Schlosser “is trying to paint a picture of 1906 in order to scare people.
The meatpacking industry isn’t too fond of him either.
“I have never encountered any business that operates so unethically and is so unrepentant,” he states flatly. We take exception to the characterization in this book.”Įven so, Schlosser’s deepest outrage is directed not at fast-food executives but at their associates in the meat-packing industry and what he calls their longstanding resistance to federally mandated food-safety practices. The restaurant companies that comprise the industry provide employment to hundreds of thousands of workers across the country and offer consumers a wide variety in menu options and prices. Schlosser’s book, ‘Fast Food Nation,’ categorizes the entire fast-food industry in such a negative light. Terrie Dort, president of the National Council of Chain Restaurants, the trade association representing many of the country’s major fast-food chains, released this statement about Schlosser and his book: “It is unfortunate that Mr. That’s an unfair characterization, complains the fast-food industry. “Fast food is not the source of all ills, but shortsighted, greedy mentality has caused many unnecessary consequences,” he says. What troubles him are the sweeping changes that the fast-food chains have brought about not only in our eating habits but in our workforce, our landscape, our culture and in how food is produced.
His book tracks fast food from its beginnings in 1948 with the McDonald brothers’ hamburger stand in Downey to its global presence today. “Essentially, for me, the growth of fast food is a history of America after World War II,” he says. In “Fast Food Nation,” Schlosser, who has a history degree from Princeton, views fast food from a historical perspective. Once he got started, though, he found himself heading in a different direction. So in 1997 when Rolling Stone magazine asked him to write an article looking at America through fast food, he figured he would write something “kitschy and lighthearted,” a relief after the sobering in-depth stories he had been doing for Atlantic Monthly on subjects like marijuana penalties and California migrant farm workers. But when he speaks about his book, it’s with the fervor of a man who has seen life’s harrowing side.īefore starting this project, he gave little thought to fast food. Dressed in a tweed jacket, red tie, white shirt with silver cuff links and dark jeans, he could be a hip college professor. Schlosser, 41, is soft-spoken but intense.
“They weren’t happy about it,” he admits recently over a lunch of Chinese dumplings and salmon, “but as a parent, you have to know what you’re feeding your kids.” Even his children, ages 8 and 10, have been cut off from school burgers and the Happy Meals they used to enjoy. It was so upsetting, in fact, that he says he no longer eats ground beef.
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