In his introduction to "Fast Food Nation", Schlosser says that he's interested in fast food "both as commodity and metaphor", and indeed, this well-written tome is as much an examination on the titular product as an able primer on the encroachment of large corporations into the lives of working Americans.

Those of you expecting an update on John Robbins' "Diet For A New America" will be disappointed. Schlosser has not crafted a scientific slam against fast food joints, but rather a thorough examination of their motives and histories, with a strong emphasis on the people - from both sides of the coin. The time he devotes to the personal stories of those whose lives have been forever changed by fast food - from the rags-to-riches tale of Carl Karcher to the tragic story of a big-hearted rancher named Hank - are largely what keeps "Fast Food Nation" both emotionally provoking and tangible throughout.

If this book were merely a saber-toothed diatribe against fast food corporations, it couldn't allow itself such concessions and would probably come across as socialist tubthumping to all but the converted. Instead, lengthy establishing essays on the history, ideologies, and present state of the communities and corporations discussed are a welcome introduction (and counterpoint to) the individual stories of struggle, greed, and survival.

While he makes no secret where his sympathies lie, Schlosser often reminded me more of Wendell Berry than John Robbins, as he bravely attempts to "tell it like it is" from more of a "pro-human" as opposed to an "anti-corporate" perspective. In doing so, the dehumanizing aspects of all global corporations (and the effects of NAFTA and the Telecommunications Act of '96) are supplied a provoking reference point.

By my standards, "Fast Food Nation" is a fine debut accomplishment for the author and a welcome book for our increasingly homogenized (and de-regulated) times. The story of fast food, a quotidian experience for many, has never seemed quite so impressive, scary, and profound. My education began here.


McInteresting Look at Fast Food   May 5, 2002
 253 out of 276 found this review helpful

I read this book knowing I was not going to learn any new and cheery anecdotes about how Ronald McDonald got his start..... instead I read this to solidify the notion that fast food was not a healthy choice. And boy, did this book give you reasons it is not, and I'm not just talking nutritional value here.

I found this book fascinating for the detail was great, well researched, and given to the reader straight. It was an eye opening book. Who knew that due to the meat industry being run just by a few corporations, essentially we are eating the same meat from the same feedlots and slaughter houses whether we buy it at a fast food chain or the local supermarket, and perhaps even the nicer restaurants. I also found some of the content appalling. Cattle are fed cats, dogs, other cows, even old newspaper! If this doesn't outrage you enough, just wait to you get to how these same meat conglomerates treat the low paid, low skilled employees of the slaughterhouses.

This book is insightful and unbelievable, and will make you question how the fast food giants sleep at night.


A Bad Taste   January 15, 2002
 174 out of 307 found this review helpful

When it comes to wordplay, Eric Schlosser, author of the bestseller Fast Food Nation, is a gourmet chef. But on closer inspection, the arguments he cooks up result in a serious case of intellectual indigestion.
Schlosser, a talented writer and even better self-promoter, came to fame with the 2001 publication of the book. With the help of the media, which hyped the book without challenging Schlosser's "facts," Fast Food Nation made The New York Times bestseller list. Many publications put it on year-end lists of the "best books of 2001" -- resulting in renewed interest.
Schlosser was smart enough to know that a study of the intricacies of the "fast food" industry would not appeal to most book-buyers. So instead of presenting an objective investigation of this major industry, or giving a fair shake to companies like McDonald's (which offers one in 15 Americans entree into the workforce), Schlosser used "fast food" as the basis for a rhetorical assault on capitalism.

