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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Eric Schlosser is an investigative reporter, who really did his research. This book is about the history of the fast food industry. There are two parts. The first part is called, "The American Way." Schlosser goes into how the franchise grew. I love rags to riches stories. The author talks about the McDonalds brothers idea of fast food and how Ray Kroc helped to expand their restaurants. He goes into Walt Disney's influence, making McDonald's more marketable toward children. He talks about the factory equipment, making assembly lines for these restaurants. I was surprised by the robberies that took place in different McDonald's restaurants, that were committed by former employees. I was saddened to read about the nine year old girl who was shot and killed. This was in the late 90s. Then the author goes into more detail of franchising the business.
The second part of the book is called, "Meat and Potatoes." I didn't enjoy this part of the book. It was really difficult for me to read content wise. Schlosser talks about the McDonalds product, how everything is flavored. I didn't know that animal fat was used in their french fries and that beef flavoring was added to their chicken nuggets.The author goes into what the lives of farmers and meatpackers are like. This was disturbing to me. I had a hard time reading about the mistreatment and abuse of migrant workers/people who work in meatpacking facilities. Reading about the passing of so many lives that could have been prevented. The way the meat is handled, makes me want to be vegan. Reading about E. choli was just gross. How rancid meat was packaged and sold. I'm not going into any more detail about that. Overall, this was an interesting read and something that I never really gave a lot of pause to. I personally don't go out to eat and cook at home. Fast food is really impactful in our culture, in our life.

Oh my GOD. You will never eat fast food again (or any processed food for tht matter). It is incredulous what food comapanies are getting away with - what they allow to get into the food they rpocess, the unscrupulous way they handle employees, the calaous way they treat consumers. Please read this book. Save yourself, your kids, our small farmers, and our planet. Put your money somehwere else.

I'm not entirely sure if I can really say that I read this, because I only read around three quarters of it, but I do know I'm not going to continue it.
I read this for a class, so it was never going to be the most captivating choice, but I did actually find some interest in it. By the title, I assumed that this was going to be more about obesity and things like that, but it was more about big corporations and greed, which is a conversation I do enjoy participating in. That being said, it was a little bit boring, and I unfortunately don't want to commit more time to it. I did like Schlosser's commentary, though.

"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."

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.

Hello Propaganda

Although Eric Schlosser wasn’t paid 500 dollars by a socialist magazine, nor was he alive in 1904, his muckraking style and focused agenda mirror that of Upton Sinclair, the author of The Jungle. Characteristics that plague both Fast Food Nation and The Jungle include anti-capitalism, one sidedness, and convincing details that are enough to “make a vegetarian out of Arnold Schwarzenegger (Seattle Weakly),” or in Sinclair’s case, enough to launch a government investigation. Both Schlosser and Sinclair are examples of how large an impact journalism, or shall I say muckraking, can have in this free country we call America.
Despite their seemingly good intentions, however, it is impossible to ignore the overly romantic, even manipulative way Sinclair and Schlosser present their views. They feel the need to attack capitalism and “greedy companies” for every single problem we face, from disease to drug abuse. Schlosser goes as far as blaming armed robberies on McDonald’s policies rather than the criminals themselves. On the other hand, Schlosser portrays every single unskilled, blue-collar worker as a helpless victim, chewed up and spit out by evil companies. What’s more, I couldn’t help but notice that Kenny’s story from Fast Food Nation was remarkably similar to that of Jurgis’s.
But I am not fooled. I am righteous enough to challenge this propaganda and think logically for myself. Sinclair and Schlosser are trying to turn boss and worker against each other; they are trying to make enemies out of partners. There is no good guy or bad guy in this scenario. This is not a comic book; this is real life and real life comes with problems that we work together to fix. What saddens me most about Fast Food Nation is the prospect that all the time and research put into explaining, “why fries taste good,” could’ve been used to expose the live boiling of cats in China, or to enlighten underprivileged children on the importance of education.

"Non à MacMerde"

I’ve always indignantly asked whoever cared to listen how come America, the all powerful America, that banished smoking and prohibited alcohol in the name of public health, does not seem to see the close relationship between obesity (the second cause of mortality in the USA) and fast food and lets fast food industry flourish.

I’d already guessed the reason, but after reading Schlosser’s book I know for sure. And so will you, if you’re interested in the subject, for there is a lot of accurate information of how the fast food chains and the meat industry gained their power and controlled the market until they became a symbol of modern American civilization, to be envied and followed by other nations:

Simply eating at a McDonald's in Beijing seems to elevate a person's social status. The idea that you are what you eat has been enthusiastically promoted for years by Den Fujita, the eccentric billionaire who brought McDonald's to Japan three decades ago. "If we eat McDonald's hamburgers and potatoes for a thousand years," Fujita once promised his countrymen, "we will become taller, our skin will become white, and our hair will be blonde."

Like the huge epidemics in the past, fast food chains are continually spreading, killing people all around the world, for obesity is an illness as fatal as any other incurable disease:

In China, the proportion of overweight teenagers has roughly tripled in the past decade. In Japan, eating hamburgers and French fries has not made people any blonder, though it has made them fatter. Overweight people were once a rarity in Japan.

