Average Rating: 
Rating:  - I want a triple cheeseburger and fries with a pizza chaser
FAST FOOD NATION is one of those true life tales that's as hard to put down as an edge-of-your-seat thriller. It's Eric Schlosser's detailed and eminently readable portrait of the American fast food industry: its founders (most notably Ray Kroc and Carl Karcher), its Southern California evolution, marketing strategy (especially as it targets kids), corporate alliances (e.g. McDonald's with Disney Corporation), hiring and employment practices, franchising structure, food product design, flavor and color additives, food growers and processors, meat packers, food contamination, job-related injuries, union relations, regulatory agencies, and overseas operations. Everything you're drooling to know - and then some. It sounds dry, but isn't.Did you know that Ray Kroc was so fastidious that he cleaned the holes in his mop wringer with a toothbrush? That the "smell" of strawberry results from the interaction of at least 350 different chemicals? That perfectly sliced french fries are formed by shooting the skinned spud from a high pressure water hose at 117 feet per second through a grid of blades? That none of the workers in McDonald's roughly 15,000 North American stores is represented by a union? Or that every day in the U.S. roughly 200,000 people are sickened by a foodborne disease, of which 900 are hospitalized and 14 die? The dominant tone of Schlosser's narrative ranges from neutral to strongly censuring. By my count, only thrice did he write something clearly positive about a fast food giant: the good wages paid by the In 'n' Out chain, the improvements in beef procurement by Jack In the Box following a 1993 outbreak of E. coli contamination at several of its outlets, and the current effort by McDonald's to clean up its meat suppliers' acts following some very bad lawsuit-generated PR. (Of course, the cynic will say it's only self-serving damage control.) So, either the industry is truly in need of reform, or the author is a closet anti-Big Business activist. You must decide for yourself. In any case, FAST FOOD NATION didn't turn me against fast food. Why, right now I'm endeavoring to keep the "secret sauce" from dripping onto my keyboard, and I can hardly see the screen for the smears of fried chicken grease.
Rating: - Fast Food = Slow Death
This is one of those books that rips the blinkers from your eyes. Eric Schlosser goes well beyond the mere truism that "it isn't good for you" and looks at how the whole fast food industry has changed the way we live, from farmers to urban development, from immigration to globalization, from obesity to mad cow disease, and from entrepreneurship to the most god-awful working conditions this side of Dickens's London.FAST FOOD NATION is not just about fast food: It is about the CULTURE of fast food, and how that could be ever so much more pervasive than the e-Coli and rat feces in your Quickie Burger. In its own way, it is every bit as much a landmark as Upton Sinclair's THE JUNGLE. The fact that Schlosser provides 70 pages of notes and a bibliography indicates that this is a serious book that invites contradiction. Only, I think I won't contradict it much: I will just continue to keep on walking right past those Golden Arches. Curiously, Schlosser concentrates his attacks on the burger chains, leaving pizzerias, coffee shops, and sandwich chains pretty much off the hook. There are cases to be made for health issues relating to Chinese food, sushi, and other popular foods -- but I guess we'll have to wait for another book.
Rating: - Read this!
Short and sweet:
Read this if: 1) you want to understand how the fast food industry shapes not just what McDonald's serves, but how food arrives in our homes every day; 2) for an overview of the ways in which corporations invisibly shape so many aspects of our lives. Don't read this if 1) you want to be able to go on eating as you do without having to rethink your life; 2) your only concern about food is fat grams and cholesterol rather than the social practices that underpin our lives. Horrifying, but excellent!
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