Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation

Summer Reading Essay: Fast Food Nation

Have you ever thrown up after eating fast food? If so, it most likely occurred after eating tainted or ill-prepared meat. Eric Schlosser, an award-winning journalist, explores the manufacturing, distribution, and consequence of today’s diet of convenience in his book Fast Food Nation. Throughout the text, Schlosser appeals to his reader’s emotion through troubling imagery, anecdotal evidence, and first-hand accounts, coupled with raw statistics to convey the terrifying truth about fast food in today’s world.

Disturbing imagery is recurrent throughout the novel, Schlosser creates detailed descriptions of everything from the slaughterhouse to an E. Coli outbreak caused by eating bad meat. When he takes

on the task of describing the condition in the slaughterhouse, he creates an image that seems unreal, a river of blood that is knee high and the constant stunning and killing of cows. With that illustration Schlosser appeals to emotions of sympathy, anger, and disgust, he inspires the reader to become very sympathetic to the workers and the animals. As it appears in the text the workers are involved in a very demanding job for little pay; it also sets up the cows to seem mistreated, being paralyzed before being killed, not knocked unconscious, but unable to move.

The book is not just a first-hand account, it also uses a high amount of stories; each taken from people who have worked for the fast food machine.

One particular story that aims to compromise the established ethos of food manufacturers is taken from a man by the name of Kenny Dobbins. After a rough start to life, being abused as a child and ending up illiterate, Kenny worked for a manufacturing plant in Iowa, where his job all day was lifting crates of meat. After many years of service and several freak accidents: being hit by a train, sterilizing the whole plant with chlorine and no protective gear, and having heart attacks on site from being overworked. Monfort, the manufacturing plant, decided to fire Kenny and simultaneously refused to give any amount of workmen's compensation, this had left him with no job, two kids, and a health insurance bill of $600 every month. This story not only leads to the manufacturer's instant loss of ethos but also inspires an immediate sympathetic reaction to

Kenny.

Schlosser also references high amounts of statistics throughout this novel, but he also presents it in a highly intelligent way.

The statistics are used to back up claims that seem to have no apparent weight behind them, yet when provided a statistic like, “In 1970, Americans spent 6 billion on fast food; in 2001, they spent more than 110 billion” (Schlosser 3), a whole argument seems to validate itself. They are also used to logically progress portions of the book that offer a significant amount of questionable activities done by large companies, which allows him to slow down the plot and allow the reader to reassess what they know to be true. When the facts are presented, he embeds them deep into the active story, ones that are real emotional, for it helps strengthen the bond between the reader and the subject. Even though an emotional connection is the primary type of influence on the reader, a logical standpoint allows the message to be prominent throughout the

novel.

With all of Schlosser’s unique forms of persuasion, the book quickly ascends through the ranks of corruption in business from bribing to understanding all of the fast food machine’s misuse of its workers and paying customers. Also, it goes on to explain how they abused the trust they initially earned. As all of his methods are combined with various accounts, the message becomes more and more apparent, but it just seems to be a message no one wants to listen to today. It showcases the political corruption on a multitude of levels, and it reaches out to inform anyone who will listen. After every story Schlosser presents to the audience, he offers information from a variety of sources to reaffirm what he believes the audience should think about. His message is not just blatant slander on the companies involved in the making of fast food; it is one of self-betterment, understanding where your food is from.