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Fast Food Nation: What the All-American Meal is Doing to the World
Penguin Search Penguin by Eric Schlosser Search Eric Schlosser
Amazon.co.uk Review
Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser's disturbing and timely exploration of one of the world's most controversial industries, has become a massive bestseller in America and rightly deserves to be so this side of the pond. On any given day, one out of four Americans opts for a quick and cheap meal at a fast-food restaurant, without giving either its speed or its cheapness a second thought. Fast food is so ubiquitous that it now seems harmless. But the industry's drive for consolidation, homogenisation and speediness has radically transformed the West's diet, landscape, economy and workforce, often in insidiously destructive ways.
Eric Schlosser, an award-winning journalist, opens his ambitious and ultimately devastating exposé with an introduction to the iconoclasts and high school dropouts, such as Harlan Sanders and the McDonald brothers, who first applied the principles of a factory assembly line to a commercial kitchen. However, he rapidly moves behind the counter to the overworked and underpaid teenage workers, onto the factory farms where the potatoes and beef are grown, and into the slaughterhouses run by giant meatpacking corporations. Schlosser wants you to know why those French fries taste so good (with a visit to the world's largest flavour company) and "what really lurks between those sesame-seed buns". Eater beware: forget your concerns about cholesterol, there is--literally--faeces in your meat.
Schlosser's investigation reaches its frightening peak in the meatpacking plants as he reveals the almost complete lack of regulation. His searing portrayal of the industry is disturbingly similar to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, written in 1906: nightmare working conditions, union busting and unsanitary practices that introduced E.coli and other pathogens into restaurants, schools and homes. Almost as disturbing is his description of how the industry "both feeds and feeds off the young", insinuating itself into all aspects of children's lives, even the pages of their school books, while leaving them prone to obesity and disease. Fortunately, Schlosser offers some eminently practical remedies. "Eating in the United States should no longer be a form of high-risk behaviour", he writes. Where to begin? Ask yourself, is the true cost of having it "your way" really worth it? --Lesley Reed
Customer Reviews:
No Pun Intended, But This Book Is To Be Taken With A Grain Of Salt
This is an excellent book- well written, well researched and thoroughly interesting.
It has some genuinely interesting chapters behind the food service industry (especially the parts on taste & fragrance science and Simplot's potato empire). On the other hand it does, inevitably, point the finger somewhat at certain corporations (sometimes justified, sometimes you get the impression we're only hearing half of the story).
Now I'm not saying it's wrong and some of the corporations named in the book, especially in the U.S. meatpacking industry, deserve to be named and shamed but to get the best out of this book you need to be able to read it and make your own mind up. It's definitely an eye-opener and, as I've said above, it's a top-notch read but keep an open mind when reading.
I'd recommend this book to anyone, a good companion to those who like to make an 'informed choice'.
Looking back from 2009 through credit crunched glasses 
I've had this book sitting on my bookshelf for seven years without flipping it open, but finally I did, a couple of days ago in 2009. I thought it might be interesting to see if and how times have changed since the book's 2001 publication since we're all much more aware of the food we eat and how modern corporations are run - and the thing is, it IS interesting, really interesting.
One can't help but notice that the rhetoric used for the way meat, land and labour is chopped, minced and commoditised is very similar to the way that we're now used to hearing about the credit crunch.
Dodgy derivatives are the new poultry and cattle serfs.
Credit default swaps are the new e coli!
(But the abuse of antitrust laws remains largely unchanged).
In this sense I found the following excerpt interesting:-
"The history of the twentieth century was dominated by the struggle against totalitarian systems of state power. The twenty first will no doubt be marked by a struggle to curtail excessive corporate power. The great challenge now facing countries throughout the world is how to find a proper balance between the efficiency and amorality of the market. Over the past twenty years the United states has swung too far in one direction, weakening the regulations that safeguard workers, consumers and the environment. An economic system promising freedom has too often become a means of denying it, as the narrow dictates of the market gain precedence over more democratic values."
