Fast Food Nation

Just finished reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. After hearing him talk in Food, Inc., I decided to FINALLY read his book. Took me long enough, huh? I think everyone in America has read this book already. In case you haven't, though, here's the recap of each chapter for you...

I. The American Way
1. The Founding Fathers
Fast food started out innocently. Good food, prepared relatively quickly. It may not have been healthy food, but at least french fries just contained potatoes, oil, and salt, and hamburgers were made of real meat and were never frozen. Too bad so many entrepreneurs got greedy and decided to create food that is now killing most of America.

2. Your Trusted Friends
Fast food giants are working around the clock trying to find ways to manipulate kids. Commercials, play places, happy meals, etc. are all being created after extensive research into ways that kids manipulate their parents into taking them to these fast food restaurants. Marketing is designed to instigate kids to perform: pleading nags, persistent nags, forceful nags, demonstrative nags, sugar-coated nags, threatening nags, and pity nags. Seriously. Research has been conducted to figure out how to get kids to nag and nag and nag and nag. The point for McDonalds, Fisher-Price, and other companies is to make parents feel lousy if they don't provide "the goods."


3. Behind the Counter
I was shocked to learn that any time that employees at a McDonalds threaten unionizing that store is suddenly shut down. Also, McDonald's (and others), who receives government subsidies for providing training and job experience to America's "un-hirable," sets the goal for themselves of creating a factory-line that requires no training at all. Most employees work less than a year and receive no training, benefits, etc. Also, managers are often giving bonuses for not allowing anyone to work over 40 hours a week, which often means that workers are working over 40 but are being pressured to not clock in for that time extra time so McDs doesn't have to pay time-and-a-half.

Did I mention that in 1998 more fast food workers were killed on the job than police officers in America? And most of those murders (and robberies) were by former (and ticked off) employees?


4. Success
Let's just say... don't open a franchise of any fast food restaurant. You are going to be had. McDonald's corporates have been quoted as stating that they are in the real estate business as much as the hamburger business. Subway's franchising agreements are especially terrible for the franchise owners.

II. Meat and Potatoes
5. Why the Fries Taste Good
Yep, the fries taste good. Mostly because they were cooked in cottonseed oil (7%) and beef tallow (93%). And I quote, "The mix gave the fries their unique flavor - and more saturated beef fat per ounce than a McDonald's hamburger." They have since changed the mix that they fry their fries in. However, in order to create the same flavor as beef tallow McDonald's had to load the fries up with artificial flavors.

Speaking of artificial flavors, all of these "flavors" are factory-created by scientists called flavorists. Natural flavors come from nature - bark from a tree, chicken legs, flowers, even ground-up insects. But hey, at least it is natural, right? (Yuck. No, thank you.) Artificial flavors come from chemicals. Amazingly, the chemicals that flavor our food can also be found in our make-up, dish detergent, perfume, etc. (Again, no, thank you.) FYI - these "flavors" are in almost every single processed food that you eat.

6. On the Range
When you buy a hamburger, a cattle rancher is lucky to get about 2 cents from that purchase. The big 4 meatpacking firms insist there is an oversupply of beef, which is why the prices are so low. However, the big 4 are the ones insisting that cattle are given grain, antibiotics, and bovine growth hormones (to make the cows bigger, ready to eat more quickly, and requiring less aging time). However, as the cows get bigger faster, the price of beef is dropping because it can be produced so much quicker than before and more meat can be sold, creating an oversupply.

I don't know about you, but I want grass-fed beef. No grain, bGH, or antibiotics for me, please.


7. Cogs in the Great Machine
The meatpacking industry. Oh my word. First of all, the disgusting state of the feedlots were the poor cows spend the end of their lives. Basically, they are standing around in their own poop for a long time. In fact, the Monfort feedlots in Greeley, CO, produce "more excrement than the cities of Denver, Boston, Atlanta, and St. Louis - combined." And these cows must wade around in it for a long time (suddenly I understand why we have problems with mad cow disease and E. coli in America). 


Also, most of these workers don't speak English. Many of them are illiterate in any language. And their working conditions are abysmal, and Monfort and other companies are ok with that because many immigrants refuse to speak up when there are problems. The meatpacking industry is taking complete advantage of America's tired, poor, weak...

I'm thinking the words on the Statue of Liberty didn't mean for the tired and poor and homeless to be handed over to the American meatpacking industry to be taken advantage of.

And before you think, "Oh, we need immigrant workers to do this kind of work. No one else in America wants to do it,"at one time working in the meatpacking industry was a good job that required skill and was paid good money in good working conditions (I'm talking about the years after Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle and Pres. Roosevelt intervened and set laws for treatment of workers). There are many Americans who would work under those good types of conditions. 

And don't even get me started on the brutality to the animals. The cruelty with which they are treated from the food that they are fed (cows were made to eat grass, not grain!) to the treatment in the feedlots (standing in their own feces) to the inhumane way they are killed (punched in the head, but if the worker misses, the cow must be punched repeatedly - sometimes they are accidentally taken to slaughter before they have been put down and are skinned alive.)

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus, 1883

8. The Most Dangerous Job

Speaking of being taken advantage of, I can barely even speak about the terrible things described in this chapter. I know many Americans feel very strongly about ending worldwide problems, like human trafficking, but until I read this, I didn't realize that there is a problem here that needs to be taken care of immediately.

Many immigrants working for minimum wage are being severely injured and killed working in the meatpacking industry. If they are hurt, then they are let go. If they try to complain, then they are soon drowning in serious debt in legal fees. If a worker is killed, then these companies are forced to pay out (for the death of a worker, the company must pay the family between $40,000-70,000 - are you as shocked as I am?). Men have fallen in the hamburger grinder and been ground up. Men have died from inhaling the chemicals to clean the machinery (one man wasn't even attempted to be rescued because no one on site had been trained to enter a chemical filled building - the man was pulled out -dead- hours later.) Men have been dropped in vats of boiling water. I've seriously never been more disgusted by corporate America.



9. What's in the Meat
To quote, Eric Schlosser, "There is shit in the meat." That's why people are getting sick from mad cow disease and E. coli. Guess that's what happens


10. Global Realizations
Europe won't accept meat produced and packed in the US. Because our meat is disgusting. 'Nough said.

The other night Sam said to me, "I don't ever want to eat fast food ever again." My heart swooned.

Then he said, "Will you make me a veggie sub?" I fell in love all over again.