Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side Of Fast Food

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Recommended: Negative effects of fast food on society

Over the last 50 years, the fast food industry did not only sold hamburgers and french fries. It has been a key factor for vast social changes throughout America. It has been responsible for breaking traditional American values and reinstating new social standards that specifically aims to benefit the industry’s growth. These social standards have inevitably changed the way the American youth respond to education and self-responsibility. Eric Schlosser, an author of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, excellently uses logic to present the tactics used by the fast food industry to cheapen and promote labor along with the social changes that occurred in the American youth as a result. Schlosser aims to dismantle and dissect …show more content…

One of the first thing Schlosser address is work-related injuries. Schlosser states that more than “200,000 [tennagers] are injured on the job” (Schlosser 122). To the reader, this may be a large number, but in retrospect, it’s actually tiny. According to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, a report regarding workplace accidents in 1998 showed that a total of 5.9 million injuries was reported. In comparison, 200,000 only makes up 3.4% of the nationwide injuries making fast food restaurants relatively safe in that aspect. Schlosser misleads his audience by failing to give it a sense of scale or magnitude. Next, Schlosser concludes that due to the increased job opportunities for teenagers, as a result, fast food restaurants had become a target for robbers and other violent crimes. Schlosser backs up his statement through extreme examples of robbery cases and a few obscure statistical reports. First Schlosser lists numerous extreme examples of violent crime cases that resulted in a homicide. “A former cook… became a fast food serial killer, murdering two workers… three workers…” (Schlosser 127). Schlosser hopes that these examples will appeal to the emotions of the reader, in order to persuade that fast food restaurants had become a hub for violent crimes. While he lists many examples of this, these are individual cases that resonate a rather extreme case. Schlosser uses these example to visualize to the reader, that this is how most robberies end up when it isn't the case. The use of pathos in these examples exaggerate the problem beyond the actual scope. While this may be effective, it fails to provide complete transparency between the author and the audience. The statistical reports Schlosser offers are outdated, ones like “ In 1998, more

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