Fast Food Nation By Eric Schlosser
Before I give my review, here is a summary on this New York Times Bestseller. Eric Schlosser reveals some ugly truths in his book, Fast Food Nation. He tells us about how the whole fast food industry started, beginning with Mr. McDonalds and Mr. Carl Karcher (founder of Carl's Jr.) themselves, and elaborating on how and why this industry is so horrible. Schlosser tells the reader a bit of these founder's life stories, and one may find that these people, along with many others, started this whole fast food phenomenon from literally nothing.
This book is split into two parts; "The American Way" which told us about the beginning of fast food, and "Meat and Potatoes" which focused on what is really in the food and where the food comes from. In the second part of this book, Schlosser reveals that french fries taste so great because they are fried in beef tallow instead of oil. He elaborates on how the food sold in these "restaurants" are poor quality, and the meat packers allow tainted meat to be distributed to national restaurant chains. He goes into great detail about the worst and most dangerous jobs in the US: meatpacking and the people who clean the meat factories. This section of the book also focuses on the foodborne illnesses from E.Coli, Salmonella and Mad Cow Disease, which are common to catch in fast food places.
When I saw that this book was listed as an option for summer reading, I knew that I had to read it. Being interested in food myself, I wanted to know more about what I eat. I expected it to be like Super Size Me, with more facts about the actual food rather than the industry and history. Fast Food Nation was not what I expected, but I wouldn't say it was any better. Schlosser has a great writing style, but after a couple chapters, I found myself bored and I just wanted to get straight to the point he wanted to make, rather than tie in multiple things into one detail. He was obviously very biased and very anti-fast food, to the point where I felt that at times his statistics and facts seemed overdramatic. Also, I noticed the author was very repetitive, especially towards the end of the book. Schlosser addresses many issues in today's fast food world, but concludes with a simple small speech saying that nobody needs to eat fast food.
Eric Schlosser also includes an updated Afterword, which addressed more dangers of Mad Cow, and also tried to defend himself for the negative reviews on this book. The fact that he needed to clarify what Mad Cow is in the updated Afterword, rather than when he first published his book, made it seem like Schlosser was just ranting to get his point across to his readers, instead of throughly explaining everything in a professional way. Also, when he "defends" himself from the negative reviews from several reviewers, I find it very unprofessional. Lastly, he gives us an update on how policies for meat packing workers have changed. He tells us that his book didnt give a positive impact for the Boards, and that statistics have actually gotten worse.
I came into this book, interested in what it had to say. I learned a lot from this book, but unless these topics are what you want to know, recommendation is a split decision for me. It had me turning pages at times but also left me skimming through certain sections. I was more interested in the actual facts, rather than Schlossers repetitive opinion, which left me unengaged in the stories. Read this book, don't read this book, you'll be informed and look at food in a slightly different perspective.
No comments:
Post a Comment