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Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
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Fast Food Nation

by Eric Schlosser

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7,087103214 (3.99)83

Member recommendations

  1. dodger recommends Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic (Bk Currents) by John De Graaf
  2. dodger recommends How Wal-Mart is Destroying America and The World and What You Can Do About It by Bill Quinn
  3. dodger recommends Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America by Morgan Spurlock
  4. Alliebadger recommends Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America by Steve Almond, "Both of these are similar in that they explore the seedy underbelly of their respective food industries: candy and fast food. They are both witty and (see more) informative (and they definitely make you want to eat something)."
  5. cransell recommends The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
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Showing 1-5 of 102 (next | show all)
Put this book on your required reading list. Originally published in 2001, this book has been a bestseller for years. I can see why. It's not that often that I come across a non-fiction book that is as much of a page-turner as this one. This book is fascinating and alarming. I'll tell you one thing right now: I am not going to be buying any hamburger any time soon. The chapters concerning the conditions and treatment of employees at slaughterhouses were among the most surprising and disturbing. The types of accidents at slaughterhouses include beheadings, being pulled into the cogs of a conveyor belt and being pulled apart, crushed heads, being overcome by hydrogen sulfide fumes. Once when two men were killed by hydrogen sulfide fumes at a National Beef plant, OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) fined the company for its negligence. The fine was $480 for each man's death. After finishing this book I came to see that the meatpacking industry is evil incarnate and that the Republican Right are so tight with them that they are allowing children to needlessly die. Read this book and then tell me you don't agree. ( )
  woodge | Nov 20, 2009 |
Since reading this book in 2001, I have never eaten at McDonalds again (no matter how good it sometimes smells). ( )
  lisavanness | Nov 14, 2009 |
Reading this book affected me as much as Glassner's The Culture of Fear did last year. I had already decided to stop eating fast food after seeing Supersize Me, but this decision was cemented after reading Schlosser's work. I felt as though I was reading it for a class, I highlighted like crazy and there are all kinds of comments written in the margins. It certainly made me feel very cynical about the influence that corporations have over politics and society in general, and has led to me taking other measures to reduce their influence over me personally. I recommend it for just about anyone. ( )
  ascgrrl | Oct 23, 2009 |
Page-turningly disgusting. I can't eat McDonalds anymore, though i'm curiously unphased on other fast foods. ( )
  dmsheldon87 | Sep 14, 2009 |
There's no doubt that this is a well-written and eye-opening book. For me, having already read Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, I think I already had most of this information. Fast Food Nation just didn't have enough new material for me, so I skimmed it, but didn't actually read enough to count it as "read." ( )
  vanedow | Aug 8, 2009 |
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Series (with order)
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People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Awards and honors
Epigraph
A savage servility slides bt on grease. - Robert Lowell
Dedication
First words
Over the last three decades, fast food has infiltrated every nook and cranny of American Society.
Quotations
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Book description
summary2: In February of 1997 workers at a McDonald's restaurant in St. Hubert a suburb of Montreal applied to join the teamster union. More than three quarters of the crew members singed union cards hoping to create the only unionized McDonald's in north America.Tom and Mike cappelli the operators of the restaurant employed fifteen attorneys

Amazon.com Amazon.com's Best of 2001 (ISBN 0060938455, Paperback)

On any given day, one out of four Americans opts for a quick and cheap meal at a fast-food restaurant, without giving either its speed or its thriftiness a second thought. Fast food is so ubiquitous that it now seems as American, and harmless, as apple pie. But the industry's drive for consolidation, homogenization, and speed has radically transformed America's diet, landscape, economy, and workforce, often in insidiously destructive ways. Eric Schlosser, an award-winning journalist, opens his ambitious and ultimately devastating exposé with an introduction to the iconoclasts and high school dropouts, such as Harlan Sanders and the McDonald brothers, who first applied the principles of a factory assembly line to a commercial kitchen. Quickly, however, he moves behind the counter with the overworked and underpaid teenage workers, onto the factory farms where the potatoes and beef are grown, and into the slaughterhouses run by giant meatpacking corporations. Schlosser wants you to know why those French fries taste so good (with a visit to the world's largest flavor company) and "what really lurks between those sesame-seed buns." Eater beware: forget your concerns about cholesterol, there is--literally--feces in your meat.

Schlosser's investigation reaches its frightening peak in the meatpacking plants as he reveals the almost complete lack of federal oversight of a seemingly lawless industry. His searing portrayal of the industry is disturbingly similar to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, written in 1906: nightmare working conditions, union busting, and unsanitary practices that introduce E. coli and other pathogens into restaurants, public schools, and homes. Almost as disturbing is his description of how the industry "both feeds and feeds off the young," insinuating itself into all aspects of children's lives, even the pages of their school books, while leaving them prone to obesity and disease. Fortunately, Schlosser offers some eminently practical remedies. "Eating in the United States should no longer be a form of high-risk behavior," he writes. Where to begin? Ask yourself, is the true cost of having it "your way" really worth it? --Lesley Reed

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:20 -0400)

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