Fast Food Nation
Encyclopedia
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (2001) is a book by investigative journalist Eric Schlosser
that examines the local and global influence of the United States fast food
industry.
First serialized by Rolling Stone
in 1999, the book has drawn comparisons to Upton Sinclair
's classic muckraking novel The Jungle
. The book was adapted into a film of the same name
, directed by Richard Linklater
.
to the top secret
military base, Cheyenne Mountain
in Colorado
. He describes various high-tech capabilities of the base and its extensive defensive system, speculating that if the worst were to happen and the entire base were entombed in the mountain, anthropologists of the future would discover random fast food wrappers scattered amongst military hardware.
Both, suggests Schlosser, would provide important clues about the nature of American society. America is becoming an obese country and needs to act upon the fast-food chains.
The book continues with an account of the evolution of fast food and how it coincided with the advent of the automobile. He explains the transformation from countless independent restaurants to a few uniform franchises
. This shift led to a production-line kitchen prototype, standardization, self-service, and a fundamental change in marketing demographics
: from teenager to family-oriented.
Regarding the topic of child-targeted marketing, Schlosser explains how the McDonald's Corporation modeled its marketing tactics on The Walt Disney Company
, which inspired the creation of advertising icons such as Ronald McDonald
and his sidekick
s. Marketing executives theorized this shift to market to children would result not only in attracting children, but their parents and grandparents as well. More importantly, the tactic would instill brand loyalty
that would persist through adulthood via nostalgic associations to McDonald's. Schlosser also discusses the tactic's ills: the exploitation of children's naïveté and trusting nature.
In marketing to children, Schlosser suggests, corporations have infiltrated schools through sponsorship and quid pro quo
. He sees that reductions in corporate tax
ation have come at the expense of school funding, thereby presenting many corporations with the opportunity for sponsorship with those same schools. According to his sources, 80% of sponsored textbooks contain material that is biased in favor of the sponsors, and 30% of high schools offer fast foods in their cafeterias. Schlosser shares anecdotes suggesting that students who disregarded sponsorships could be punished, such as the case of high school student Mike Cameron. He was suspended from school for an incident on "Coke
day"; while his fellow students wore red or white T-shirts and posed collectively as the word COKE while aerial photographs were taken, Cameron instead wore Pepsi
-blue.
In his examination of the meat packing industry
, Schlosser finds that it is now dominated by casual, easily exploited immigrant labor and that levels of injury are among the highest of any occupation in the United States. Schlosser discusses his findings on meat packing companies IBP, Inc.
and on Kenny Dobbins. Schlosser also recounts the steps involved in meat processing and reveals several hazardous practices unknown to many consumers, such as the practice of rendering dead pigs and horses and chicken manure into cattle feed.
Schlosser notes that practices like these were responsible for the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, aka Mad Cow Disease
, p. 202-3), as well as for introducing harmful bacteria into the food supply, such as E. coli O157:H7
(ch. 9, "What's In The Meat").
A later section of the book discusses the fast food industry's role in globalization
, linking increased obesity in China
and Japan
with the arrival of fast food. The book also includes a summary of the McLibel Case
.
In later editions, Schlosser provided an additional section that included reviews of his book, counters to critics who emerged since its first edition, and discussion of the effect that the threat of BSE
had on US Federal Government policy towards cattle farming. He concluded that, given the swift, decisive and effective action that took place as a result of this interest and intervention, many of the problems documented in the book are solvable, given enough political will.
was published in May 2006 by Houghton Mifflin
. It is co-authored by Charles Wilson
.
Eric Schlosser
Eric Schlosser is an American journalist and author known for investigative journalism, such as in his books Fast Food Nation, Reefer Madness and Chew On This.- Personal History :...
that examines the local and global influence of the United States fast food
Fast food
Fast food is the term given to food that can be prepared and served very quickly. While any meal with low preparation time can be considered to be fast food, typically the term refers to food sold in a restaurant or store with preheated or precooked ingredients, and served to the customer in a...
industry.
First serialized by Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
in 1999, the book has drawn comparisons to Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...
