I was more creeped out by the targeting of toddlers in advertising, making Ronald their trusted friend. It kept reminding me of Stephen King’s IT.
Schlosser’s second book, Reefer Madness is quite good too.
No Logo by Naomi Klien is similar; she vents about big business, branding and globalization a lot but it is a good read.
Captive State by George Monbiot is also quite a good read. It is about the takeover of Britain by big business. However, Monbiot is more 1-dimensional than either Klein or Schlosser. Still, the final chapter (his solutions to the problems) is a most amusing collection of ideas which politically come from way, way left of sanity.
As for Fast Food Nation I thought it was a good read, but somewhat 1-dimensional. It seemed clear to me that Schlosser was intent on hammering Mickey D’s and the other fast food chains instead of presenting a balanced view (not that I’m defending fast food, but these companies have to have more redeeming features than Schlosser will acknowledge).
You might like the following:
Thomas Frank, One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy. (not as complicated as it sounds)
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Toxic Sludge is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies, and the Public Relations Industry.
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Trust Us, We’re Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future.
The Project on Disney, Inside the Mouse: Work and Play at Disney World.
I also add my voice to those who have recommended Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed.
No it’s NOT!
Farmers that incorporate the giant agri-business model are going belly up right left and center.
With all due respect,** MGibson**, there are affordable alternatives out there that do not abuse either the land, the farmer, or the livestock.
One of my hero’s is a 2nd generation farmer, Joel Salatin.
I discovered Joel by reading an article about him in the Smithsonian magazine 3 years ago.
His farm utilizes a natural ecological balance, seasonality, and stewardship to generate a comfortable living wage for his family. They work hard but they’re certainly not living in poverty.
He sells pasture broilers, farm fresh eggs, natural beef and vegetables on his farm in Virginia.
My husband and I are so impressed with his model (as well as others that we’ve studied), that we’re slowly converting our 20 acres to a viable concern that will support us both in comfort by working hard 8-9 months a year.
Health care is the leading industry in America today.
Why?
Could it be that our chickens are 20% fecal soup, our beef is laced with antibiotics and steroids, and our imported veggies lack nutritional content?
There is validity to the statement-"you are what you eat."
Farmers that factory farm are constantly dealing with livestock disease.
They create toxic manure lagoons.
Poultry farmers are sharecroppers controlled by big producers.
Grain producers have zero control over the market.
The average American consumer pays the price in enviromental degradation and in poor health.
When I traveled extensively in Europe, I was amazed by the quality of the food-the taste, the smell, the texture.
Americans are being sold a bill of goods.
Would you pay $2.00 a dozen for golden farm fresh eggs rich in protein?
Would you pay $2.00 a pound for chemical free great tasting chicken?
Would you pay pennies more for really fresh locally grown and vitamin rich veggies?
If you’re answer is no, then you deserve what you’re eating.
FWIW, I was extremely disappointed by Nickle and Dimed.
My husband has always eaten store-bought eggs. When I started getting them from my grandfather’s free-range chickens, he was actually a bit put-off at first by the firm, bright yolks, and slightly different taste.
My grandfather’s farm’s produce, chickens and eggs taste so much better than the ones from the grocery store. As a child, I was raised on these foods, grown with no chemicals. (The chickens served as our “pesticide,” pecking the bugs from the plants.) The vegetables I get from the grocery stores are pallid comparisons to his. Chicken flesh from grocery stores is bland and tasteless, whereas his chickens “taste like chicken should.”
Of course, my credibility isn’t helped by botching the spelling of “Nickel”.
::rolleyes::
Lissa-I’m betting my future on people like you.
(By the way, we call grocery store chicken “tofu chicken.”)
I’m always astounded by people that quibble over the cost of wholesome food.
Now I can’t afford to pay what some fancy healthfood supermarkets charge for free range beef and chicken but I can afford to patronize my local chicken producer.
I recently purchased a pasture raised bird for $2.00 a pound or roughly $10.00 total.
We split it and grilled it for dinner as we had a guest.
We had a quarter left over that I used to make chicken salad for lunch the next day.
3 people feed at dinner and 2 at lunch = $2.00 per meat serving for food that tasted great!
(Plus I have the carcass frozen and I’ll make stock.)
If you grew up on fast food (fat, salt, and grease) and the soft bland processed crap that passes for food in most American grocery stores, you may have to educate your palate.
It’s worth it however.
[sub]This is my new personal crusade. Your patience is appreciated.[/sub]
Try “Everything You Know is Wrong”. The book is a collection of essays by many different authors (with varying subjects and perspectives), but they have some very disturbing stuff about the food industry in there. I can’t believe how much of a tortured existence the animals we eat (poultry especially) are forced to bear.
