With the boom in car ownership and the knock-on effect of a freeway network, city suburbs were born and fed with drive-by convenience.Ĭheaper prices attracted families. ‘ Founding Fathers’ (I detect a little irony here), describes the start of fast food when the McDonald brothers used assembly line methods to reduce costs in their food business. History of American fast foodįast Food Nation chapter names give clear signposts of his journey. Neither a vegetarian nor a dietary evangelist – “the French fries were delicious” (131) – Schlosser desires to inform “you really should know where your food is coming from,” he tells Gavin Grant. He seeks justice for exploited food industry workers, independent cattle ranchers, and duped customers, especially children. His evidence in Fast Food Nation has left a bad taste in the mouths of executives at McDonald’s, KFC and Burger King, but Schlosser’s facts remain legally unchallenged after ten years, a point he makes in his afterword in the 2012 edition. Schlosser takes the stand as both witness and prosecutor, presenting convincing evidence without telling us what to think. I discovered the disturbing chapter that I first read in Pilger to be the tip of a dangerous iceberg. His travels take him from California and Idaho in the West, through Colorado and Iowa in central U.S., and across the Atlantic to Plauen in Germany. Schlosser’s research takes him back to the 1950s, then forward through five decades.
It’s the journey of a changing American culture where traditional cowboys are beaten into submission by a new breed of cowboy that views land and livestock as commodities, rather than a way of life. The changing face of American cowboysįast Food Nation is the story of how national identity has been changed by a revolution in the way food is grown, processed, marketed and sold. If you eat factory farmed meat, this book might just change your mind. Schlosser’s inclusion in Tell Me No Lies speaks volumes on his credibility as a “muckraker” and the importance of his work. slaughterhouse and is featured alongside unsettling truths on Hiroshima, Iraq and Chechnya. I was first introduced to Eric Schlosser by John Pilger in his book Tell Me No Lies, a “celebration of the very best investigative journalism.” Schlosser’s chapter from Fast Food Nation exposes gross malpractice in a U.S. By Tracy Brighten Eric Schlosser’s investigative journalism in Fast Food Nation uncovers a greedy, corrupt meat industry that threatens people and animals worldwide
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