Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

Eric Schlosser
Harper Perennial (2004)
Reviewed by Lisa Kemmerer
Reprinted with Permission from the Journal for Critical Animal Studies

Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation hit The New York Times’ “Bestsellers” list, and was praised by powerful publications such as The New Yorker, Newsweek, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Washington Post. Fast Food Nation presents the history and horrors of this industry’s journey from its sparse beginnings to become a symbol of American success, including purposefully advertising to children, union busting, and bribing government agencies. Fast Food Nation, as readable as it is riveting, includes a thorough investigation of fast food’s shameful realities.

Schlosser begins by exploring the chance beginnings of fast food giants. He explains how fast food restaurants targeted children with their advertisements early on, and exploited teenagers for cheap labor. While courting government monies, Schlosser notes that fast food businesses have fought furiously against the formation of unions. In one of his most eye-opening chapters, Schlosser describes the flavor industry and the meaning behind the term “natural flavors.” Fast Food Nation even explores briefly where this apparently tasteless flesh originates. While Schlosser questions the horrible conditions under which slaughter house workers labor, and their tendency to hire illegal immigrants, shoddy company medical policies and the inherent risk entailed in the speed of the processing lines, nowhere does Schlosser question the morality of slaughterhouses themselves.

Readers cannot help but note Schlosser’s sorrow as he writes of his journey, in reverse, through a slaughterhouse, where he watches cattle wait anxiously in line where they turn to him with a mixture of curiosity and horror. Though he rightly questions many business decisions that endanger human health or well-being, he fails to offer even one comment on corporate responsibility to chickens, pigs, cattle, and turkeys-victims of our ignorance, greed, and indifference. Schlosser’s focus is entirely human-centered.

Why are such grievous problems common in the U.S. flesh industries that feed fast food joints? Schlosser notes: “the USDA is largely indistinguishable from the industries it was meant to police. President Regan’s first secretary of agriculture was in the hog business. His second was the president of the American Meat Institute (formerly known as the American Meat Packers Association). And his choice to run the USDA’s Food Marketing and Inspection Service was a vice president of the National Cattleman’s Association. President Bush later appointed the president of the National Cattleman’s Association to the job” (206). It is not surprising, then, that a nationwide study found that 78.6 percent of ground beef “contained microbes that are spread primarily by fecal material” (197). Schlosser bluntly notes: “There is shit in the meat” (197).

Fast Food Nation, as readable as it is riveting, provides a thorough investigation of fast food’s shameful realities. Ultimately, Schlosser calls consumers to arms, to force these corporate giants to their knees before they do any more harm. But those with a good memory will recall Schlosser’s earlier chapters: McDonald’s woos children, anticipating that customers hooked on McDonald’s will remain loyal for a lifetime.