"Greed" is the ingredient that gives Fast Food Nation its flavor. Schlosser seems utterly shocked that these businesses exist... in order to make money! And to rage against business, Schlosser had no problem in engaging in what The Wall Street Journal called "cavalier manipulation of data."
Fast Food Nation is piled high with anecdotes and served with a heaping helping of skewed data. It's all intended to support Schlosser's case that "fast food has infiltrated every nook and cranny of American society" in harmful ways. It's not about the food itself; Schlosser himself says fast food tastes "pretty good" and that "the odds are low that eating a burger is going to make you sick." Instead, it's a diatribe against the very concept of making a profit by creating a product that consumers enjoy.
Schlosser says he doesn't eat "ground beef anymore," but not because he's "worried about getting sick from it; I'm pissed off at the corporate greed." He blasts McDonald's for reaping in "17 cents in pure profit" on every large Coke it sells, assuming that the sort of people who buy his book (at a profit to the author) will be disgusted by the notion of making money.
But he's strangely silent on the benefits to consumers of a hamburger that costs only a dollar -- except to use this, too, to attack the industry. Schlosser claims that "increasing the federal minimum wage by a dollar would [only] add about two cents to the cost of a [99-cent] fast food hamburger," ignoring a nearly endless supply of available economic data to the contrary generated by university economists including winners of the Nobel Prize in economics.
Instead, Schlosser uses one report from the Department of Agriculture to make his case -- and inappropriately at that. His two cents "evidence" comes from a study of labor costs and price hikes for the sale of prepared food and drinks in general, not just the fast food industry. More importantly, 75 percent of the employees studied were not even in the minimum wage range.
Schlosser is too savvy a polemicist to let something as small as facts stand in the way of a good rant. Counting every minor scratch and bump, Schlosser claims that meatpacking is "the most dangerous job in the United States." The government's Bureau of Labor Statistics disagrees. On its ranking of truly dangerous industries -- those with the most "injury and illness cases involving days away from work" -- meatpacking doesn't even make the top 25.
But bad data and a lack of logic do not stop Schlosser from claiming the worst about the fast food industry. He tries to have it both ways on overtime hours, favorably noting that the Depression-era Fair Labor Standards Act placed limitations on mandatory overtime.
Then, on the very next page, Schlosser complains "managers try to make sure that each worker is employed less than forty hours a week, thereby avoiding any overtime payments." In fact, labor unions support the very practices Schlosser condemns, in part because they keep workers from being overburdened, and also because they encourage the creation of more entry-level jobs.
This is not the only place where, despite Schlosser's progressive politics, he seems almost reactionary. Schlosser notes that "inside job" robberies at fast food restaurants occur because those they employ -- the young, poor, and minorities -- are also responsible for much of the nation's violent crime. Is he suggesting these at-risk individuals should not be given jobs and a chance?
Decidedly selective in his presentation of data, Schlosser realizes that a cavalcade of deceptions is necessary to leave the reader with his funhouse-mirror image of the fast food industry, where fat-cat executives in fancy suits get rich while entry-level restaurant workers struggle to get by.
These are just a few selections from Fast Food Nation's menu of mistruths. Schlosser, himself the wealthy son of a former NBC president, knows exactly what he is doing: Crafting a politically motivated weapon to fire against restaurants that play such a vital role in helping entry-level and at-risk Americans enter the workforce.
Professional rabble-rousers like Schlosser pretend to care about those poorer than them -- just like Schlosser pretends to care about the facts. But in reality, these are just the means to an end: The glorification of political dogma at the expense of truth. And that is the most unappetizing morsel of them all.


You can still have it your way   January 3, 2001
 81 out of 88 found this review helpful

A fascinating, important book for everyone. Fast Food Nation doesn't take easy shots at the fast food and beef industry, it shows the whole story, shifting back and forth betweeen intimate details of real people (a meat packing plant worker, a franchise owner, several cattle ranchers), and the larger, global markets created by the fast food restaurants. The book achieves a kind of epic flow to it, full of interesting and infuriating information. Splendid reading.


fascinating and fair, if overwrought   January 22, 2001
 81 out of 103 found this review helpful

With a subtitle like that, I was fully prepared for this book to be little more than a hysterical diatribe against the evils of fast food. Nor was my fear allayed by this defensive sentence in the Introduction :

I do not mean to suggest that fast food is solely responsible for every social problem now haunting the United States.

