More handpicked essays just for you.
Fast food and its health effects
The risk and effects of fast food essay pdf
The risk and effects of fast food essay pdf
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
“The Dark Side of the American Meal”
Today’s big names in fast food indeed had their humble beginnings. The majority of present day fast food chains started as a small. Some were destined to fail. Regardless, as time progressed, so did fast foods production and the general impact on society. Its businesses expanded and became what it is today. Although the faces of these chains seem innocent, they are responsible for more problems than they lead on. Eric Schlosser clarifies how in his expose Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All American Meal. His text documents the changes of the industry from innocent to corrupt and corrupting through detailed accounts and accurate and shocking statistics. Fast food negatively not only impacts the animal
…show more content…
industry, our nation’s health, and youth, but also our nations economics, landscape, and workforce. In Part one, the author illustrates the struggles of selling new food through many different perspectives, including Carl N.
Karcher, the founder of the Carl’s Jr. Chain. He continues to write and show how fast food has evolved into the giant it is today. He explores and reveals how deadly, influential, and in some cases, invasive working for these fast food restaurants are. Schlosser writes “McDonald's employees claim that managers forced them to take lie detector tests, interrogated them about union activities, and threatened them with dismissal if they refused.” (P.76) He goes on to write about how the industry has begun to change many aspects of the American lifestyle, even our economics and politics. However, many of these problems are caused indirectly and the industry isn’t the only thing to …show more content…
blame. Nevertheless, there are obvious problems associated with fast food, the more dangerous problems lie beneath the friendly smiles that represent the establishments. The people behind fast food are willing to cut corners, manipulate their employees, and expose the general public to disease all in the name of cheaper prices and massive profits. Scholsser expresses in Part Two of Fast Food Nation that "One of the most important goals was redesigning the kitchen equipment so that less money needed to be spent training workers." (P.71) These companies manipulate smaller farmers which supply them due to the fact that they refuse to pay them a fair and appropriate sum. Family owned and operated companies have been shoved to the side by the corrupt heads of the fast food industry. Farmers are underpaid and manipulated. "Out of every $1.50 spent on a large order of fries at a fast food restaurant,” the author writes, “perhaps 2 cents goes to the farmer who grew those potatoes." (P. 117) Due to this, wealthier and larger slaughterhouses and farms are created in place of the family owned farms. The Washington Post writes that “The number of farms in the country has fallen by some 4 million… from more than 6 million in 1935 to roughly 2 million in 2012. Meanwhile, the average farm size has more than doubled.” These slaughterhouses are not only dangerous to animals, but to the employees.
Sadly, employees are killed in freak but preventable accidents, the large majority of these accidents going unreported. The employees that stay in the business are exposed to excessive stress and brutal hours. “The combination of long hours and repetitive motion directly leads to increased risk of injury. The workers suffer chronic pains in their hands, wrists, arms, shoulders and back.” The article by the Food Empowerment project also states that “Repetitive stress injuries are unavoidable under the frantic pace that most facilities choose to operate.” The uncleanliness of these same slaughterhouses house bacteria such as E. coli in the meat, which is later consumed by small unknowing children. According to Food Safety News, “E. coli O157:H7… causes an estimated 96,000 illnesses, 3,200 hospitalizations and 31 deaths in the U.S. each year, adding up to $405 million in annual healthcare expenses.” E. Coli is only one out of the array of health problems that is caused by fast food’s unwillingness to pay for cleaner
facilities. Fast Food Nation has become a critically acclaimed book and has gathered much recognition. His diction, appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos, and solid arguments have made many Americans aware of the industry’s destructive nature. The fast food industry has created dangerous jobs which take and mental and physical toll on the employees. Average citizens are walking around, unknowing to the fact that they are being exposed deadly pathogens and constant stream of advertisements that seem innocent. Now that people are being educated by Eric Schlosser’s book, they can think twice before ordering at the McDonalds around the corner.
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York: Perennial, 2002.
“The passive American consumer, sitting down to a meal of pre-prepared or fast food, confronts a platter covered with inert, anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and sanitized beyond resemblance to any creature that every lived (Berry 9).” This a great example that makes that makes us learn and think about when we eat a fast food product and also what it contains. This should a reason for us to be thinkful of the food products that we consume on a daily basis, and so do our
“Out of every $1.50 spent on a large order of fries at fast food restaurant, perhaps 2 cents goes to the farmer that grew the potatoes,” (Schlosser 117). Investigative journalist Eric Schlosser brings to light these realities in his bestselling book, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Schlosser, a Princeton and Oxford graduate, is known for his inspective pieces for Atlantic Monthly. While working on article, for Rolling Stone Magazine, about immigrant workers in a strawberry field he acquired his inspiration for the aforementioned book, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, a work examining the country’s fast food industry (Gale).
