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.

In some ways obsolete because its deed is done; Schlosser may have been blowing the lid off the industry 20 years ago, but now even the most unsavory details of his book are common knowledge. Americans are fat, corporations are greedy, fry cooks sometimes spit in the food, “there is shit in the meat,” etc. The book also is, honestly, kind of an inelegant info dump.

Why read it? For those human moments. I will never forget the story of Kenny Dobbins.

so basically i’m becoming a vegetarian after reading this

This, I feel, is now a classic book in the 'wrongs going on in the food-making world'. Although this is from 2001, I feel many of the revelations are still true, unfortunately. It is US-centric, yet at least some of the facts appear worldwide, depending sometimes on the country. But it did make me feel wary about eating fast food if I was traveling in US.

This book of 3 years of research talks about the industry of fast food, and its consequences on people, animals, and nature. There are notes and a bibliography at the end, and two afterwords. The city of Colorado Springs, and some other places near it, are the example-centers for many stories within.

This is not a story merely of dangers within food, and on treatment of animals, but also on people suffering because of it. Some of the people are given here as examples of this, and one is left with great sadness after reading their fate. I will now go on to list the chapters. The book is divided in two: first part talk mostly about the business and people behind the counter, the second part focuses on food and global business.

1. Beginnings: history of many fast food companies, including the influence of car culture, and looks of each place
2. Getting to the kids: Disney's involvement, advertising, the toys...
3. The staff: in US often teens - part-time, unskilled, low-pay; causing dropping out of school sometimes; the stricts rules, unpaid overworking, lack of unions, violence in the workplace
4. Being a franchisee (incl. history, rules): success not guaranteed, conflicts with the franchiser (Subway esp. bad)
-
5. Potatoes = french fries: how it is done, how farmers suffer (esp. smaller), where the good taste comes from: 'natural flavor' (not necessarily healthier than the beef tallow used before). Here we find the often-quoted ingredients list for stuff in strawberry milkshake - long and hair-rising).
6. Cattle business: here we find ranchers suffering just like the potato farmers above, small plots merging into bigger ones. Similar is also going on with poultry growers. Some ranchers commit suicide, like the example of Hank here.
7. Meatpacking industry: workers often (illegal-sometimes) immigrants, often illiterate and unaware of any rights; high turnover rate (usual lasting time 3 months); creating poverty-and-crime/drug-ridden areas around; the smell from feedlots (the shit); history: from urban to rural, away from unions.
8. Health risks of workers in said industry: from 'knife cut scars' to 'DEATH'; the working conditions are dangerous, especially because of the speed demanded; many accidents go unreported (and injury reviews are often falsified); abusive supervisors, especially for women who get verbal/sexual abuse also from male workers; especially bad for sanitation crew who work with chroline-mixed, hot water: poor visibility, heath, hit with water by other workers, falling risks, etc. Later the author tells us that while the places he reported about were bad, it was *worse* in Texas.
9. Contaminated food (you might refrain from eating when you read this chapter): the e.coli, salmonella, listeria. The meatpacking systems' lax food safety pratices does not help. What bad can be introduced in the meat besides those mentioned: many, but especially SHIT. Children being vulnerable also through school food (which gets cheap meats). Feedlot issues: worn-out dairy cattle, all the shit around, what they eat (other animals, incl. cats and dogs). The industry goes for denial, inspection-avoiding, recall-avoiding/hiding. The meat also can end up in the home freezers.
10. Fast food globally: rise of obesity, less use of traditional food, agricultural production imports, advertisement for kids, spying on protesters. Global conquest especially post-Cold War, causing protests.
Epilogue 1: Different ways of raising beef; Conway's Red Top (closed in 2012) and In-N-Out (still going strong); what good influence can come from McDonald's power; what even the ordinary consumer can do.
Epilogue 2 (added after first prints): on Mad Cow: from feeding other animals to cows (same sort of feeding happens in other places - poultry, hogs, pets, zoo animals). Reaction to the problem: not addressed well at first. This shows that contaminated food appears in other countries too; although US has avoided serious Mad Cow stuff, who know what will happen? Also addresses reaction to the first prints of the book.

The ending of the book shows the authors' optimistic views about the future of fast food industry; it might be different now. But anyway, this book did make me think, even if some points vary by country. I have some trust in my country's meat industry so that doesn't worry me here. Still, it did raise my awareness of workers' rights, what cautions I might use while traveling, and of favoring more my country own burger chains, I guess *lol*
This is a classic book, one that makes you think, one that might make you lose your appetite for a second, and maybe make you grateful for some things that you don't have (bad working conditions, ill health). It seemed first a bit frightening to read this, but I was glad in the end for the experience. Well worth it.

Far from being yet another one of these easy thrashing of thrash food sold in fast food, the journalist Eric Schlosser delivers here a well-researched investigation of everything surrounding the manufacturing of such junk. From jobs on offer in such 'restaurants' (the sadly infamous 'McJobs') to the consequences of such 'food' upon our health, the picture offered is frankly worrisome, even sinister.

