Book Review: "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser

(This review was written on December 31, 2006, and is being posted today in light of recent news events concerning beef recalls due to the possibility of diseased cows in the food supply chain.)

This book made me sick. Literally. And figuratively. Figuratively, while reading about sweetheart deals between some members of a certain national political party who are in bed with (literally, in the case of former Texas Senator Phil Gramm and his wife) food processing companies and manufacturers (and yes, food is manufactured, just like any other industrial product), my blood seemed to boil.

Literally, while I digested the chapters on slaughterhouses, Escherichia coli O157:H7, Salmonella, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (Mad Cow disease) coursed through my body. (Perhaps hypochondriacally, perhaps not.) Author Eric Schlosser follows in muckraking writer Upton Sinclair’s (The Jungle, 1906) muckraking footsteps, and what a lot of muck there is to rake! The book covers such a broad range of issues, political, scientific, and sociological, that there are enough topics for any reader to order from a menu (with more choices than you’ll find at the local McDonald’s) and find a choice sure to enrage. Dead-end career track for fast-food workers? Check. Obesity in America? Check. Union busting? Check.

Wait, whatever happened to unions? In the earlier part of the last century, unions protected laborers and acted with one voice to speak for many. Now food processing companies are forming conglomerates to stifle the voice of the individual worker, demanding greater productivity at cheaper wages, and union-busting techniques are simply business-as-usual.

Back to our menu. Inspiring stories of young mavericks like Carl Karcher of Carl’s Jr. restaurants, and J. R. Simplot, of Idaho potato fame, give a glimpse of what some remarkable individuals with grit, gumption, and not much else, can achieve. It’s only when we reach the 1960’s when the spread, through franchising, of fast-food chains throughout the country (and later the world) that we see nutrition disappearing from America’s dinner tables (and car seats!) as healthy foods are replaced by chemically-processed fake foods.

But by far, the slaughterhouse descriptions are the most revolting chapters of the book. Do you care about unskilled laborers working with barely any protection from OSHA? The accident rate among those workers? The poverty levels of the workers? If you don’t, that’s OK, because I wasn’t referring to that.

I’m referring to the blood and guts of the slaughtering process.

And I’m referring to the hamburgers that the public has been eating. I have eaten my last hamburger. On page 197, line 22, of the paperback edition, you will find out why.