Anyway, I thought it was very good. Intelligent, easy to read (if hard on the stomach and conscience) page-turner.
Would You Like to Add Some E. Coli to That Order? 
Eric Schlosser, doesn't like the fast food industry, and neither do I. In fact I've never eaten a Big Mac or a Chicken McNugget in my life. I have been quietly and privately vegetarian since my early youth, and thankfully so after reading this. This treatise is generally well written and engaging. We are allowed a fly on the wall purview of the at once Neanderthal and techno-obsessive world of the burger barons.
While I can agree with Schlosser that the industry and its affiliates are pretty scummy and intractably bottom-line focused, the author (a journalist by profession) is predictably and unfortunately a lefty and staunch acolyte of the Nanny State. While assuring us that this industry can be made more decent, more safe and more healthy if only we could shovel enough funds at the variegated governmental regulatory agencies, lost on Schlosser, are the examples of successful free-market checks and balances that he highlights. We learn that Jack In The Box, after poisoning (and killing) a number of customers by serving E.Coli infected burgers, takes extraordinary measures to clean up its act and that of its meat packers. This was done to prevent them from going out of business, not from any special pressure exerted upon them by the State.
Absent in entirety in the book is any chastisement of the lack of personal responsibility exercised by parents who raise their kids on this crap (some of it literal, as we come to learn from his visits to slaughterhouses). Not once are parents of teenagers who work behind the counters bought to task by Schlosser. Adult employees of the industry are viewed, with typical liberal paternalism, as victims. At one point we are privy to the tragicomedy travails of Kenny Dobbins, an illiterate slaughterhouse worker and union buster, who accumulates a massive shopping list of work related injuries ranging from broken limbs, to chemical poisonings, yet for some odd reason, never rationalizes that he might be safer in a different line of work.
Congress should ban all advertising aimed at kids and "fight against dangerous concentrations of economic power" by the McDonald's of the world concludes Schlosser. He then inadvertently speaks the real truth about how to affect changes within this industry, observing: "Nobody in the United States, is forced to buy fast food. The first step towards meaningful change is by far the easiest: stop buying it."
Until that happens, no amount of government tinkering will stop a free people making bad choices about what they and their children eat.
Still want to eat fast food?
Still want to eat fast food after reading this book? I don't think so! Amazingly in depth study of the origins, industry, manipulations and consequences of the giant multinational corporations.
Take heed, the information on just how many cows contribute to the average burger patty is truly disgusting, not to mention the rest of the unlisted ingredients!
The Lowdown
We all hear about how fast food is "bad" for you and all that, but never much about the process behind it. This books gives a well documented and detailed account on how the industry started and the factors around it that transformed this industry into the beast that it is today. From the potatoes, to the beef and those that are exploited to produce the food that so commonly eaten by all, Schlosser delivers a great book loaded with insight into fast food and its influence on society - not just in America, but globally. A definite must read if you have ever had a french fry.
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bibliography
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/articlenews/story/ctvnews/20060609/tansfat_charts_060612/20060613/ 2. http://www.gather.com/viewarticle.jsp?articleid=281474976732488 3. http://www.amazon.co.uk/fast-food-nation-all-american-doing/dp/0141006870 ...
http://fastfoodchoicesamanda.blogspot.com/2007/01/bibliography.html
勝間化計画 読む 「fast food nation」
... で面白いのですけれど、これは情報が取れれば良い本なので日本語で良さそうです。 訳も良さそうですし、分からなくなったら原書に戻ると言うことで。 英語で二章読みましたが、日本語に切り替えます。 [asin:479421071x:detail] [asin:0141006870:detail]
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/shibutora/20080312/1205329606
anna lappé and bryant terry: grub
nach einem vorwort von eric schlosser, autor von <a href=”http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/0141006870?ie=utf8&tag=webhafen-21&linkcode=as2&camp=1638&creative=6742&creativeasin=0141006870″>fast food nation</a> widmen sich die autoren den ...
http://texte.webhafen.de/2007/06/07/anna-lappe-and-bryant-terry-grub/
