Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

Eric Schlosser is an investigator and a journalist. In Fast Food Nation, he explains to the readers both how the fast food industry came to be, and how fast food has badly affected the American culture and those of countries overseas.

Schlosser writes as a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly. In Fast Food Nation, he takes the viewpoint of a jounalist, naturally. Schlosser sheds light on the problems behind the fast food industry: cheap labor, unsafe conditions, and obesity, to name a few. His book contains two sections, one on its history and one on its effects. Section 1 covers the histories of various fast food companies, while Section 2 mainly focuses on the truth behind what you are eating (that is, the meat and potatoes), but also on the global effects of fast food.

Schlosser does an almost excellent job at showing everything the American people need to know, but there are a few small problems. He uses shocking statistics, terrible situations, and horrifying truths to make each and every reader remember exactly what he or she has just read. With all this schocking information, Schlosser somewhat, at times, loses his viewpoint a little bit. In between giving his harsh statistics, he has many smaller stories. Some explain a man's history. Others explain a rural town and its history. All of this history becomes a little bit tedious. A few times, I felt more as if I were reading a school textbook than an astounding book on fast food.

In Fast Food Nation, the statistics are simply unbelieveable. In the back of the book is its sources, so I felt better trusting the information. On the down side, the writing occasionally tends to soften; but on the plus side, the solid, factual, and extremely shocking information in this book is ultimately the only aspect that one would remember after reading this book.

I've taught this book for several years, and over time have realized that the title is quite misleading. Or the content is. Consider: the book is ostensibly a critique of the history/influence/fallout of the fast-food industry in the US. However, much of the book has little to do with this.

For example, one large section focuses on the coloring/flavoring industry, which can be seen, the author notes, in every supermarket. This is a characteristic of the entire food and cosmetics and toiletries industry, not just fast food.

The sections on meatpacking plants are harrowing, indeed. But then I realized this applies to the entire supermarket/restaurant industry, not just fast food. So what's it doing here?

Similarly, the sections on agribusiness, disheartening though they may be, reflect the business practices of this entire section of the US economy, not simply those parts used by fast food. So the detailed discussion of this, though it is fascinating, does not uniquely illuminate fast food.

There are other examples, but you get the idea. Overall, there's a lot of interesting research, well-presented, but rather than calling is Fast Food Nation, it would be more accurate to title it simply Food Nation.

Even before Super Size Me hit the market, Eric Scholessler was criticizing the fast food industry. It is not all about the food itself being risky or of a low quality. The industry itself exploits farms, slaughter-house workers, high school student workers and small business people. Not to mention the risk of getting injured, robbed or shot. Fast Food Nation is a real eye opener what the fast food industry does to children, our health and its workers. After reading Fast Food Nation, I avoid those places even more.

Doug Setter, author of Stomach Flattening and One Less Victim

I've taught FFN a few times, sometimes switching it out with Cadillac Desert. FFN has a lot of information, most of which may be new to readers. It has become an industry of its own, and since Morgan Spurlock's Supersize Me, more people have become aware of these issues. While Supersize me is a rock 'n roll, fast-paced, in-your-face romp through issues of nutrition, Schlosser's book is a much more thoroughly researched and encyclopedic take on all aspects of fast food, from the agricultural practices that support fast food, to the nutrition, to the advertising, to the impacts on children (obesity and brainwashing), to the impact on the landscape and architecture, to the globalization of the American lifestyle. It is an easier read that it may seem from this review because most all of the references are in end notes, so his research never gets in the way of the story. This is good and bad. It makes it an easy read, but it makes it hard to evaluate his copious research. As an academic, I do have bones to pick with some of his sources, but these are relatively few, and I have a few more sources I would suggest in support.

If anyone is thinking it, the book is not a novelization of the film. The film is a fictionalized narrative based on the research in this book. An interesting note is that the slaughterhouse scenes in the film were taken in an actual slaughterhouse, in Mexico, if I remember correctly.

I read this book to become more familiar with the fast food industry which is so easy to choose these days. As a busy wife and mother, it is so much easier to drive through somewhere than to cook at home. But I knew that I needed to be informed about my choices and so I read this book. It was very informative, clear, easy to understand. Very blunt in describing the fast food situation. It gave me a good perspective to remember as I choose what my family will eat for dinner. It made the fast food choices not quite as tempting as I realized what I was consuming. A definite read. Better to make an informed choice about what we eat, than to blindly assume that the food we are sold is worth eating.