I am an aspiring vegitarian (I lack the willpower to commit - no, I’m not talking about romantic relationships here!) and find myself starting to lean towards a real disdain for speciesists. Not exaxtly a word that rolls off the tounge but it is partially defined something like “One who allows the interests of his own species to override the greater interests of members of other species”. That definition doesn’t really do the idea justice. The discrimination against animals which we percieve to have lesser abilities/levels of awareness definitely exists. That is a fact. The question is whether that is a bad thing. I’m torn. I wish I could live my life without having to kill anything, but as a human by nature (surprised?), I must destroy either plant or animal life to live.
Perhaps it’s a lack of belief in any religious system or collection of mythologies, but I see humans as a part of the animal kingdom, not above it. We kill and manipulate animals to best suit our purposes, and I don’t like it. I also hate that people starve and die so it’s a pretty tough moral double standard to defend. I root for the day when we can get our energy from the sun directly. Alas, we can’t quite alter humans to make them capable of photosynthesis (yet). Dare to dream. Or maybe I should be rooting for nanomachines which build meat without ever creating a perceptive entity that must die - like in Star Trek.
Anyway . . .
Yeah, it’s sort of depressing as an American, when Russian immigrants (whom MGibson says used to wait in line hours for bread), constantly complain about how awful the produce is here. All I can tell them is that “yeah, it sucks, but it’s cheap. You can go to the farmer’s market for some better stuff, although it’s more expensive.”
You’ve now got me thinking of where I can buy better chickens. The organic free-range ones are rather expensive. If I lived closer to it, I could buy freshly killed chickens from Chinatown, but it’s just not possible to do that regularly.
How about the chapter on artificial flavorings? What did that have to do with anything?
he was explaining what was in your food.
Ah, there you are, Manatee. I was going to send an FYI message about this thread, but I see you found it on your own.
How about a fictional twist? Try Michel Faber’s novel Under the Skin. It is sometimes funny, sometimes revolting, and often said, but also exquisitely painful and nicely written. It’s about
Aliens who hunt down humans to fatten, then kill, for transport back to their native planet, since human flesh is a delicacy there. Interestingly, the aliens refer to themselves as humans and are four-legged creatures in their natural state, unless they have surgery like the main character does, so she can snatch hitch-hikers for the slaughterhouse.
I read it two years ago and it still seems like yesterday.
I admire your sensitivity to the plight of food animals, ** dalovindj. **
I’m one of those people who see utterly nothing wrong with eating an animal who has been cared for and killed humanely. That’s why store-bought beef and chicken bother me so. The thought of the suffering of these creatures pains me greatly, especially when I know that the animals’ living conditions and “harvesting” can be humane and decent. Sure, it will cost more. I, for one, am willing to pay it.
On my grandfather’s farm, his chickens have a great life. They get to roam the fields by day, eating tasty bugs, as well as any vegetable scraps from the table, such as melons and corncobs, and cracked corn (which he actually grows, dries, and grinds himself.) At sundown, he calls for them, and they come running to their house, which I call the Chicken Hilton. (It’s probably cleaner than most hotels, anyway.) He’s built large nests for them, lined with straw. (One of my favorite activities as a child was hunting for the eggs after the chickens had been let out in the morning.) The house is both heated and air-conditioned, as well as predator-proof.
When it comes time to eat one of them, he kills them with a quick chop to the neck. I have no problem eating these chickens because I know that they neither suffered in life or death, but I respect that others feel differently.
I think that a lot of people’s general indifference to the suffering of animals stems from a still-prevalent sense of fundamental difference between humans and the “lower” orders. Still to this day, some claim that animals are a sort of furry robot which cannot truly * feel * pain-- that the animal’s screams are merely “stimulus response.” Words cannot fully express my contempt for that attitude. True sentience is not needed for the nerves to function properly. Thus, it’s always been my mantra to avoid giving pain whenever it is possible, regardless of species.
I’ve never fully understood the shugs of those who say, “It’s just an animal.” Pain is pain, to me.
** dalovindj**
Lissa
Here’s the deal: There’s been a fundamental change in how we perceive the farmer, the land and the livestock within the last 100 years.
The concept of stewardship, of caring for the land and the animals has fallen by the wayside.
Agri-business is based on a principal of exploitation-everything exists as a consumer resource.
The Agri-giants have an agenda to sell the farmer chemicals and fertilizers and big expensive equipment. That’s how they stay in business.
