The Horrid Commercialism of the Fast Food Industry

Believe it or not, this is actually a book review. I just finished Chew on This! by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson, a book for teens about the fast food industry and how it affects every aspect of Americans' lives. It's basically a slightly dumbed-down and shortened version of Eric Schlosser's other book, Fast Food Nation, which I also read.

The book addresses many good points:

1. How the industry was started, beginning with the invention of the hamburger

2. Who the big thinkers were, such as Carl Karcher, Ray Kroc, and even Walt Disney

3. How fast food is made, from the fries to the burgers to the artifical flavoring

4. How it is marketed to us

5. What goes on behind the scenes at the slaughterhouses and the industrial farms and meat-packing plants (ugh, do you really want your burgers from a place known as a PLANT?)

6. The affects it all has on society: soda rotting teeth, bad food causing obesity, etc

I found the book very informative. And the best part is, Eric Schlosser presents it all in a straightforward, mainly unbiased manner, unlike Morgan Spurlock, for instance. But still, even with the lack of bias, it's still EASY to see the harmful effects fast food has on society and how WRONG it is.

Take this Ray Kroc quote, here:

"We have found out... that we cannot trust some people who are nonconformists... We will make conformists out of them... The organization cannot trust the individual; the individual must trust the organization."

Ray Kroc is the man who promoted McDonald's and made it what it is today, one of the founding fathers of fast food, if you will. And look, doesn't that sound more like a totalitarian takeover than a way to run a restaurant? No, there is no way to portray Ray Kroc as anyone except the man who wanted to start a revolution with his business, using any means necessary. How can we trust an industry that was build on people like this?

Huh. That last paragraph was pretty good. I should have included that in my research paper. Yeah, I wrote my research paper on the fast food industry. Let me just say, as far as reliable sources go, WATCH SUPERSIZE ME. That movie will change your life.

Video teaser! This guy, Morgan Spurlock, also has a book out that I read. Again, very informative but very biased. He's my second-favorite advocate against fast food besides Eric Schlosser.

Another thing I liked about Chew on This! was that it included real life stories of people who are affected by the industry: the teen working behind the counter at a McDonald's, the boy getting a gastric bypass surgery from having too much fast food and becoming obese. It makes it so much more real.

Seriously, how do we sit back and let this happen? How do we let good potatoes become THIS? It's no wonder America has an obesity crisis today, we fry our dang vegetables! How hard is it to figure out? And sure, we got there over a long period of time, but everything has grown exponentially since TVs have become commonplace and advertising runs rampant.

We need to stop sitting back and doing this to ourselves. At least educate yourselves, people. I love fries as much as the next person, but I saw Supersize Me and I no longer have an urge to eat them quite as often.

For more sources on fast food, read:

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, a novel based on the true horrors of the meat industry in the early 1900s

Don't Eat This Book by Morgan Spurlock, his book about the Supersize Me project

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, which I mentioned above

All of these can teach you a lot. Open your eyes. You don't have to become a vegan zealot or anything, just choose buying some dough and some sauce at Trader Joe's and throwing it in the oven with a salad as a side instead of ordering that pizza with the free breadsticks and the liter of soda.

Anyway, all my preaching aside, I really enjoyed this book.