's classic muckraking novel The Jungle
The Jungle
The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by journalist Upton Sinclair. Sinclair wrote the novel with the intention of portraying the life of the immigrant in the United States, but readers were more concerned with the large portion of the book pertaining to the corruption of the American meatpacking...
. The book was adapted into a film of the same name
Fast Food Nation (film)
Fast Food Nation is a 2006 American/British drama film directed by Richard Linklater. The screenplay was written by Linklater and Eric Schlosser, loosely based on the latter's bestselling 2001 non-fiction book of the same name...
, directed by Richard Linklater
Richard Linklater
-Early life:Linklater was born in Houston, Texas. He studied at Sam Houston State University and left midway through his stint in college to work on an off-shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. While working on the rig he read a lot of literature, but on land he developed a love of film through...
.
Summary
Schlosser opens the book with the ironic delivery of a Domino's PizzaDomino's Pizza
Domino's Pizza, Inc. is an international pizza delivery corporation headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of America. Founded in 1960, Domino's is the second-largest pizza chain in the United States and has over 9,000 corporate and franchised stores in 60 countries and all 50 U.S....
to the top secret
Top Secret
Top Secret generally refers to the highest acknowledged level of classified information.Top Secret may also refer to:- Film and television :* Top Secret , a British comedy directed by Mario Zampi...
military base, Cheyenne Mountain
Cheyenne Mountain
Cheyenne Mountain is a mountain located just outside the southwest side of Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S., and is home to the Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station and its Cheyenne Mountain Directorate, formerly known as the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center .Throughout the Cold War and...
in Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
. He describes various high-tech capabilities of the base and its extensive defensive system, speculating that if the worst were to happen and the entire base were entombed in the mountain, anthropologists of the future would discover random fast food wrappers scattered amongst military hardware.
Both, suggests Schlosser, would provide important clues about the nature of American society. America is becoming an obese country and needs to act upon the fast-food chains.
The book continues with an account of the evolution of fast food and how it coincided with the advent of the automobile. He explains the transformation from countless independent restaurants to a few uniform franchises
Chain store
Chain stores are retail outlets that share a brand and central management, and usually have standardized business methods and practices. These characteristics also apply to chain restaurants and some service-oriented chain businesses. In retail, dining and many service categories, chain businesses...
. This shift led to a production-line kitchen prototype, standardization, self-service, and a fundamental change in marketing demographics
Demographics
Demographics are the most recent statistical characteristics of a population. These types of data are used widely in sociology , public policy, and marketing. Commonly examined demographics include gender, race, age, disabilities, mobility, home ownership, employment status, and even location...
: from teenager to family-oriented.
Regarding the topic of child-targeted marketing, Schlosser explains how the McDonald's Corporation modeled its marketing tactics on The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
, which inspired the creation of advertising icons such as Ronald McDonald
Ronald McDonald
Ronald McDonald is a clown character used as the primary mascot of the McDonald's fast-food restaurant chain. In television commercials, the clown inhabits a fantasy world called McDonaldland, and has adventures with his friends Mayor McCheese, the Hamburglar, Grimace, Birdie the Early Bird, and...
and his sidekick
Sidekick
A sidekick is a close companion who is generally regarded as subordinate to the one he accompanies. Some well-known fictional sidekicks are Don Quixote's Sancho Panza, Sherlock Holmes' Doctor Watson, The Lone Ranger's Tonto, The Green Hornet's Kato and Batman's Robin.-Origins:The origin of the...
s. Marketing executives theorized this shift to market to children would result not only in attracting children, but their parents and grandparents as well. More importantly, the tactic would instill brand loyalty
Brand loyalty
The American Marketing Association defines brand loyalty as:# The situation in which a consumer generally buys the same manufacturer-originated product or service repeatedly over time rather than buying from multiple suppliers within the category .# The degree to which a consumer consistently...
that would persist through adulthood via nostalgic associations to McDonald's. Schlosser also discusses the tactic's ills: the exploitation of children's naïveté and trusting nature.
