Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
by Eric Schlosser
Harper-Perennial, $14.95 (US) $22.95(CAN), 416 pages
What Eric Schlosser writes about the fast food outlets might make you ill. What he says about the supporting industries such as the meatpackers might even put you off processed food. But what Schlosser writes about the consequences of the food industry’s actions and attitudes will definitely leave you nauseous and upset.
Every day, one out of every four adults will visit a fast food outlet. As a result, North Americans spend more money on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos and music – combined. In 1970, North Americans spent $6 billion per year on fast food. By 2001, that amount had jumped to $110 billion. If only those people read Eric Schlosser’s book, they would change their eating habits.
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal is investigative journalism at its finest. Schlosser’s research is first rate, and he details alarming facts and figures such as those above that illuminate the problem with the reliance on fast food. Then he shows the impact on the diets of consumers globally, and how the arrival of fast food outlets transforms not just towns and villages, but a whole nation. For example, he points out how Great Britain has changed since the arrival of fast food outlets. “Between 1984 and 1993, the number of fast food restaurants in Great Britain roughly doubled – and so did the obesity rate among adults,” he writes. “The British now eat more fast food than any other nationality in Western Europe. They also have the highest obesity rate.”
While Schlosser ably describes the working conditions and problems in restaurants such as McDonald’s, Jack-in-the Box, Carl Jr.’s and Burger King, they are only the visible tip of the iceberg. Schlosser’s best work – and the most horrifying aspect – of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal is his description of the corporate exploitation and profit-driven greed that keeps working wages suppressed, and tolerates (and in some cases even promotes) such poor working conditions that workers become “disposable.” Workers in meatpacking plants are forced to work so fast that severed fingers and limbs are considered as the cost of doing business. When workers drown after falling into huge vats of bovine blood and meat processing waste, the corporations consider these instances as business as usual. As soon as the vats are cleared of the coagulating blood and the body of the dead worker, the company is up and running as soon as possible, sometimes the very next day.
Corporations have spent years at union busting, by either closing the packing plants, moving to another location or by hiring low wage scab workers to replace strikers who are legitimately asking for realistic wages. The typical meatpacking worker is not unionized, has no medical benefits and is treated no better than feudal serfs. Many of these workers entered the U.S. as illegal immigrants, (sometimes brought by the busload into the U.S. by these meatpacking companies), can hardly speak English, and have no literacy skills. They either cannot complain or dare not, for fear of losing their jobs and being deported.
Medical professionals who are in the employ of these corporations routinely misdiagnose and underreport serious injuries, so that corporations’ health records and industrial accidents appear to be less serious than they are. One worker had several vertebrae broken but was told he was suffering from a muscle strain. Another, a meat packing plant cleaner, was blasted with chlorine gas and steam, and although his lungs were nearly destroyed, was told he needed a few days off work to rest and recover. Schlosser writes that the meatpacking plant workers are treated not much better than the animals they slaughter.
Schlosser calls the meat-processing company IBP “one of the most irresponsible and reckless corporations in America.” Such companies have used their political pull, he writes, to ensure favorable legislation, lower state taxes and special treatment from health inspectors who turn a blind eye to dangerous industry practices. One meat packing company managed to convince the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the industry, that it had a mere oversight in company policy. That “oversight” resulted in more than 35 tons of ground beef poisoned with the deadly E coli bacteria O157:H7, being delivered to restaurants and grocery stories in more than 15 states.
Schlosser’s work took over three years to research and write, but his storytelling is gripping and fascinating. Although the details are unsettling, unnerving and at times horrifying, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal is hard to put down. It is a scathing indictment of the industries that provide food “from farm to fork.” It is also a warning that all of us need to speak up on the issues of greedy corporations, workers’ rights, and compliant governments willing to overlook corporate culpability. If we don’t, it is sure to make us a sicker society. After reading Schlosser’s work, an order of burgers, fries, or chicken nuggets will be hard to keep down.
Mike Gange teaches media studies in Fredericton.