Review Of Eric Schlosser's Critique Of Fast Food Nation

In a Michael Moore style critique, Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, examines the effects of the fast-food industry’s need for consolidation and efficiency, targeting how these incentives have altered the American diet, workforce and economy. Schlosser’s expose is ambitious, albeit gruesome and discussion of the fast-food industry, which he said has infiltrated every facet of American society over the last four decades and has become a social custom “as American as a small, rectangular, hand-held, frozen, and reheated apple pie.”

Schlosser begins his investigative reporting with the humble beginnings of the fast food restaurants and the men who created and perfected the industry. Schlosser argues that the rapid growth of these restaurants

In order to promote mass production and profits, the industry has to keep labor and material costs low. This industry culture has brought down the integrity of fast-food jobs, making workers disposable and allowing them to be paid minimum wage. Schlosser goes on to suggest that fast food restaurants create a trap for farmers and workers, lead by business men and women who are willing to sell anything as long as they are profiting off of it. Executives for these large corporations hire teenagers and immigrants who are desperate for money. It’s as if their employees are disposable assets, making the job easy to find, yet hard to

These employees become a metaphorical symbol for the industry -- the batteries of the business -- used to produce high quantities of low quality products, disposed when they are no longer needed. The fast food titans want the biggest profit possible, therefore, the cheaper the supplies, the greater the income.

Another example of how the fast food industry is taking advantage of people with no other option for work is found in his examination of the conditions of slaughterhouses and meatpacking, exposing an environment that is both vile and dangerous. He notes that the majority of the meat served in fast food restaurants come from slaughterhouses and suggests that when these slaughterhouses depend heavily on income from fast food chains, they are more willing to mass produce meats hazardously to increase their