Two Christmases ago, my husband bought me a book. It was called Fast Food Nation and it was generating quite a buzz in the media. I read it in two days. I have not touched fast food since. In fact, if I could, I would retroactively expel all fast food from my system. Yes. The book made that much of an impression on me.
In the fine tradition of muckrackers around the world, the author, Eric Schlosser, probes the fast food industry in two ways: the food itself and the ways these multinational corporations do business. When discussing the food, Schlosser takes us to a slaughterhouse, potato farms and residences of injured workers who worked at these places. Once upon a time, we learn, meat slaughtering was a union job and paid good wages. Thanks to many factors, not the least of which were several union-busting corporations, the job is now lowly paid, dangerous and dirty. Workers don't have benefits and don't receive worker's compensation if they are injured. They are often recent immigrants. This section of the book is graphic and while I won't go into details, I will tell you that there is one person at the slaughterhouse Schlosser goes to whose job it is to drain blood from the dead animals. Think of that, please, the next time you start hating your own job.
My personal favorite part of the book was the trip we took to a factory in New Jersey. This is the place where they make the flavors that they put in the foods that they put in the grocery stores and the fast food restaurants that we later put in our mouths (all in the house that Jack, er, Jack in the Box, built). The next time you are enjoying, say, fried shrimp, know that there is a better than average chance that the "flavor" was born in this New Jersey factory, and not in Forrest Gump's boat.
Perhaps even more interesting is the section of the book that discussed the business practices of fast food corporations. Schlosser examines hiring practices of fast food restaurants. They tend to hire recent immigrants and other traditionally oppressed workers, give them no training, pay them little better than minimum wage, and fire them with abandon. As you might guess, the restaurants are rabidly anti-union. The general philosophy, Schlosser reports, is that it's okay to fire a worker-there will be another one walking in the door in a minute.
Further, the corporations aren't shy about putting up restaurants that directly compete with local, "mom and pop" owned diners. When looking from a purely economic standpoint, one sees a 39 cent hamburger at Mickey D's versus a $3.99 burger at Mel's Diner. Unfortunately, most people in this country don't think about where the meat came from, who prepared the beef for sale and who is working behind the counter. They want the burger for less than a buck, in less than a minute. And this, unfortunately, is the consequence of our fast food nation: quick and cheap. Fast and (nearly) free.
It is almost a cliche to say this, but I will say it anyway: this book changed my life. I now try to shop at the food co-op or locally owned stores and restaurants. But I realize that I am lucky in that I live outside of Ann Arbor, in a community that has such things. I am all too aware that many places don't. Many communities in America only have McDonald's, Wal-Mart and the Gap. And to me that is the biggest shame of our fast food nation.