In marketing to children, Schlosser suggests, corporations have infiltrated schools through sponsorship and quid pro quo
Quid pro quo
Quid pro quo most often means a more-or-less equal exchange or substitution of goods or services. English speakers often use the term to mean "a favour for a favour" and the phrases with almost identical meaning include: "give and take", "tit for tat", "this for that", and "you scratch my back,...
. He sees that reductions in corporate tax
Corporate tax
Many countries impose corporate tax or company tax on the income or capital of some types of legal entities. A similar tax may be imposed at state or lower levels. The taxes may also be referred to as income tax or capital tax. Entities treated as partnerships are generally not taxed at the...
ation have come at the expense of school funding, thereby presenting many corporations with the opportunity for sponsorship with those same schools. According to his sources, 80% of sponsored textbooks contain material that is biased in favor of the sponsors, and 30% of high schools offer fast foods in their cafeterias. Schlosser shares anecdotes suggesting that students who disregarded sponsorships could be punished, such as the case of high school student Mike Cameron. He was suspended from school for an incident on "Coke
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...
day"; while his fellow students wore red or white T-shirts and posed collectively as the word COKE while aerial photographs were taken, Cameron instead wore Pepsi
Pepsi
Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink that is produced and manufactured by PepsiCo...
-blue.
In his examination of the meat packing industry
Meat packing industry
The meat packing industry handles the slaughtering, processing, packaging, and distribution of animals such as cattle, pigs, sheep and other livestock...
, Schlosser finds that it is now dominated by casual, easily exploited immigrant labor and that levels of injury are among the highest of any occupation in the United States. Schlosser discusses his findings on meat packing companies IBP, Inc.
IBP, Inc.
IBP, Inc., formerly known as Iowa Beef Processors, Inc., now Tyson Fresh Meats, is now an American meat packing company based in Dakota Dunes, South Dakota, USA. IBP was the United States' biggest beef packer and its number two pork processor until it was acquired by Tyson Foods in 2001 for US$3.2...
and on Kenny Dobbins. Schlosser also recounts the steps involved in meat processing and reveals several hazardous practices unknown to many consumers, such as the practice of rendering dead pigs and horses and chicken manure into cattle feed.
Schlosser notes that practices like these were responsible for the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, aka Mad Cow Disease
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy , commonly known as mad-cow disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease in cattle that causes a spongy degeneration in the brain and spinal cord. BSE has a long incubation period, about 30 months to 8 years, usually affecting adult cattle at a peak age onset of...
, p. 202-3), as well as for introducing harmful bacteria into the food supply, such as E. coli O157:H7
Escherichia coli O157:H7
Escherichia coli O157:H7 is an enterohemorrhagic strain of the bacterium Escherichia coli and a cause of foodborne illness. Infection often leads to hemorrhagic diarrhea, and occasionally to kidney failure, especially in young children and elderly persons...
(ch. 9, "What's In The Meat").
A later section of the book discusses the fast food industry's role in globalization
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
, linking increased obesity in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
with the arrival of fast food. The book also includes a summary of the McLibel Case
McLibel case
McDonald's Corporation v Steel & Morris [1997] EWHC QB 366, known as "the McLibel case" was an English lawsuit filed by McDonald's Corporation against environmental activists Helen Steel and David Morris over a pamphlet critical of the company...
.
In later editions, Schlosser provided an additional section that included reviews of his book, counters to critics who emerged since its first edition, and discussion of the effect that the threat of BSE
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy , commonly known as mad-cow disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease in cattle that causes a spongy degeneration in the brain and spinal cord. BSE has a long incubation period, about 30 months to 8 years, usually affecting adult cattle at a peak age onset of...
had on US Federal Government policy towards cattle farming. He concluded that, given the swift, decisive and effective action that took place as a result of this interest and intervention, many of the problems documented in the book are solvable, given enough political will.
Young Adult version
An adaptation of Fast Food Nation for younger readers titled Chew on ThisChew on This
Chew On This: Everything You Don't Want to Know about Fast Food is an adaptation of Fast Food Nation for younger readers by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson.- Plot summary:...
was published in May 2006 by Houghton Mifflin
Houghton Mifflin
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is an educational and trade publisher in the United States. Headquartered in Boston's Back Bay, it publishes textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, reference works, and fiction and non-fiction for both young readers and adults.-History:The company was...
