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).
Factory farming began in the 1920s soon after the discovery of vitamins A and D. Shirley Leung said, when these vitamins are added to feed, animals no longer require exercise and sunlight for growth (B2). This allowed large numbers of animals to be raised indoors year-round. The greatest problem that was faced in raising these animals indoors was the spread of disease, which was fought against in the 1940s with the development of antibiotics. Farmers found they could increase productivity and reduce the operating costs by using machines and assembly-line techniques. Unfortunately, this trend of mass production has resulted in incredible pain and suffering for the animals. Animals today raised on factory farms have had their genes manipulated and pumped full of antibiotics, hormones, and other chemicals to encourage high productivity. In the fast food industry, animals are not considered animals at all; “they are food producing machines” (BBC). They are confined to small cages with metal bars, ammonia-filled air and artificial lighting or no lighting at all. They are subjected to horrible mutilations: beak searing, tail docking, ear cutting and castration. The worst thing is that ...
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...of what really lurks behind your next double cheeseburger, because as Eric Schlosser stated: “You are what you eat” (10).
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Fast food, while a quick alternative to cooking, has always been known to be less healthy than traditional preparations, but the extent of its health benefits or detriments was not known until a lawsuit came out which inspired documentarian Morgan Spurlock to engage in a 30 day experiment. The resultant documentary specifically targeted McDonald’s, the largest fast food chain in the world, which also happens to be a major recipient of lawsuits linking obesity and their food. Spurlock endeavored to spend a thirty day period eating nothing but food that came from the golden arches, with the rules that he would supersize only when asked, and every time he was asked, and that he would have everything from the menu at least once. In the 2004 film Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock explores the concept that McDonald’s contributes to the nation’s obesity problem through the utilization of statistics and scientific evidence as a logical appeal, comedy and repulsive qualities as an emotional appeal, and s...
McDonald's is one of the multiple fast food restaurants that serve greasy and oversized meals that are harmful to the human body. Throughout a thirty day McDonald's only diet, Spurlock surrounds himself with logos, ethos, and pathos to impact the viewer's opinion on the true cost of eating fast food
McDonald’s is killing Americans, at least that is what Morgan Spurlock believes. In his documentary Super Size Me he embarks on a quest to not only describe and use himself as an example of the growing obesity trend, but to offer the viewers with base-line nutritional knowledge that will allow them to draw their own informed conclusions. Spurlock's primary intention is to prove through self-experimentation that eating solely McDonald's food is dangerous. His secondary intention is to denounce the rising obesity rate in American by using statistics, his own research, and the opinions of experts. His broader message is for a general audience while he tailors select chapters towards more specific demographics such as parents or McDonald's themselves.
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...
Pollan’s words, “You are what what you eat eats, too”, got me thinking about how not only am I eating my food, but I am also eating what my food ate (Pollan 84). For example, when I eat a hamburger, I’m not only eating cow meat and bread, but I’m also eating what the cow ate, which is now mostly corn and antibiotics. When I first learned that cows are mainly eating corn and antibiotics, I was appalled. Though many may say that animals are being fed antibiotics to combat all sorts of disease, an article written by Sabrina Tavernise, who wrote for the New York Times, even states, “Farmers learned that antibiotics helped animals grow rapidly, and they began to add the drugs to feed and water, with no prescriptions or sign of sickness in the animals” (Tavernise 2014). The main reason for cows being fed all of these antibiotics isn’t simply because the animals are sick. Instead the animals are being fed these drugs because these drugs apparently help shorten the amount of time for animals to be sent to slaughter
The Author and His Times: The author of Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser was born on August 17, 1959. Eric grew up in Manhattan, New York and also in Los Angeles where his father, Herbert Schlosser, was President of NBC. He attended the college of Princeton University where he studied American History, and soon getting his in British Imperial History. Eric’s career soon took off when he became a journalist for The Atlantic Monthly, quickly earning two medals in a matter of two years. After that he wrote Fast Food Nation in 2001 soon created it into a film in 2006 called Chew on This. As you can see, Eric Schlosser has a tremendous life and has written many articles and books, but only one thing has remained in common, they
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.
Andrew F. Smith once said, “Eating at fast food outlets and other restaurants is simply a manifestation of the commodification of time coupled with the relatively low value many Americans have placed on the food they eat”. In the non-fiction book, “Fast Food Nation” by Eric Schlosser, the author had first-hand experiences on the aspects of fast food and conveyed that it has changed agriculture that we today did not have noticed. We eat fast food everyday and it has become an addiction that regards many non-beneficial factors to our health. Imagine the wealthy plains of grass and a farm that raises barn animals and made contributions to our daily consumptions. Have you ever wonder what the meatpacking companies and slaughterhouses had done to the meat that you eat everyday? Do you really believe that the magnificent aroma of your patties and hamburgers are actually from the burger? Wake up! The natural products that derive from farms are being tampered by the greed of America and their tactics are deceiving our perspectives on today’s agricultural industries. The growth of fast food has changed the face of farming and ranching, slaughterhouses and meatpacking, nutrition and health, and even food tastes gradually as time elapsed.
The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, a work examining the country’s fast food industry (Gale). Schlosser sets off chapter 5: “Why the Fries Taste Good,” in Aberdeen,
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Print.
Factory farms have portrayed cruelty to animals in a way that is horrific; unfortunately the public often does not see what really goes on inside these “farms.” In order to understand the conditions present in these factory farms, it must first be examined what the animals in these factory farms are eating. Some of the ingredients commonly used in feeding the animals inside factory farms include the following: animal byproducts, plastic, drugs and chemicals, excessive grains, and meat from members of the same species. (Adams, 2007) These animals are tortured and used for purely slaughter in order to be fed on. Typically large numbers of animals are kept in closed and tight confinements, having only little room to move around, if even that. These confinements can lead to suffocation and death and is not rare. Evidence fr...
Works Cited Schlosser, Eric. A. Fast Food Nation. N. p. : Harper Perennial, 2001. Print.
McDonald’s, one of America’s fastest growing fast food restaurants, has made more than its share of money within the last twenty years, serving more than 46 million people daily. They have twice as many restaurants as Burger King and more restaurants than KFC, Wendy’s, and Taco Bell combined. Often children have the dream of eating fast food for every meal of every day. Well, Morgan Spurlock took the challenge to see how dangerous it would be to eat McDonalds for every meal. He also took the challenge in response to a lawsuit against McDonalds by a family whose children became obese by the contents of its meals.
The animals that are raised in factory farms, and the farms are ran just like any other business. According to the article Factory Framing, Misery of Animals, the factory farming industry strives to maximize output while minimizing cost, always at the animal’s expense. “The giant corporations that run most factory farms have found that they can make more money by squeezing as many animals as possible into tiny spaces, even though many of the animals die from disease or infection” (Factory Farming). This is actually quit disgusting that we eat food that walks around in each other’s feces and can attract disease. These animals live a life of abuse, but we sit back and say it’s okay because we will eventually eat them. “Antibiotics are used to make animals grow faster and to keep them alive in the unsanitary conditions. Research shows that factory farms widespread use of antibiotics can lead to antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threatens human health” (Factory Farming). These animals aren’t treated with proper care and we act as if they are machines. Chickens for example, become so big and distorted that their legs can longer support them. Eventually they die because they can longer walk to get food or water. According to Factory Farming, most of these animals have been genetically manipulated to grow larger and to produce more eggs and milk than they naturally