Thank goodness, here in Europe we have at least stricter regulations when it comes to everything pertaining to food! In the USA, though, the situation is far from being the case, and the impact upon people's health and even the economy is, well, quite catastrophic. Farmers cultivating potatoes are subjected to the dictate of powerful industrials; the beef meats which were once raised by cowboys in ranches is now a national identity on its way out; working conditions in slaughter houses are absolutely deplorable, with a foreign labour (at times illegal immigrants) being exploited mercilessly; the poultry industry is absolutely dreadful (a concerning fact considering that chicken remains the favourite meat sold to children -occasional cases of E-coli, sadly, are a telling issue...)... Scandals after scandals and at a time when fast food and their consequences (farming, meat industry, working practices...) are clearly negative, a question will face the reader over and over: are they sustainable, at least being the model they are now?

Personally, it's been more than a decade that I haven't set foot into a McDonald, and, as a vegetarian, I kind of knew most of the issues outlined in here. Nevertheless, even when you might think (as I kind of did) that you know it all, such read still manage to lift the veil upon even more shocking practices from a whole highly profitable industry; practices which are as dangerous as they are disgraceful. It's shocking, scandalous, and even gross at time for sure; yet it's also what we allowed to happen for junk to end up in our plates...

An eye-opener.

3.5. To be completely honest, the first maybe 1/3 of this book was kind of boring and I was very close to simply quitting. I’m glad I persevered. Though this book is more than 20 years old, the horrible truths it exposes in the fast food and industrial agriculture settings are if anything even more relevant now. Not an easy read, but an important one.

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.

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

Writing wise, this book is bogged down with a lot of economic and business statistics and information, and while I’m sure that’s fascinating for some people, for me it was dry and difficult to trudge through sometimes. The historical background information started to get boring as well; I suppose I had expected and hoped for more of a human interest aspect. The stories that stood out the most to me were the ones about employees being mistreated and taken advantage of in meatpacking facilities, and the high injury rates among those workers. Oh, and also the fact that it is someone’s job to literally slit the throats of hundreds of cows a day!

Content wise, I was generally appalled by what I read in Fast Food Nation, but I came away from this thinking that the fast food industry is just one part of a huge, greedy, corrupt system. I am now more concerned about the lack of regulation and accountability within the meatpacking industry and the negative effects of globalization and Americanization of the world, but I suppose all of those things I just mentioned go hand in hand.

Although this might seem like a chicken-or-the-egg type situation, the author does make the excellent point that huge companies do have the power to shift the behavior of their suppliers if that’s what is being demanded by enough consumers. McDonald’s, for example, is one of the world’s top purchasers of beef, potatoes and chicken, so if it started requiring that the slaughterhouses and feedlots they do business with take better care of their workers and take more precaution in the preparation of the product, these companies would have to comply if they wanted to keep making money (much like when Nike was forced by consumers to address the poor working conditions in sweatshops in Asia).

I would think that most people know about this kind of thing by now and either don’t care or don’t think one person can make a difference, since it is such a huge system that is so ingrained in our society. I definitely fall in the latter category, so this book made me feel somewhat helpless, not to mention hopeless! However, the new afterward does talk about the shift in food culture in America in the last 10 or so years since Fast Food Nation was published, the new focus on sustainability and nutrition, different programs to bring agriculture and food education to inner cities, etc., so maybe there is hope after all.

Random side note: While reading this, I realized that I've eaten in a McDonald’s in almost every country I've been to (which is admittedly not a huge list) and it’s crazy to think about the “humble beginnings” of this huge fast food empire.

Well, I finished that considerably sooner than I expected to. Mainly because the last 44% of the book (I read it on my Kindle) is taken up entirely by an enormous bibliography, photograph credits section and an incredibly in-depth index.

I wasn't sad; by the 56% mark I'd had enough, to be honest. I'm not saying it's a bad book by any means but it's not the kind of book one enjoys.

The book held few surprises for me, I'm sad to say. I already knew at least 50% of the information contained in it and another 40% I could have guessed, based on my knowledge of how big business works. Perhaps I'm just too cynical to be shocked by this stuff or perhaps I've just accepted the fact that large companies will do absolutely anything they think they can get away with to increase their profit margins as a basic fact of life in the twenty first century.

'What about the other 10%?' I hear the more attentive mathematicians amongst you cry! Well, the only part of this book I did find a bit shocking was the section that dealt with some of the horrific injuries suffered by employees in meat packing factories in the US. Injuries and deaths, I should say. Bone-chilling stuff, particularly the part about the meat packing employee who fell into a vat and was rendered into lard. Bad as that is, it's not the worst part (no sausage jokes, please); the lard was then SOLD AND EATEN!

Ghhaarrrccckkkk!!!

Anyway, I'm not dwelling on that any longer than absolutely necessary... Let's just say that this is an informative book that everybody should read... probably... It might give you nightmares, though; don't say I didn't warn you! This being said, you probably won't get the desired effect from the book unless you're considerably less cynical than I am...

Right! That's that review written! Now... Burger King or KFC for dinner tonight? Decisions, decisions...

I may be a sucker for propoganda (I'm not questioning the authenticity of anything inparticular), but I really enjoyed how this book put things out there. Vegetarianism is so sexy.

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