Fast Food Nation

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

The book’s humourously nostalgic cover art belies the scariness of its subject. I finished reading and recalled all the times as a kid I ate at McDonald’s. The nostalgia was somewhat nauseating. . Schlosser’s work has already garnered much attention, with even a motion picture made from it.

Schlosser begins the book with a description of Cheyenne Mountain, one of the most secure military combat operations centers in the world. It houses units of the North American Aerospace Command, the Air Force Space Command, and the U.S. Space Command. This is as well a guarded facility as one is liable to find anywhere. It can sustain itself for a month, with electrical generators, reservoirs of water, medical/dentist office, fitness center, and of course food. And yet, Schlosser describes the absurd juxtaposition of this most secure military site with a lone Domino’s deliveryman driving past signs reading “DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED” and heavily armed guards, unloading his arsenal of pizzas and collecting his money. If somehow the U.S. (including Cheyenne Mountain) ever gets wiped out by a nuclear attack, Schlosser writes, “future archeologists may find other clues to the nature of our civilization – Big King wrappers, hardened crusts of Cheesy Bread, Barbeque Wing bones, and the red, white and blue of a Domino’s pizza box.”

This book examines the effects, as well as the causes, of the fast food industry’s being firmly ensconced in American culture. Schlosser writes: “What people eat…has always been determined by a complex interplay of social, economic, and technological forces….A nation’s diet can be more revealing than its art or literature.”

The industry began with a small group of hamburger outlets a only few decades ago in California and has now spread throughout the world.

Fast food can be found everywhere: movie theaters, Wal-Marts, school cafeterias. In 1970, Americans spent $6 billion on fast food. In 2001 they spent over $110 billion. According to Schlosser, “[Americans] spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music – combined.”

The McDonald’s Corp. is now the source of 90 percent of America’s new jobs. They went from 1000 restaurants in 1968 to around 30,000 today. It is the country’s largest purchaser of beef, pork and potatoes. It owns the most retail property in the world. The biggest portion of the corporation’s profits come not from selling food, but from collecting rent. In a survey of American children, Santa Claus was the only cultural icon more recognized than Ronald McDonald. And the Golden Arches are more familiar than the Christian Cross.

Schlosser writes, “the…success of the fast food industry has encouraged other industries to adopt similar business methods….Almost every facet of American life has now been franchised or chained, [f]rom maternity ward[s] to…funeral homes….a person can now go from the cradle to the grave without spending a nickel at an independently owned business.”
It’s an interesting note of history that the pioneers of the fast food industry, which is so “dedicated to conformity” were iconoclasts, entrepreneurs who went against the grain. Many never attended college.

Schlosser writes, “Fast food has joined Hollywood movies, blue jeans, and pop music as one of America’s most prominent cultural exports. Unlike other commodities, however, fast food isn’t viewed, read, played, or worn. It enters the body and becomes part of the consumer. No other industry offers, both literally and figuratively, so much insight into the nature of mass consumption.”

The most humourous section is chapter 5 where Schlosser describes his visit to a chemical factory that provides the smells and scents for fast food. What you smell as walk through those restaurant doors is the chemical concoction of some scientist in Dayton, New Jersey. The most disturbing part is chapter 9: What’s in the meat. The statistics and stories he shares are chilling and heartbreaking, especially the descriptions of children who were poisoned with E.Coli O157:H7 from eating undercooked hamburgers.

If even a third of what Schlosser has written is true, then there is reason to be concerned. I haven’t eaten fast food in a while, and if I had any inclination to eat some more, this book has stamped it out. Anyone who, upon reading Schlosser’s book, continues to eat fast food would have to be described as either incredibly obtuse or astonishingly brave.