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He also took us step by step through the fast food processing chain, which can be quite unappetizing and off-putting.It is especially important that Schlosser explored the human element of the fast food chain, ranging from the farmers and slaughterhouse workers to the servers we encounter when we patronize a fast food restaurant. So it is only fitting that I read Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation". As a self-professed foodie, I love to read about foods, cuisines and cooking. Sometimes it becomes rather disheartening when reading about how an initially quality food business has descended to a greedy, 100% profit-based, inhumane industry. I enjoyed this book because it is highly educational and enlightening. Schlosser looks at the fast food culture from its humble beginnings in the early 20th century to its present day form. However, as the author mentions in the book, change starts from within and the individual has the power of the purchasing decision.I enjoyed this book very much and the only shortcoming of this book is the constant blaming of the Republicans and conservatives for the current state of the fast food industry. A first-rate investigative reporter/journalist should know better than to simplify the the evolution of the fast food insdustry to pure Republican greed.
The book reveals the hidden secret of why fast food is so fast, so good, and so cheap. In the book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser goes in to harsh detail discussing the problems that the American fast food chains are causing to the health of America. It really gets real to the reader when schlosser begins metioning the long term effects that foods like Mc Donalds and Burger King will evenutally have on the human body. Schlosser states that the chains have been chemically enahancing their foods and points out the issues such chemicals pose to human health. Also according to Schlosser, the chain have been using "cheap" agricultural practices in competition to provide more product at a cheaper price. Schlosser has a valid arguement in his book and it is must read for any who lives in America. It will definitely will change any readers view of fast food.
As good as that double-double may taste, you get what you paid for in the long run, as you read to uncover some of the tragic stories of people that have been victims of tainted food. Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser is an awesome book that covers a lot of true stories in conjunction with the fast food industry. As Schlosser states in Fast Food Nation, "the real price never appears on the menu" (9). Readers go behind the scene of the hard but unskilled workers and learn about the unhealthy and gruesome conditions at the slaughter houses. This book will help you understand why it is so important to carefully choose what you eat. To better educate yourself about what you're eating when you hear that voice say "may I take your order." pick up this book. You will be surprised to learn how dangerous one meal can really be.
An excellent view on history of the fast food industry and how it is processed and eventually end up on places like McDonald's. No matter how much money or resources the government or private corporations put into health care services, drug and therapy research, it wouldn't make much difference if people decide to continue their fast food eating life style. When I first read the book I didn't make care so much as many others did. However, as I saw more and more people getting sick every year and not being able to afford their health care bills, I started waking up to this warning. It is time for them to act up, learn how fast food culture is destroying not just our economy, but our health and children's future. So if you do not care about the issues that I have raised above, continue to do so and be ready to face dire consequences.
In short, for whatever good giants like McDonald's have done, the bad and the ugly has long since far outweighed this good.Thus, at its deepest level, "Fast Food Nation" points to the many prototypical unintended consequences of unbridled capitalism, which when left unattended and under regulated, tend to seek its own level: the outer limits of governmental economic controls. In short it becomes a very negative tool that can seriously alter, injure, undermine and even take over an entire culture. Giant food franchises like McDonald's have not only literally changed the national landscape, but have also changed and seriously distorted our way of life: to wit, made us unhealthy individually and as a nation, undermined labor and pollution laws, further corrupted our politicians, our tax system and system of government subsidies, killed the family farm running single farmers off their land and into the cities, etc. This book gives the good, the bad, and the ugly side of the fast food industry. As a result, franchise fast food capitalism has become just another clear case of the tail wagging the dog. When this happens, that power becomes a form of vampire capitalism.
Under these conditions, they then represented the ultimate capitalist "rags-to-riches" dream.But when franchise capitalism is coupled with unrestrained greed, the corruption of political graft, lobbying and payoffs or unfair government subsidies, insider trading, lax tax laws and business regulations, anti-trust violations, and improper sweetheart side deals, it can acquire an unwarranted power that turns it into an ambiguous cultural monster.
When it does this, it always goes well beyond its established mandate of serving the public good and the national interest.
They have become the dogs that no longer serve their master: the public and the common good.
Once they reach a certain critical mass in size, the bad and the ugly then it seems, begin to far outweigh the good.
What this book tells us is that such has been the case with the giants of the fast food industry in the U.S and across most of the world where they operate.
At this point of no return, it then, inexorably, becomes a national nightmare: a virtual cultural mime that has metastasized like a cancer in the cultural bloodstream of our nation.
On the good side, franchise capitalism, when properly regulated and carefully restrained can be a national good and can serve many useful purposes within our culture, as it did for many decades, not the least of which is to make many an industrious entrepreneur rich beyond anyone's imagination.
They have become too large to "heel" to the national interest.
Like Bernard Madoff and Haliburton, it is just another fine example of what can happen when important matters of public policy are abandoned by government and left to the whims of the self-interest of corporations and greedy individuals.Four Stars
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