Chapter 1 discusses one of fast food’s developer, Carl N. Karcher. It begins by addressing his year of birth and place, Ohio; 1917. After eighth grade, he quit school and went through extending periods of time cultivating with his dad. At the age of twenty years old, he was offered a job by his uncle at his Feed and Seed store in Anaheim, California. He then went to California, which is when he met Margaret, his wife and started his own family. Carl and his wife purchased a hot dog cart, Margaret sold franks over the road from a Goodyear processing plant while Carl worked at a bakery. Amid this time, California's population was quickly growing, similar to the vehicle business. Carl in the end opened a Drive-In Barbeque eatery. The post-WWII
In the book Fast Food Nation: The Darks Side of the All-American Meal, Eric Schlosser claims that fast food impacts more than our eating habits, it impacts “…our economy, our culture, and our values”(3) . At the heart of Schlosser’s argument is that the entrepreneurial spirit —defined by hard work, innovation, and taking extraordinary risks— has nothing to do with the rise of the fast food empire and all its subsidiaries. In reality, the success of a fast food restaurant is contingent upon obtaining taxpayer money, avoiding government restraints, and indoctrinating its target audience from as young as possible. The resulting affordable, good-tasting, nostalgic, and addictive foods make it difficult to be reasonable about food choices, specifically in a fast food industry chiefly built by greedy executives.
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...
One of the most shocking books of the generation is Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. The novel includes two sections, "The American Way" and "Meat and Potatoes,” that aid him in describing the history and people who have helped shape up the basics of the “McWorld.” Fast Food Nation jumps into action at the beginning of the novel with a discussion of Carl N. Karcher and the McDonald’s brothers. He explores their roles as “Gods” of the fast-food industry. Schlosser then visits Colorado Springs and investigates the life and working conditions of the typical fast-food industry employee. Starting out the second section, Schlosser travels to the western side of Colorado to examine the effects presented to the agriculture world in the new economy. Following Schlosser’s journey across the nation, he leads everything up to slaughterhouses and the main supply of income for fast food franchises – the meat. After visiting the meat industries in America, Schlosser explores the expansion of fast food around the eastern hemisphere – including the first McDonalds in Germany. Throughout Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser presents in his point of view and informative tone, a detailed disscussion of the conditions using various examples imagry and flowing diction/syntax to help support and show his audience the reasoning behind the novel.
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
Almost everyone has eaten fast food at some point in their lives, but not everyone realizes the negative effects some fast food can have on our nutrition. My family especially is guilty of eating unhealthy fast food meals at least once a week because of our budget and very busy schedules. In Andrea Freeman’s article entitled, “Fast Food: Oppression through Poor Nutrition,” She argues that fast food has established itself as a main source of nutrition for families that live in average neighborhoods and have low-incomes. Freeman begins the article by explaining how the number of fast food outlets is beginning to grow in poor communities because of the cheap prices and quick service these restaurants are famous for. The overabundance of fast
Chapter 1 opens with discussion of Carl N. Karcher, one of fast food’s pioneers. Carl was born in 1917 in Ohio. He quit school after eighth grade and spent long hours farming with his father. When he was twenty
Many people, however, argue that this cheap and efficient labor is not only a product of the dominant capitalist society, but also a benefit to the marketplace and the economy. People in big business would argue that paying people less than minimum wage and ignoring the high cost of safety equipment is acceptable because it is saving businesses money, which gives them an opportunity to expand. Today, there is often little concern for these issues due to society being ignorant, indifferent, and having false beliefs surrounding the labor force in the food system. The labor force is described at great length in the book Fast Food Nation written by Eric Schlosser. He specifically discusses the working environment in the modern American slaughterhouse.
Schlosser, Eric. "The Most Dangerous Job." Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. 169-90. Print.
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...
Most Americans do not care enough to take a look at the nutritional values of the food that he or she is consuming. That is why America has the highest percentage of obesity in the world. This is a serious problem because one in every three adults is obese, and one in every six children is obese. There are many factors that go into the regular American diet, but most of those factors are not appealing nor is it healthy. Americans put way too much processed food into their daily diet. Some would say that other countries diets superior the American diet because of nutritional values that it carries. Other countries have proven that an active lifestyle is a huge element in the average weight of the country. There are many things that Americans could change about their diets and lifestyle that would help them to become healthier.
In the conclusion I would like to say that Schlosser managed in the reportorial voice to tell the history, economic and day to day dealings, and negative implications of the fast food industry through delivery impressive examples of information. Fast food in United States seems to be truly American and considered to be as harmless as an apple pie. However, through his book Schlosser proved that the industry drive for consolidation and speed has radically changed the American diet, economy and workforce in the destructive way.