368 pages
English language
Published Aug. 27, 2001
To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar Amerca. Though created by a handful of mavericks, the fast food industry has triggered the homogenization of our society. Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism abroad. That's a lengthy list of charges, but Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning.
Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from the California subdivisions where the business was born to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike where many of fast food's flavors are concocted. He hangs out with the teenagers who make the restaurants run and communes with those unlucky enough to hold America's most dangerous job -- meatpacker. He travels to Las Vegas …
To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar Amerca. Though created by a handful of mavericks, the fast food industry has triggered the homogenization of our society. Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism abroad. That's a lengthy list of charges, but Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning.
Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from the California subdivisions where the business was born to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike where many of fast food's flavors are concocted. He hangs out with the teenagers who make the restaurants run and communes with those unlucky enough to hold America's most dangerous job -- meatpacker. He travels to Las Vegas for a giddily surreal franchisers' convention where Mikhail Gorbachev delivers the keynote address. He even ventures to England and Germany to clock the rate at which those countries are becoming fast food nations.
Along the way, Schlosser unearths a trove of fascinating, unsettling truths -- from the unholy alliance between fast food and Hollywood to the seismic changes the industry has wrought in food production, popular culture, and even real estate. He also uncovers the fast food chains' efforts to reel in the youngest, most susceptible consumers even while they hone their institutionalized exploitation of teenagers and minorities. Schlosser then turns a critical eye toward the hot topic of globalization -- a phenomenon launched by fast food.
FAST FOOD NATION is a groundbreaking work of investigation and cultural history that may change the way America thinks about the way it eats.
It's not the most enjoyable reading experience, but it's a powerful one. Schlosser rips off the curtain covering America's fast food industry and reveals the ugly truths behind it. It's The Jungle (1906) of it's day. After reading it, I stopped eating fast food. It has been decades since I've eaten MacDonald's, Burger King or their equivalents.
Borrowed this copy from the UHD Library. It is one of 5 copies we ordered given the book is popular, and it is a required reading in some classes.
See my note on the book:
[http://itinerantlibrarian.blogspot.com/2007/08/i-finally-finished-reading-fast-food.html]
There is an amazing amount of information in this book, all very eye-opening. It MAY put you off your feed--just a warning, towards the end, especially. Schlosser mentions Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle quite a bit during the chapters about meatpacking. I haven't read it, but certainly will.
If I'd have underlined everything I'd wanted to remember, the whole book would be marked up--it's all absorbing stuff. (The book is unscathed--resisted the temptation) The link below mentions ConAgra's Greeley Plant, one of the subjects of Schlosser's research.