. It is co-authored by Charles Wilson
Charles Wilson (journalist)
Charles Wilson is a Scottish journalist and newspaper executive.Charlie Wilson was Managing Director of Mirror Group plc from 1992 to 1998, having been Editorial Director of Mirror Group Newspapers from 1991 to 1992...
.
Editions
- ISBN 0-06-093845-5 (paperback edition 2002, 400pp.)
- ISBN 0-7139-9602-1 (paperback edition 2001, 368pp.)
- ISBN 0-14-100687-0 (paperback edition 2002, 400pp.)
- ISBN 0-395-97789-4 (hardcover edition 2001, 288pp.)
- ISBN 0-06-083858-2 (paperback edition 2005, 383pp.)
See also
- Chew on ThisChew on ThisChew On This: Everything You Don't Want to Know about Fast Food is an adaptation of Fast Food Nation for younger readers by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson.- Plot summary:...
— a young readers' adaptation of the book Fast Food Nation - The Corporation (film) — a 2003 Canadian documentary film critical of the modern-day corporation and its behavior towards society
- Fast Food Nation (film)Fast Food Nation (film)Fast Food Nation is a 2006 American/British drama film directed by Richard Linklater. The screenplay was written by Linklater and Eric Schlosser, loosely based on the latter's bestselling 2001 non-fiction book of the same name...
— a 2006 American/British drama film directed by Richard Linklater. The screenplay was written by Linklater and Eric Schlosser - Food, Inc. (film) — a documentary film featuring the author talking about similar subject matter
- Jennifer GovernmentJennifer GovernmentJennifer Government is a novel written by Max Barry. Published in 2003, it is Barry's second novel, following 1999's Syrup. The novel is set in a dystopian alternate reality in which most nations are dominated by for-profit corporate entities while the government's political power is extremely...
— a 2003 novel by Max BarryMax BarryMax Barry is a contemporary Australian author. He also maintains a blog on various topics, including writing, marketing and politics...
set in a hyper-corporate world, where schools, health care and almost everything else are run by major corporations - Million Calorie March: The MovieMillion Calorie March: The MovieMillion Calorie March: The Movie is a 2008 American documentary film directed by, co-produced by and starring Gary Michael Marino, an author, speaker and anti-obesity activist. The film follows Marino as he embarks on a fundraiser and awareness walk, the Million Calorie March, from Jacksonville,...
— a 2008 documentary film highlighting obesity and weight loss - My Secret Life on the McJobMy Secret Life on the McJobMy Secret Life on the McJob: Lessons from Behind the Counter Guaranteed to Supersize Any Management Style is a book by Jerry Newman about low-wage work in fast-food outlets...
— a book by Jerry Newman, a college professor, about low-wage work in fast-food outlets undercover - Reefer Madness (2003 book)Reefer Madness (2003 book)Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market is a book written by Eric Schlosser and published in 2003. The book is a look at the three pillars of the underground economy of the U.S., estimated by Schlosser to be ten percent of American GDP: marijuana, migrant labor, and...
— a 2003 book by Eric Schlosser examining migrant labor and the pornographyPornographyPornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
and marijuanaCannabis (drug)Cannabis, also known as marijuana among many other names, refers to any number of preparations of the Cannabis plant intended for use as a psychoactive drug or for medicinal purposes. The English term marijuana comes from the Mexican Spanish word marihuana...
businesses in America - Super Size MeSuper Size MeSuper Size Me is a 2004 American documentary film directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock, an American independent filmmaker. Spurlock's film follows a 30-day period from February 1 to March 2, 2003 during which he eats only McDonald's food...
— a 2004 fast food documentary by Morgan SpurlockMorgan SpurlockMorgan Valentine Spurlock is an American documentary filmmaker, humorist, television producer, screenwriter and journalist best known for the documentary film Super Size Me...