Disclaimers like that one usually indicate the opposite of what they say. But just a few sentences later comes a surprising admission which sets the tone for the whole book :

During the two years spent researching this book, I ate an enormous amount of fast food. Most of it tasted pretty good. This is one of the main reasons people buy fast food; it has been carefully designed to taste good. It's also inexpensive and convenient.

This is merely the first of many times throughout the book where Schlosser's fairness and honesty compel him to reveal facts that tend to undercut the polemical thrust of his arguments. This willingness to present both sides of the issues, combined with his prodigious research on the industry, makes for a book that, though the author clearly has a viewpoint that he wants to get across, also allows readers to make up their own minds, and provides the information necessary to make informed decisions. Though I disagreed with many of Schlosser's arguments, it was really refreshing to find an author who acknowledges competing views.

Here are some of the instances in which this contradictory dynamic crops up. One of the topics that he spends a good deal of time on is the pay levels in the industry, both for those who actually work in restaurants and for those who produce and process the food. He makes a big issue of the attempt by restaraunteurs to hold employees to minimum wage and not give them benefits, but at the same time he acknowledges that most of the workforce is made up of teenagers and :

Although some students...work at fast food restaurants to help their families, most of the kids take jobs after school in order to have a car.

Now, I'd acknowledge that a labor force of fathers trying to support their families on minimum wage would represent a social problem, but I won't shed a tear over teens who want their own cars. Not to mention that he goes on to note that :

Most of the high school students I met liked working at fast food restaurants.

To quote the immortal Clara Peller : Where's the beef ?

Similarly, in a section on the unskilled, uneducated migrant workers who are being "exploited" by the meat packers, Schlosser notes that they get something like $10 an hour, whereas the average worker in Mexico and Central America, where many of these employees come from, makes $5 a day. Sure, it would be wonderful if these folks were getting rich working at the undeniably difficult and often dangerous jobs they perform, but, comparatively, they are getting a damn good deal right now.

In the scariest portion of the book, he details all of the potentially lethal microbes that have invaded the food supply, e. coli and the like. He goes to great lengths to show how inadequate the system is for inspecting meat and testing for these contaminants, and I'll accept every word he says. But he also concedes that when meat is cooked properly these microbes are killed and then points out that food irradiation will also destroy them and is safe, but that misunderstanding of the process and fearmongering has kept it from being widely adopted. Sounds like there are safe and simple solutions to even this most worrisome of issues.

Finally, in the least compelling portion of the book, he argues that fast food is bad because it's making us fat. No one can honestly take issue with his point that the fat content in fast food is ridiculously high, and that the enormity of portions is unnecessary. However, in arguing that fat consumption is a unique problem, he accidentally concedes one of the great achievements of the industry :

During thousands of years marked by food scarcity, human beings developed efficient physiological mechanisms to store energy as fat. Until recently, societies rarely enjoyed an overabundance of cheap food.

Okay, so there are some problems associated with an "overabundance of cheap food:" the whole world should face such problems. Moreover, assuming that you believe in evolution, shouldn't we expect this to be a temporary problem, one that will take care of itself as succeeding generations develop mechanisms which don't store fat ?

Perhaps the best effect of Schlosser's honesty is that when it comes time to make proposals for solving some of the problems he's raised, he's pretty reasonable. The best point he makes is that :

Nobody in the United States is forced to buy fast food. The first step toward meaningful change is by far the easiest: stop buying it.

I don't believe that his book makes the case that such a step is necessary. It does, however, enable the reader to better understand what goes on behind the scenes to get that Big Mac or Whopper into your hands. As he presents it, this information is always fascinating and it is often at least troublesome. The book is well worth reading even if you don't ultimately end up feeling compelled to boycott the Colonel.

GRADE : B+