Fast Food Nation
by Eric Schlosser · first published 2001
48% recommend48% neutral3% critical
Why HN recommends it
Muckraking history of McDonald's and the fast food industry, covering meatpacking, lobbying, advertising, labor and the flavor industry. Suits readers who want to see how industrial food gets made.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar Amerca. Though created by a handful of mavericks, the fast food industry has triggered the homogenization of our society. Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism abroad. That's a lengthy list of charges, but Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning. Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches
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…before, and in some countries it's still being tried. If the Chinese cat food stories from last year aren't scary enough for you, try reading Sinclair's The Jungle... or the slaughterhouse chapter of Fast Food Nation.
on “Everything I want to do is Illegal” ↗Read this: http://www.amazon.com/Fast-Food-Nation-Dark-All-American/dp/... and tell me if you want to eat at McDonald's again.
on “How I Ate No Food for 30 Days” ↗You don't know much about the advertising or food businesses, I take it. Suggest Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. It'll open your eyes.
on “Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial” ↗…stun bolt I'm certainly not saying that this never happens (How would I know? And from what I hear you don't want to give the meatpacking industry too much slack; they cut every corner they can. Read Fast Food Nation...) but Temple Grandin claims to have built an entire career out of making sure that this sort of thing doesn't happen. She says that panicking the cows is more than just cruel: It lowers the quality…
on “Lies We Tell Kids” ↗If you are interested in reading more about the food industry, I highly recommend Eric Schlosser's book "Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Food_Nation
on “Poultry Workers in Diapers as Bathroom Breaks Denied, Oxfam Says” ↗…historical perspective on McDonalds and its defining role over the last 60+ years at the intersection of food, technology, labor, business, and culture, there's hardly a better book than Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. Old fashioned muckraking journalism at it's best.
on “McDonald’s High-Tech Makeover Is Stressing Workers Out” ↗That is one of the premises of https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1097.Fast_Food_Nation , you won't want to eat US processed meat after reading this. (Good book, BTW)
on “Hearts and Stomachs: Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”” ↗I started reducing meat for health reasons, then cut back even more after reading Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation. While I don't condone animal cruelty, I was even more affected by the human suffering involved in producing American meat at industrial scale. Like many, I'm not an absolutist, and still use things…
on “Ask HN: What prompted you to convert from non-vegetarian to vegetarian?” ↗Reminded me of the book Fast Food Nation where they describe the artificial flavor industry (Chapter 5), and visit labs in New Jersey where fast food tastes are created by "flavorists". Most of the taste comes from smell, via gas molecules released…
on “Perfectly Replicating Coca Cola [video]” ↗Fast Food Nation is also an interesting read. They can make practically anything taste well, like anything.
on “Fast Food: Just Another Name for Corn” ↗Be careful what you wish for. Narrow focus is great, as long as you make the right bets. In the book "Fast Food Nation", there's a great profile of a talented hockey player whose career is sidelined by injury... after thousands of hours of practice and work, he's running a chain pizza joint. The Tiger Woods of world…
on “What Should a 4 Year Old Know? (2010)” ↗There are a lot of documentaries (Earthlings, Dominion) or books (Eating Animals, Fast Food Nation) on animal agriculture that would give you a better counterpoint to #1 than I will in this comment. Or just Google image search "factory farm", "battery cage", "gestation crate". If #2 justified animal…
on “Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission” ↗…in New York into the 80s. Slaughterhouses were moved out to the country to break the unions, period. “Saving money” by being closer to farms is a contrived argument. A good place to start is the book “Fast Food Nation”. Illegals are a symptom. The problems are industrial facilities with heavy manpower requirements, high turnover, designed to operate in a way that guarantees chronic medical problems with workers, placed…
on “For years, Guatemalans traveled thousands of miles for jobs in Mt Pleasant, Iowa” ↗…economics into terms more caring and sharing rather than people being run around like well paid slaves by companies whose end effect is? producing more ICE cars, fertilizers for the wheat/meat industry (Fast food Nation is an enlightening book-film as is Demain or Tomorrow a french film...) I'm sorry if I hurt your patriotism, but I do appreciate very much your and the other comments contributing to helping me flesh…
on “Ask HN: Why can't Germany just go cold turkey and turn off Russian Gas?” ↗…(dailybooth.com/whatpamelaseating). Anyway, it's going well so far, and I hope to use what I learnt to help my obese sister lose weight as well, before it affects her chronically. Other suggested reading: Fast Food Nation, In Defense of Food, 4-Hour Body.
on “How to lose weight: What worked for me, with graphs” ↗