Fast Food Nation Opens Eyes

Review 1

By Nicole Powell

Note: All quotations in this review come directly from the book Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser.

Fast food is a larger portion of our lives than we might think. "On any given day in the United States about one-quarter of the adult population visits a fast food restaurant." While there, "the typical American now consumes approximately three hamburgers and four orders of French fries every week." To wash all that down is a hefty supply of soda. Since 1978, soda consumption has tripled and replaced healthier beverages with empty calories, caffeine and sugar. Now, "Americans" drink soda at an annual rate of about"six hundred twelve-ounce cans of soda per person."

What do all those figures mean for your pocketbook? "In 1970, Americans spent about $6 billion on fast food; in 2001, they spent more than $110 billion. Americans now spend more money on fast food than on higher education, personal computers, computer software, or new cars. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music "combined." Things have changed drastically in the past few generations in the food business and for family meals. "A generation ago, three-quarters of the money used to buy food in the United States was spent to prepare meals at home. Today about half of the money used to buy food is spent at restaurants"mainly at fast food restaurants." People are starting to sway to fast food for is familiarity, taste and convenience.

The target consumers for fast food are children. "Every month about 90 percent of American children between the ages of three and nine visit a McDonald's." Heavy advertising easily influences children. "Indeed, market research has found that children often recognize a brand logo before they can recognize their own name. A 1991 study found "nearly all of America's six-year-olds could identify Joe Camel, who was just as familiar to them as Mickey Mouse." This advertising often gets children hooked into wanting the product and even trusting the products spokespeople. For example, "In Australia, where the number of fast food restaurants roughly tripled during the 1990s, a survey found that half of the nation's nine-and ten-year-olds thought that Ronald McDonald knew what kids should eat."

What makes fast food taste so good? This seemingly simple question brings a lot of the tricks of the fast food trade to light. According to tests, "the aroma of a food can be responsible for as much as 90 percent of its flavor." For foods to have a certain smell, they do not have to contain the actual plant that gives off that scent. Instead, scientists in labs can recreate the smell with chemicals. "Adding methyl-2-peridylketone makes something taste like popcorn. Adding ethyl-3-hydroxybutanoate makes it taste like marshmallow. The possibilities are now almost limitless." Color also affects the taste of your meal. "Titanium dioxide gives many processed candies, frosting, and icing their bright white color; it is a common ingredient in women's cosmetics; and it is the pigment used in many white oil paints and house paints. At Burger King, Wendy's, and McDonald's, coloring agents have been added to many of the soft drinks, salad dressings, cookies, condiments, chicken dishes, and sandwich buns."

Eating fast food has its consequences whether you eat rarely or all the time. The immediate effects of fast food are sickness or even death. "Every day in the United States, roughly 200,000 people are sickened by a food-born disease, 900 are hospitalized, and fourteen die. Although the rise in food-born illnesses has been caused by many complex factors, much of the increase can be attributed to recent changes in how American food is produced. American meat production has never before been so centralized." Since there are not as many producers of meat because of the decline of the smaller farmers, an outbreak of toxins in one meat plant causes widespread sickness across the nation or even across the world. Unfortunately the government has little control over the meatpacking companies. This means government programs, like the USDA, have little power to do anything about infected meat. The government can force toy companies to recall dangerous toys but it cannot force a meatpacking plant to recall tainted meat. "A nationwide study published by the USDA in 1996 found that 7.5 percent of the ground beef samples taken at processing plants were contaminated with Salmonella, 11.7 percent with Listeria monocytogenes, 30 percent with Staphylococcus aureus, and 53.3 percent with Clostridium perfringens. All of these pathogens can make people sick."

There is another pathogen that often found in meat called E.Coli 0157:H7 in which, "the Shiga toxins enter the bloodstream, causing hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), which can lead to kidney failure, anemia, internal bleeding, and the destruction of vital organs. About 5 percent of the children who develop HUS are killed by it. Those who survive are often left with permanent disabilities, such as blindness or brain damage." Animals become prone to illnesses and disease, like E.Coli 0157:H7, because of poor treatment and care." About 75 percent of the cattle in the United States were routinely fed livestock wastes the rendered remains of dead sheep and dead cattle "until August of 1997" To make matters worse, the animal used to make about one-quarter of the nations ground beef "worn-out dairy cattle" are the animals most likely to be diseased and riddled with antibiotic residues" A single animal infected with E.Coli 0157:H7 can contaminate 32,000 pounds of that ground beef."

This leads to significant harms for the human population as "far more Americans are severely harmed every year by food poisoning than by illegal drug use." For example, in 1992 and 1993 there was a major outbreak of E.Coli 0157:H7 in the fast food chain called Jack in the Box. "More than seven hundred people in at least four states were sickened by Jack in the Box hamburgers, more than two hundred people were hospitalized, and four died. Most of the victims were children. One of the first to become ill, Lauren Beth Rudolph, ate a hamburger at a San Diego Jack in the Box a week before Christmas. She was admitted to the hospital on Christmas Eve, suffered terrible pain, had three heart attacks, and died in her mother's arms on December 28, 1992. She was six years old. This is only one victim of the horrible effects E.Coli causes along with other toxic pathogens.

Fast food companies have profited at the expense of their customers in other health related ways. "The profits of the fast food chains have been made possible by losses imposed on the rest of society. The annual cost of obesity alone in now twice as large as the fast food industry's total revenues." In relation to the world, "the United States now has the highest obesity rate of any industrialized nation in the world. More than half of all American children are now obese or overweight." This is not helped by the fact that people are getting less exercise than they used to. "The typical American child now spends about twenty-one hours a week watching television," roughly one and a half months of TV every year. That does not include the time children spend in front of a screen watching videos, playing video games, or using the computer." Obesity does not affect one particular group of people alone but instead affects people from all walks of life.

