fats, sugars, and highly processed, chemical-heavy junk into your system, but that’s only a very minor part of what this book covers. He begins with what seems a nostalgic trip down memory lane: a history of the ‘founding fathers’ of the fast food industry, how men like the McDonald brothers, Ray Kroc, and Carl Karcher, and others, riding on the back of the booming automobile industry, set up restaurants to cater to people on the move. Food cooked factory-style assembly line, self service, drive throughs. Uniformity, low prices, no cutlery needed.

So far so good: interesting, informative, but not scary.

It gets scary the deeper Schlosser goes into what makes the fast food industry so bad for pretty much everybody except the big wigs in the industry. One section at a time, Schlosser examines the fast food industry from different angles. The young and minimally trained employees who work behind the counters. The children to whom this food and drink is marketed ruthlessly, using a ‘cradle to grave’ approach. The franchisees. The suppliers, in particular those who supply the potatoes and process them into fries, and the slaughterhouses that process the beef and chicken that go into most burger-and-fries orders. The chemists and scientists who create the flavour cocktails that make your shake or your chicken patty or your fries taste the way they do—always.

He looks into how the fast food industry has become the face of the globalisation (or, perhaps more specifically, Americanization) of the world. And how there could be an alternative, how the same burger-and-fries meal could be clean, safe, and ethically produced.

Fast Food Nation was an eye-opener for me. Some (a very little) of what Schlosser mentioned, I already knew of. A lot was new and horrifying. The sheer lack of ethics, the callousness and greed that guide the most inhuman behaviour on the part of the fast food industry and those who supply it took my breath away. There were facts here, too, that I hadn’t even thought about (for instance, that fast food stores, often full of cash and staffed mostly by teenagers, are easy targets for robberies). The conditions in slaughterhouses and meatpackers’ factories. What cattle are really fed.

If you are a frequent customer of McDonald’s and the like, this book might help you think differently. Not just about how your burger can kill you, but also how it’s possibly killed, debilitated, or otherwise negatively impacted many people in its journey to you.

A must-read.

When it comes to wordplay, Eric Schlosser, author of the bestseller Fast Food Nation, is a gourmet chef. But on closer inspection, the arguments he cooks up result in a serious case of intellectual indigestion.

Schlosser, a talented writer and even better self-promoter, came to fame with the 2001 publication of the book. With the help of the media, which hyped the book without challenging Schlosser's "facts," Fast Food Nation made The New York Times bestseller list. Many publications put it on year-end lists of the "best books of 2001" -- resulting in renewed interest.

Schlosser was smart enough to know that a study of the intricacies of the "fast food" industry would not appeal to most book-buyers. So instead of presenting an objective investigation of this major industry, or giving a fair shake to companies like McDonald's (which offers one in 15 Americans entry into the workforce), Schlosser used "fast food" as the basis for a rhetorical assault on capitalism.

"Greed" is the ingredient that gives Fast Food Nation its flavor. Schlosser seems utterly shocked that these businesses exist... in order to make money! And to rage against business, Schlosser had no problem in engaging in what The Wall Street Journal called "cavalier manipulation of data."

Fast Food Nation is piled high with anecdotes and served with a heaping helping of skewed data. It's all intended to support Schlosser's case that "fast food has infiltrated every nook and cranny of American society" in harmful ways. It's not about the food itself; Schlosser himself says fast food tastes "pretty good" and that "the odds are low that eating a burger is going to make you sick." Instead, it's a diatribe against the very concept of making a profit by creating a product that consumers enjoy.
Schlosser says he doesn't eat "ground beef anymore," but not because he's "worried about getting sick from it; I'm pissed off at the corporate greed." He blasts McDonald's for reaping in "17 cents in pure profit" on every large Coke it sells, assuming that the sort of people who buy his book (at a profit to the author) will be disgusted by the notion of making money.

But he's strangely silent on the benefits to consumers of a hamburger that costs only a dollar -- except to use this, too, to attack the industry. Schlosser claims that "increasing the federal minimum wage by a dollar would [only] add about two cents to the cost of a [99-cent] fast food hamburger," ignoring a nearly endless supply of available economic data to the contrary generated by university economists including winners of the Nobel Prize in economics.

Instead, Schlosser uses one report from the Department of Agriculture to make his case -- and inappropriately at that. His two cents "evidence" comes from a study of labor costs and price hikes for the sale of prepared food and drinks in general, not just the fast food industry. More importantly, 75 percent of the employees studied were not even in the minimum wage range.

Schlosser is too savvy a polemicist to let something as small as facts stand in the way of a good rant. Counting every minor scratch and bump, Schlosser claims that meatpacking is "the most dangerous job in the United States." The government's Bureau of Labor Statistics disagrees. On its ranking of truly dangerous industries -- those with the most "injury and illness cases involving days away from work" -- meatpacking doesn't even make the top 25.
But bad data and a lack of logic do not stop Schlosser from claiming the worst about the fast food industry. He tries to have it both ways on overtime hours, favorably noting that the Depression-era Fair Labor Standards Act placed limitations on mandatory overtime.

Then, on the very next page, Schlosser complains "managers try to make sure that each worker is employed less than forty hours a week, thereby avoiding any overtime payments." In fact, labor unions support the very practices Schlosser condemns, in part because they keep workers from being overburdened, and also because they encourage the creation of more entry-level jobs.

This is not the only place where, despite Schlosser's progressive politics, he seems almost reactionary. Schlosser notes that "inside job" robberies at fast food restaurants occur because those they employ -- the young, poor, and minorities -- are also responsible for much of the nation's violent crime. Is he suggesting these at-risk individuals should not be given jobs and a chance?

Decidedly selective in his presentation of data, Schlosser realizes that a cavalcade of deceptions is necessary to leave the reader with his funhouse-mirror image of the fast food industry, where fat-cat executives in fancy suits get rich while entry-level restaurant workers struggle to get by.

These are just a few selections from Fast Food Nation's menu of mistruths. Schlosser, himself the wealthy son of a former NBC president, knows exactly what he is doing: Crafting a politically motivated weapon to fire against restaurants that play such a vital role in helping entry-level and at-risk Americans enter the workforce.
Professional rabble-rousers like Schlosser pretend to care about those poorer than them -- just like Schlosser pretends to care about the facts. But in reality, these are just the means to an end: The glorification of political dogma at the expense of truth. And that is the most unappetizing morsel of them all.