_Fast Food Nation_

Cafe Society
1

Amazon.com’s page for FFN.

This is a fun - sometimes horrifying - book to read. In addition to the material being engrossing, Schlosser also has a decent ability to story-tell, which keeps the book interesting even when the subjects might not normally be so. The book goes fairly quickly, but it also covers a lot of ground. It’s a good balance.

I think this book has and will continue to shock a lot of people. Being a person who grew up in Boulder and had exposure to militant vegans, I wasn’t much surprised by the accounts of what kind of things go on in slaughterhouses. But if you didn’t know in advance what you were going to read, shock certanly is an appropriate reaction. You may not eat hamburger again for a long time after reading this book.

This is a great book book if you like and/or live in Colorado. There are some excellent descriptions of Colorado Springs and Greely, among others. The chapter on Hank the cattle rancher was both highly insightful and particularly enjoyable.

This is certanly a book that lazzie-faire conservatives will hate. It shows how huge-scale agribusiness has more or less castrated independent farmers and ranchers, the backbone of America, reducing them to sharecroppers. This is done in the name of “efficiency”, but in a truly efficient free market, ConAgra executives wouldn’t be making millions a year - that too is highly economically inefficient when there are many executives who would work just as hard for a fraction of the salary. AgriBusiness is an oligopoly, not a free market. And it exploits everyone to the limits of the law and beyond. Pay particular attention to how very closely the current system of agribusiness resembles the crop control system of the old USSR.

The chapter on hiring practices within McDonalds was particularly enjoyable to me, as I saw in it a very strong echo of the way that Best Buy hires and fires. There are some very obvious and very slimy ways that costs are kept low by exploiting people as much as possible. Denying insurance until so many months or years after hire, then going out of their way to fire people or pressure them to resigning when the date approaches. Collecting Federal subsidies for training programs for the poor while simultaniously having stated goals of “zero training” for their employees. Fierce, illegal union busting. Although he was a meatpacker and not a restaurant employee, the story of Kenny Dobbins was particularly illustrative.

Highly recommended.

-Ben

2

I’d recommend it very highly as well.

3

Another recommendation here.

4

This book really changed a lot of my dining and consumer choices. Whenever possible, I try to avoid fast-food chains in favor of a privately owned eatery.

While I was aware of the impact of “big buisness” on “mom and pop” before I read the book, some of the stories illustrated this so poignantly, I had to stop and examine my own habits, not only in fast food, but in other purchasing areas, as well. (For example, Barnes & Noble may have a better selection, but I’d rather shop from an independant book-seller.)

All in all, I’d say the book is as equally informing as entertaining, and would also recommend it highly.

5

I’ve used it in a few classes and have had students tell me, “This book made me a vegetarian.” While that’s not my intention in using it (the OP’s right: it’s a great read), it gives you some idea as to the impact that Schlosser’s book can have.

6

Actually, when i read that last month, i started going to McDonald’s more. (though it was unrelated to reading the book). I am blessed to live in SF right now which is full of mom and pop restaurants, so they get 95% of my business. I did grow up in the midwest and my grandma’s farm was in Columbus Junction, where IBP has a plant and is mentioned in the book where a worker died, so i was partially familiar with what goes on.

7

**

A share cropper is someone typically living in poverty who farms someone elses land in exchange for a place to live, a small share of the profits, or a little of both. Most independent farmers I know don’t fall into that category. There are also farm co-opts made up of many “smaller” farms.

Unfortunately huge agribusiness is simply the most efficent way to farm these days. Are you aware of the high cost of farming when it comes to labor, equipment, fuel, pest control, and weed control? Ford may have pushed a lot of independent auto makers out of business but he put the average man in an automobile in the process.

[ul]
[li] Case Tractor IH MX 240 new 112,000[/li][li] John Deere 7810 w/ JD1560 no till grain drill $107,000[/li][li] John Deere 9650 Combine w/ Header (part that cuts grain) $190,000[/li][/ul]

We’ve come a long way from the days of one tractors farms.

**

That just sounds like a bunch of anti-capitalist drivel. We’ve all heard the same arguements against executives in every industry. If they can get the exact same quality of executives for a fraction of the cost why wouldn’t they? If I recall correctly Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream tried this and it failed.

**

I know we have one of the stable food supplies in the world. Unlike the Soviet Union we don’t have to stand in line for hours for our daily bread.

**

I experienced this first hand when I first entered the work force when I was 17. Some managers really have no ethics when it comes to

Marc

8

forgot to add i recommend the book

9

Do I recommend the book? Yeah, sort of… it had some interesting portions, well worth reading. The problem is, Schlosser is

  1. an ideologue
  2. a scatterbrain

The fact that he’s an ideologue means that you have to take everything he says with a grain of salt AND that he tries to make every fact fit his preconceived notions, whether they do or not.

The fact that he’s a scatterbrain means that the book (like his current book on the underground economy) is frequently a disjointed mess. He has an extremely annoying habit of tossing out huge numbers of unrelated stat and unconnected anecdotes (some interesting, some not) and treating them as if they’re all part of the same story.

A few things I’d love to say to Schlosser if I ever met him:

  1. You really think the cows killed to make burgers or steaks at Mom & Pop restaurants are killed more humanely than the ones that go into Quarter Pounders and Whoppers?

