Fast Food Nation from bookish, a weblog by girtonman

Fast Food Nation . . . . . Oct 13 2002 — fastfood.dat

With the exception of the occasional visit to 'In and Out Burger' (a burger chain in California), I have avoided fast food restaurants for years. I always thought that slow food was better. Now I know why. It's not just a matter of personal style or nutrition. In a book that should be required reading, certainly for all teenagers (they may decide not to eat at or work in a fast food restaurant after reading the book), Eric Schlosser engagingly details all aspects of the fast food industry.

Concentration of businesses in the potato and meat industries into just a few companies, captive farmers, teenagers working minimum wage at zero-training-required jobs (which the food chains get federal job training dollars for, ironically), a nonunion workforce of illiterate meatcutters working at breakneck pace -- what I wouldn't give to see a video of a modern boning room working at full speed. Guess what. This is something you just aren't going to see. Rodney King you see getting beat up on national television, but guys with knives cutting intestines out of your hamburger meat at 30 seconds per cow? Forget it! The shit would really hit the fan if that tape aired.

But it's more than just an industry. The book's title, "Fast Food Nation", says it perfectly.

This book, filled with painstaking backup detail in the notes (which of course you don't have to read, but I couldn't resist), paints a picture of government support of the industry of franchised fast food stores (new businesses, but with a higher failure rate than independents), combined with a governmental hands-off attitude on food safety; a situation with far more potential for terrorist harm, that could be improved with far less effort than is being expended now on getting ready for war on Iraq. The fact that there is very little government inspection of food, and that bacteriological science has not been harnessed for this obvious benefit to our food security, is more than annoying. It's maddening.

Fast food in schools? Schlosser has this topic covered, too, right down to the kind of cattle that are used for the meat that goes to schools.

In fact, some rather unappetizing items surface in the later chapters of this book. But rest assured there are no gruesome photographs to turn your stomach. It's all lighthearted and fast-paced, with the possible exception of the chapters on Mad Cow disease and the '90s E.Coli deaths in the Pacific Northwest.

This book had an added interest to me personally because of the light it shed on changes in cattle industry due to the growth of the fast food chains over the last several decades. Both of my grandfathers and my father were employed in this industry, by one of the companies Schlosser has studied. So I have a certain historical family interest in an industry that no one really talks about much. And in case you're wondering, Swift and Company came out smelling like a rose in Schlosser's account. But those days are long gone.

But I easily would have finished it anyway, with all that it offers for understanding and survival in a fast food age. And not to put too fine a point on it, but information contained in this book could save your life, or that of a loved one. This book is a best-seller, and with good reason.

Super Size your way over to www.amazon.com for your meaty copy of Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser.

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