Yet, if these changes are so beneficial -why are farmers going out of business so rapidly?
Take chicken breeding for example.
As Schlosser explains, the farmer is forced to invest in $250,000.00 chicken houses but the mega-poultry breeders determine the fixed rates that he/she will make raising the birds
Often, the best the farmer can hope for is to pay the mortgage on the building.
In order to capitalize on the building, the farmer packs the birds in cages in truly heinous conditions.
The fecal and ammonia content in the air in a standard chicken factory farm is hazardous to human health.
Imagine what it does to the birds that are packed beak to arse hole.
To compensate for these conditions, the farmer is forced to lace the feed with antibiotics.
Despite the farmer’s best efforts, disease is rampant and can wipe out entire flocks within days.
Now, contrast this with pasture poultry like Lissa’s grandfather (and I) raise.
Our birds eat primarily grass, which is packed with vitamins.
They get most of their protein from bugs.
They live outside in fresh air-being chickens.
When it comes time to kill them, death is quick and humane.
So what’s the benefit to the average consumer?
Well, for starters, the birds taste much better.
There’s no guilt about how they’re raised or killed.
The environment is not degraded-no huge pile of stinking chicken shit.
One of the biggest pluses however, is that the chickens are much higher in nutrients and lower in cholesterol than the traditional supermarket birds.
It’s a win win situation for everybody.
** Avumede**
Good! If you’re willing to invest in a used freezer, you can probably find some one rasing pasture poultry within 25-40 miles of where you live.
Contact the farmer and reserve some birds.
They’ll let you know when the chickens are ready and you can take a little trip into the country to pick them up.
You’ve now done something good for yourself and your environment.
It requires a little more time and planning than going to your local supermarket but heh-aren’t you worth it?
Give me a freaking break, hendo.
Did I offer a lengthy, researched discourse on “Fast Food Nation”? No. This is only a message board. I offered a few quick takes, on the spur of the moment. That’s what message boards are for. Frankly, I rarely EXPECT organized thought or bias-free posts on ANY message board. I expect a little more from a lengthy book- not least because a few scattershot paragraphs can be fun. Two hundred scattershot pages get old in a hurry.
Both of the Schlosser books I’ve read feel like magazine pieces slapped together sloppily. Very likely, he originally INTENDED many of the chapters to be magazine pieces. And I give him credit for this: between them, his books have the makings of 6 or 7 excellent magazine articles. As it is, they make for 6 or 7 interesting passages in what are, too frequently, tiresome books. A good editor would have helped immensely.
You’re kidding, right? You’re perfectly entitled to your opinion about Schlosser’s book, but i find it hard to believe that someone with almost 4,000 posts on these Boards would offer such a lame excuse for getting something wrong. If everyone here worked on your logic, there would be no room for debate or discussion, becasue every time someone was criticized they could just say “Hey, it’s only a message board, so you can’t expect organized thought or unbiased arguments.” If you make assertions about an author and his argument, like you did with Schlosser, then don’t whine when someone offers an opposing viewpoint and a critique of your position.
No, you did not “offer a lengthy, researched discourse,” but the “few quick takes” that you did offer contained what i believed to be significant misreadings, and i pointed them out. Just because your analysis is short does not mean that it should not be subject to debate. Why bother hanging out on these boards otherwise?
I notice that you fail completely to address the substantive points that i made in response to your original post. Your most recent post only mentions issues of the book’s organization and its need for a decent editor. But in your earlier post you called Schlosser an “ideologue” and “scatterbrained,” and asked two questions that implied that his argument was inconsistent (regarding the independent fast-food operations) and poorly researched (regarding teenagers working in fast food restaurants). I addressed the first question and pointed out the way in which it failed to address the broader issues that Schlosser was discussing. Other people addressed the second question. Surely this is the way a message board should work?
As i said earlier, you’re perfectly entitled to your opinion about the book. You are not, however, entitled to have your assertions about it go unquestioned by people who disagree with you.
So the big mystery for me, after reading FFN, was how on earth does In-n-Out Burger manage to serve food that is both cheaper and better than its competitors, while simultaneously paying its employees better and using healthier, more natural, less processed ingredients?
But who cares… there’s one 5 minutes from my house, and it’s almost the only fast food I eat anymore…
FFN indirectly changed my life, as it led me to read more books dealing with the environment and animal rights. These were topics I had avoided before although I knew I would find them interesting reading, because I was afraid I would be disturbed and have to actually make changes. Well, I did wind up a lacto-ovo vegetarian about a year ago. It’s really not that hard. I wish I had done it earlier!