Moreover, often fast food is contaminated with E-coli or Salmonella, since the process of meat preparation resembles nowadays to a factory assembly line where speed is more important than hygiene. I never liked hamburgers, but after reading what I after learnt to be probably the most quoted line in the book…

There is shit in the meat

…nobody will ever convince me to taste one again.

There are many disturbing facts in “Fast Food Nation”, like improper conditions of working in slaughterhouses and meatpacking companies, the savage exploitation of illegal immigrants and / or almost illiterate workers, the pressure of politicians who create or block laws to defend their own interest in the industry, the alarming lack of protection of children’s health by not only permitting but even encouraging the entry of fast food in schools’ cafeterias whilst heavily advertising it in front of them, the rubbish cattle and poultry eat (like dead pigs and dead horses), the rubbish in the ground meat (which brings “far more fecal bacteria in the average American kitchen sink than on the average American toilet seat”), etc.

All that should warn us of the danger not only of the consequences of bad eating but also of carelessly ignoring the fast food influence on our society, from health to economics, politics and even aesthetics. Are we truly intended to be remembered, for generations to come, as that dark age of fat people who never cared what they put in their mouth? Wake up, people, says Eric Schlosser all along his disquieting study, speak up, don’t let yourself slaughtered on the table of big profit and low esteem of the huge companies. You have the power to stop it, do it before it is too late:

Pull open the glass door, feel the rush of cool air, walk inside, get in line, and look around you, look at the kids working in the kitchen, at the customers in their seats, at the ads for the latest toys, study the backlit color photographs above the counter, think about where the food came from, about how and where it was made, about what is set in motion by every single fast food purchase, the ripple effect near and far, think about it. Then place your order. Or turn and walk out the door. It's not too late. Even in this fast food nation, you can still have it your way.

This is one of those books that should open the eyes of most readers to the food and flavor industry in America.

As with so many aspects of American life, Schlosser deftly examines how humans are studied and then manipulated into following our drives, both conscious and subconscious, and how those that profit from learning about our behavior, continue to do so.

In reading this book, people will see food, production of food and the marketing and selling of food, in a new light.

I thought that this book was going to be like Super-size Me only in book form. Not that the author would eat McDonalds everyday but that he would talk mostly about the unhealthiness of fast food.

I was wrong.

The author barely touches the "fast food is full of fat and fattiness" deal. He mainly talks about the greed, power, and evilness of fast food companies. I would read this book in the mornings as i drank my coffee and I would get so mad at how only a few people can make so many people miserable. I would cry at the working conditions of the meat industry (and trust me, i'm not crying over the cows. it's the workers that have it so bad that i just want to take them all away from that horrible job and give them all sacks of money and comfortable chairs to sit on.)

He discusses the ranchers, the feedlots, the slaughter houses, and the packaging companies. He talks about the potato farms. He talks about minimum wage. He talks about how our government is supposed to regulate and keep us safe from unhealthy meat and that it not only doesn't do that, but CAN'T do that, legally. The USDA cannot recall meat that is unhealthy. It has no rights to do that. The meat companies can voluntarily recall meat, but they can't be forced to, even if the meat is infected with epidemic proportions of e. coli 0157:H7, which, as far as i can tell, is like ebola, it turns your organs into mush.

The meat industry is so corrupt and has bought so many republican congressmen that it has no watchdogs, no police. OSHA is not allowed to investigate a factory unless the injury records show above the national average. The meat companies hire doctors to lie about the severity of injuries and, and, and they keep two injury logs. the real one and the one they turn in to OSHA. This is illegal. And when the companies are caught they have to pay a piddly fine.
The FDA doesn't care about the food you eat. They only care about prescription drugs.
The USDA is not allowed to police the thing it was set up to police. (This is not new and it's also the reason i don't drink milk.) The author also says that the government will not change any of this. That the only way to make some change is if McDonalds will make the change. So if enough people complain and make bad press about McDonalds using nasty beef instead of clean, grass-fed cows...nothing will change.

He discusses the franchise/franchisee relationships.

He discusses the hisory of fast food and the american west. It's amazing.

This book was so interesting. If I were to become a vegetarian it would not be because I had a problem with the way cows are treated. Nay, it would be because of the treatment of humans.

Книга, която описва развитието на индустрията на бързата закуска в САЩ. Четох я, защото има и филм по нея и я превъзнасят като монументално журналистическо разкритие на тайните на големите fast food корпорации.

Като цяло, нищо особено интересно. Дреме ми на дедовия коя година точно Макдоналдс е почнал да прави чийзбургерите с 1 унция по-големи или Нестле да слага захар в киселото мляко. Ако ядеш като прасе, ще приличаш на такова, не са ти виновни "корпорациите"...

The topics documented in this book have been meticulously researched.
This book is filled with many more reasons for people to abstain from supporting the horrors of the meat industry.