  2. WHERE are you seeing all these poor, exploited teenagers working fast food jobs? Sure, when I was a teen (a loooong time ago) it was common for teens to get their first jobs at a McDonald’s outlet. But I can’t remember the last time I saw a teen working a fast food job. In fact, I’d wager you’re FAR more likely to see a senior citizen working at Mickey D’s than a teenager. Teens today look with utter disdain at such jobs, which they consider beneath them (“Starbucks si, Wendy’s no”).

10

Liked the book. The author was serviceably even-handed, and he really made me think. I still got a little whiff of an “angle” coming off the book, especially many of the statistics he used (I don’t trust numbers). But the actual numbers weren’t really the point, I guess.

It made me very hungry for McDonald’s though. One of the fairest things the author said in the book was that despite all the disgusting practices involved in getting animal flesh from the factory to your local fast-food eatery, there is no denying that the food tastes good.

11

** Astorian**, I routinely see teenagers working at fast food places. When are you going? If you’re going during the schoolday, you won’t see any teens. If you go at night or on weekends, you’ll probably see more. It could also be that the restaurants in your area don’t hire teens.

12

Which is why all teenagers today are AssHats.

I strongly disagree with the scatterbrained accusation. I had no problems following the book, and he certainly didn’t jump from one place to another or switch topics without warning.

And all of the anecdotes were part of the chapter in which they appeared and also part of the book as a whole, in that they helped the book to achieve cohessivness. Again, I don’t recall reading any anecdotes that were in the wrong chapter/section of the book.

13

Well, i don’t believe that Schlosser ever makes the assertion of which you accuse him. What he does do is give details of the ways in which some of these smaller operations differ from McDonald’s and other large chains, and some of these differences relate to the quality of meat that is used, and the source of the meat. For example, he says of Conway’s Red Top, based in Colorado Springs,

And, regarding California’s In-N-Out Burger chain, he says:

His observations about these smaller operations are perfectly consistent with his overall argument about concentration and oligopoly in the meat industry and the restaurant industry, and its consequences for product quality and conditions of work. At no stage does he say, for example, that the small, independent meat processor GNC Packaging kills its animals more humanely than the larger operations. What he does say is that smaller operations are less likely to suffer from the consequences of speed-ups and inattention to health and safety than are the larger concerns. And he also points out that the meat coming from these smaller operations is consistently judged by independent experts and by consumers to be of better quality than that coming from larger meat companies.

Also, having accused Schlosser of being scatterbrained, you demonstrate your own inability to follow more than one argument at a time. One of his key arguments about the smaller operations has nothing to do with the meat itself, but relates to pay rates, benefits and overall working conditions for the staff, and dining atmosphere for customers. While the conditions under which cattle are processed into beef is a major concern of the book, this issue does not have any necessary or direct correlation to working and dining conditions in fast food restaurants, and Schlosser never says that it does. All he is trying to do is give an overall picture of the industry, and to point out unsavoury aspects of it at various stages along the chain of production and consumption.

You also accused Schlosser of being an ideologue, yet your wilfull misreading of his argument tends to suggest that you are not immune from ideiological considerations yourself.

For those who found Schlosser’s portrayal of the conditions in the factories compelling, may i suggest The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair. This is a novel, written in 1906, that describes vividly the conditions in the Chicago meat-packing industry. Interestingly, Sinclair wrote the book not to expose the conditions in the meat industry, but to advocate for socialism in America. When his book became famous for its portrayal of the meat industry, and helped to prompt the passing of the Pure Food and Drug Act, Sinclair famously said: “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident i hit it in the stomach.”

The Jungle is a great book that reads more like a journalistic expose than a novel; unsurprising, given that Sinclair was one of the great muckraking journalists of the early twentieth century.

14

I read it, but the only effect it had on my diet was that (thanks to a blurb in the section on flavoring/coloring manufacture) I now refuse to eat or drink anything with “cochineal” in it. It’s crushed-up bug skins; I just…no.

Incidentally, I had already sworn off McDonald’s years before reading this book; I think if I hadn’t I would have afterwards.

(P.S.–was anybody else surprised to find from this book that Taco Bell DOES use real beef?? I always thought they had found some loophole that allowed them to call cow vomit beef, or something.)

15

Just because something is true in your little neck of the woods doesn’t make it true throughout the country. I’ve been in fast food places from Illinois to San Francisco and back again and i can guarentee you that teenagers made up 80% of the workforce. Immigrants make up another chunk (many of which are teenagers), and since you are in texas it would make sense that more of them would be employeed by the fast food industry since they would put up with more crap, while teenagers can afford to go get jobs at the mall. But teenagers are by and large the backbone of the fast food industry.

16

Can anyone recommend any similar books? I read Fast Food Nation a few months ago and loved it.

17

It’s more theoretical and less anecdotal than Schlosser’s book, but George Ritzer’s The McDonaldization of Society is good at showing how the values of the fast food industry have permeated almost every aspect of our culture, from medicine to education.

18

I think Nickel and Dimed is a good companion to Fast Food Nation.

Amazon.com does, too, evidently.

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I’ll second Nickel and Dimed, it’s a great, great read, though she can be a bit tiresome when she gets going.

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Hey! You forgot your signature smilies!

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

There you go. Almost didn’t recognise you without them!