In Eric Schlosser book ‘Fast Food Nation’ he discusses his findings of the fast food industry and exposes it for what it is. Fast food has been an American tradition for over half a century and it’s not a mystery why. Fast food is the most convenient, quick, and cheapest way to get a meal. Not only is fast food cheap and convenient, it’s also loaded with grease and fat to make sure it keeps you coming back. Fast food has become almost more common than eating at home with “about half of the money used to buy food spent is at restaurants, mainly fast food restaurants.”(Schlosser) Fast food is causing problems because of the unsafe slaughterhouse conditions, questionable quality of food, and its advertising towards children. In the book, Schlosser explains how slaughterhouses and the meatpacking industries are immensely unsanitary, unsafe, and employees are underpaid and underappreciated. The workforce consists mostly of illegal immigrants who lack proper training and are paid extremely low wages for long hours in dangerous working conditions. In an article by Timothy Gardner he state...
...h and safety laws have been disregarded in the slaughterhouses, causing a number of deaths. Also, there is a great deal of corruption in the slaughterhouses where workers are being threatened or lied to, especially about their injuries. I couldn’t imagine a factory not providing any type of reimbursement if anybody got hurt on the job.
“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).
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 the book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser writes about the fast food industry. However, his book is not merely an expose of the fast food industry but is even more a consideration of how the fast food industry has shaped and defined American society in America and for other nations as America exports its fast food culture to others. Schlosser describes a great deal of American culture to the fast food mentality, and he finds that globalization is taking the fast food culture around the world at a rapid rate. Schlosser addresses a number of specific issues related to food production and distribution. He connects the social order of a society to the kind of food it eats and the way it eats that food, with American society very much defined by the fast food culture that has developed. Schlosser tends to represent the theory stressing the importance of interdependence among all behavior patterns and institutions within a social system, as can be seen from how he connects fast food to other social processes and institutions.
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Print.
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Print.
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).
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
Eric Schlosser takes a bold step in attacking fast food restaurants by exposing the inhumane and horrid methods and practices of fast food restaurants. Mainly targeting McDonalds, this book delves deep into what really goes on in their food industry as well as their business aspects. Fast food restaurants mainly target kids and would be in a worse financial situation without them.
Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser, is a stark and unrelenting look into the fast food industry that has ingrained itself in not only American culture, but in many cultures around the world. There is almost no place on earth that the golden arches has not entered. Aside from Antarctica, there is a McDonalds on every continent, and the number of countries that have fast food restaurants is growing on a daily basis. Schlosser describes in detail what happens behind the scenes, before the hamburger and fries come wrapped in environmentally safe paper and are consumed by millions of people daily.
-- Eric Schlosser -- Fast Food Nation Is fast food worth the trouble it may cause you? Obesity is a growing problem and it is taking a toll on kids’ health due to eating too much fast food. But who is to blame for the fattening of our country? Is it us, or the companies that allow us to pack on the pounds? Obesity itself is not only the problem. Obesity also causes many diseases such as depression, heart complications, and much more. “By eating like Americans, people all over the world are beginning to look more like Americans, at least in one respect. The United States now has the highest obesity rate of any industrialized nation in the world” (Schlosser, 240).
Sinclair and Schlosser express the uncontrolled power that the meatpacking industry has over its workers. In both books, the slaughterhouses manipulate their employees and use them until they have nothing left to offer. The workers are immigrants that come to America chasing the American dream of wealth and freedom, but find more hardships than they had in their native countries. The meatpacking industry takes advantage of the desperation of the workers and pays them the lowest wages for laborious jobs. In the beginning of The Jungle, Jurgis Rubkus, a Lithuanian immigrant and his family and friends arrive in America full of goals and the illusion of the perfect American life, but as the meatpacking industry abuses them, their ...
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. N. pag. Print.
It's quick, it's convenient, it's delicious. Fast food is the most popular quick-service nourishment. It plays an important roll in the lives that we humans so perfectly laid out for ourselves. Why try cooking when you can get food at a much faster rate? To most people, fast food is the answer to all of our problems. It is good in every possible way, or is it? Although some might deny the consequences, we all know there is a steep price to pay. So here by today, I am asking you to have a closer look at the hidden dangers. In my opinion, we should free the world of fast food because, not only are they adding the amount of cruelty to animals and draining money out of our pockets, they're also taking great risk of the health of billions of people.
The fast food industry is something that is familiar to everyone. Living in the United States, you can usually only go a few miles without seeing a multitude of fast food restaurants popping up. The bright neon lights flashing and enticing all to come and have a quick, easy and cheap meal. Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation, points out, “Americans now spend more money on fast food than on higher education, personal computers, or new cars. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music - combined.” Without the fast food industry our country would be significantly different, it has changed the nation environmentally, economically, and culturally and has done many beneficial things