"Obesity is now second only to smoking as a cause of mortality in the United States." The human body is "far more efficient at gaining weight than at losing it." Fast food plays a major role in this increasing problem because "as people eat more meals outside the home, they consume more calories, less fiber, and more fat. Commodity prices have fallen so low that the fast food industry has greatly increased its portion sizes, without reducing profits, in order to attract customers." Fast food companies also continue to attract customers through advertising. "A survey of children"s advertising in the European Union found that 95 percent of the food ads there encouraged kids to eat foods high in sugar, salt, and fat. The company running the most ads aimed at children was McDonald's."

The fast food industry not only affects the health and lives of people across the world, it also has an effect on the nations workers. "The fast food industry pays the minimum wage to a higher proportion of its workers than any other American industry." Many workers cannot try to petition for higher wages or even other worker rights through unions due to the possibility of losing their job. At the time the book was published, ""none of the workers at the roughly fifteen thousand McDonald's in North America are represented by a union." However abuses stretch farther than just the immediate fast food restaurant. For example, "the giant processing companies do their best to drive down the prices offered to potato farmers." Out of every $1.50 spent on a large order of fries at a fast food restaurant, perhaps 2 cents goes to the farmer who grew the potatoes." This goes beyond potato farmers and affects other produce and livestock farmers. Many ranches and farms are being bought out and taken under the control of one producer who then controls the ranches in a uniform order to maximize the output. The advantages in these situations lie with the big companies. According to a report by Nebraska's Center for Rural Affairs, "A free market requires many buyers as well as many sellers, all with equal access to accurate information, all entitled to trade on the same terms, and none with a big enough share of the market to influence price. Nothing close to these conditions now exists in the cattle market."

Abuses also happen in the meat packing plants themselves. Many workers are encouraged to take methamphetamine in order to stay with the quick pace of the line. Many female workers at the plants face sexual harassment from other workers or even supervisors. However, "some of the most dangerous jobs in meatpacking today are performed by the late-night cleaning crews. Although official statistics are not kept, the death rate among slaughterhouse sanitation crews is extraordinarily high. The nation's worst job can end in just about the worst way. Sometimes these workers are literally ground up and reduced to nothing."

Where does all of this information leave us? I hope this gave you a glimpse into the world of the fast food industry. There are many other factors involved that I simply did not have the space to cover. For more in-depth information I suggest reading the book Fast Food Nation. If that is not possible, I hope this article has given you enough insight into the fast food industry. Please think about yourself and your family next time you are deciding whether to stay in or eat out. I hope this will help start your first steps to breaking away from fast food and moving towards healthier and safer food products.

Review 2

Colorado Springs is the place Eric Schlosser has chosen to focus on in his book about fast food. The recent changes that have swept through the city are an echo of the changes that the fast food industry has brought throughout the United States. In the last decade Colorado Springs has become one of the fastest growing cities in the nation. After World War II, a number of military bases were built there which greatly increased the population. Other high tech military installations soon followed, which attracted others to the area, from defense contractors to Focus On The Family, a religious organization. This in turn attracted more people, and of course the fast food chains.
McDonald's, the most popular of the fast food restaurants, seems to lead the way. They have perfected the art of selecting locations in the direction they believe development is heading and where they will be highly visible. Other chains soon follow in their footsteps and open nearby. In spite of the fact that they spend billions of dollars on advertising, they still depend on their visibility because they understand the fact that a large percent of their customers stop on impulse.
Just as important as their visibility is their efficiency. They have adapted assembly line production to kitchens and have changed the way the food industry prepares food. Technology and organization have increased their "throughput" - the amount of food they produce and the speed with which they do it - while at the same time decreasing their need for expensive skilled labor.
According to Schlosser, a lot more than food production goes on behind the counters of fast food restaurants. Assembly line production is what you would expect to find. But in the course of his research he heard stories of things such as food fights, children playing, injuries, even murders. While these things are unexpected perhaps, they are not uncommon.
The latest technology has produced machines that greatly regiment the way food is prepared to produce a standard product. Therefore they do not need to rely on highly trained or skilled employees to produce the desired results. All they need is employees who are willing to work for low wages, who follow instructions to the letter and who are easily replaceable.
Teenagers seem to be the ones who fit this ideally. They have low job skills, are willing to work for low pay, and if they decide to move on, are easily replaced. Unfortunately, it seems are though McDonald's has made every effort to keep it this way. In order to keep labor costs at a minimum, managers arrange shifts so that no one works more than 30 hours a week to avoid having to pay overtime.
Even though there are laws regulating teenage workers, Schlosser found that many times these laws are ignored or violated. Teenagers are kept at work for long hours, far beyond what is legal. Also teenagers are not allowed to use hazardous equipment. Many do so anyway and result in serious injuries. Also keeping teenagers late at night, often as the only ones on the premises to close up, increases the risk of being murdered in attempted robberies.
For all their talk of motivation employees and keeping it fun, and giving rewards for accomplishments, it seems at the highest level there is very little concern for the well being of their employees. Any attempts to change their policies have been met with strong resistance.
In spite of all this, most high school kids that were interviewed liked working at McDonald's and other fast food joints. Many said they had dreamed of working at McDonald's ever since hey were little kids. It has become an "American rite of passage." The prestige of a job and spending money in their pockets is apparently compensation enough.

-EG