Introducing my food-related book

 I chose the book called “Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal,” by Eric Schlosser.

A little bit about the author:

Eric Schlosser is an award-winning journalist, who has written for Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, the Nation, and many others. His books include Reefer Madness, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, and Chew. He has addressed the risk of the food supply from bioterrorism to the United States House of Representatives and Senate. 

Is Fast Food bad for your body?

I chose this book because I was interested in learning about fast food and wanted to know what it’s doing to our bodies. This book touches upon fast food culture in America and the ingredients of fast food like potatoes and meat. I’m especially interested in learning about meat because I once heard the news about how it’s not meat and there was something else in it. 

From reading the back cover, I learned that this book talks about the fast-food culture of the USA and reveals some shocking truths. It exposes the gap between the rich and poor, the problem of obesity, the workers, and food production. 

The book is divided into an introduction, two main topics: “The American Way” and “Meat and Potatoes,” and an epilogue. 

Here’s what I learned from Chapters 1 and 2. 

Chapter 1: “The Founding Fathers”

It provides a historical backdrop of how the fast-food nation began. And provides detail about the great economy during the post-World War II era. 

The author begins first talking about Carl Karcher who later on becomes the founder of Carl’s Jr. fast-food restaurants. Then talks about the McDonald brothers who started the Speedee Service System, which brought customers out of their cars and into their highly-efficient restaurant. 

What surprised me the most was that Carl opened his own self-service restaurant after being inspired by McDonald’s. This (Carl Jr.’s Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway Act) made more people eat in self-service restaurants/got popular. Entrepreneurs throughout the nation came to observe the McDonald’s phenomenon. During this period, fast-food places like Taco Bell, Dunkin’ Donuts, Wendy’s, Domino’s, and Kentucky Fried Chicken started. 

Throughout Carl Karcher’s career, there were difficulties however, he believes in progress and doesn’t miss the good old days. 

Chapter 2: “Your Trusted Friends”

In this chapter, the author compared the rise of McDonald’s with the Walt Disney Company. Schlosser demonstrates how fast-food companies, which offer little nutrition manipulate young people’s minds in order to sell their products. These companies go so far as to portray themselves as “Trusted Friends.” While fast-food companies market their product to young kids’ minds, parents are the final decision-makers for their children. 

The similarity between Kroc and Disney was: born in Illinois a year apart, they both dropped out of high school, served together in WWI, moved to Southern California after the war, became geniuses at marketing their products to children. 

Disney quickly developed clever and efficient marketing strategies like procuring corporate sponsorship, creating an atmosphere in which visitors felt as though they had escaped the real world, and inventing the “synergy” strategy. “Synergy” sold the rights to use Disney characters to other companies, thus increasing product recognition. Similarly, Ray Kroc worked on his own marketing strategies: telling people he was really in show business, not the restaurant business.