A Good Read

A few years ago I read a really good book, Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser. I heard about the book when I watched the documentary "Supersize Me". At the end of the documentary, Morgan Spurlock, who was the subject of the show, interviewed Mr. Schlosser about his book. The book was written in 2001 but it is still so relevant today.

The book starts out giving the reader a history lesson on how "fast food" was born in this country and shows the progression from small "mom and pop" operations to the big corporations that exist today. The author states that "the fast food chains now stand atop a huge food industrial complex that has gained control  of American agriculture". The once family farms and local ranchers are becoming a thing of the past, replaced by big feedlots, factory farms and giant corporate farms. The independent farmer is disappearing.

He goes on the explain how the big fast food chains influence how the cattle are raised and how the meatpacking business is run. There is also a section on how this big business affects the workers in some of these jobs. It is sometimes low-paying and dangerous.

Mr. Schlosser goes out West and talks to some of the ranchers whose land is being surrounded by big agribusiness operations and they explain how these companies are ruining the land. One in particular shows the author around his ranch, and tells him how he rotates his cattle to graze in different pastures everyday so that the land can recover and not get over grazed. He feels he is being squeezed out by the "corporate" farms and they are ruining the land.

There are sections on how McDonalds grew into an international corp., scary insights into the meatpacking industry, food safety and what's really in our food.

Towards the end of the book, the author talks to the operators of a family-owned restaurant in Nevada. It's a small place, their beef is from a local, small, independent producer, formed by hand. The buns come from a bakery down the street, the fries are cut fresh right in the kitchen. There's no drive-thru and it costs only slightly more than the fast food chain across the street. There is nothing wrong with having a hamburger and fries, occasionally, when it is from a place like this.

I really enjoyed this book, although, I will say that parts of it where cites a lot of statistical information  and may be a little hard to understand some of that part, for me anyway. But I believe it is worth reading and will provide many insights in to our culture of fast food.


Kathy