Book Review: "Fast Food Nation"

By Bill London, from the December 2002 Newsletter

I have always thought of fast food places as a joke: low-quality industrial food, created and served without individuality or soul, homogenizing the world to a new low level. And then I read “Fast Food Nation” by Eric Schlosser.

Schlosser ties up all the loose ends, packaging in this one book information about the cause and effect relationship between the ever-increasing number of fast food places and an array of destructive trends in our society. He shows us the links between the overwhelming power of fast foods and rising levels of obesity in youth, strangulation of family farmers and ranchers, bacterial contamination of meat, and poverty wages for workers, just to name a few.

Schlosser is a great writer. He knows to share these important messages through poignant and heart-wrenching stories of individuals (ranchers, slaughterhouse workers, school kids, and others) whose lives have changed because of the power of fast food in this culture.

He also knows to add lots of illustrative facts. Little tidbits of knowledge that shine a small light on the immense power of the fast food industry, like these examples:

• The taste and aroma of American fast food is manufactured at a group of New Jersey chemical plants.
• With a decline in parks and public recreation opportunities, most families with children now go to fast food playlands (90 percent of all American children aged three to nine go to a McDonalds at least once per month).
• Because of the way meat is mixed at the new huge slaughterhouses, a single fast food burger can contain meat from hundreds of different cattle, resulting in many more incidents of, and opportunities for, E. coli contamination.
• The rate of obesity in American children is now twice as high as it was just 25 years ago, and 280,000 Americans die annually as a direct result of being overweight.

While his book is depressing in its relentless exposure of the slimy underside of the American burger, Schlosser ends on a note of hope. The year 2000 was the first year that the fast food industry did not gain any new customers in the US. Sales have stagnated. Customers are looking for better-tasting food, more enjoyable meals, and more acceptable practices. And that is what he hopes will happen as more people read his book—they will just say NO to fast food.

(Editor’s note: “Fast Food Nation” is available at the Co-op, as well as at libraries and bookstores, and is the January selection of the Moscow Book Club. The members of the Club will meet on Thursday, January 30, 2003, in the Moscow Public Library.)

Bill London will give his copy of “Fast Food Nation” to the first person to contact him by email and promise to both read the book and then pass it on to a friend.

© Copyright on articles, recipes and images are jointly held by the Moscow Food Co-op and the respective contributors, except were otherwise noted.

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