The Business of Fast Food Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation - Book Report/Review Example

The Business of Fast Food Introduction Over the last years, fast food business has infiltrated every cranny and nook of the American society. The business of fast food initially started with a handful of meek hamburger and hot dog in Southern California and spreading to all corners of the country selling fast food products wherever there are paying customers. This form of business is now taking place in big restaurants, airports, stadiums, high schools, universities, elementary schools, on cruise ships, airplanes, hospital cafes, zoos, gas stations, and even at Wal-Marts and K-Marts. Eric Schlosser in his book ‘Fast Food Nation’ states that Americans are spending more on fast food than they spend on other things such as higher education, purchasing personal cars, or personal computers (3). Thesis statement The whole business of selling fast food is now becoming so routine and thoroughly unexceptional. Those who operate these businesses in America are now taking it for granted just like stopping in traffic for red light or brushing your teeth. This business is becoming a social custom in American as a rectangular, small, frozen, handheld, and re-heated apple pie. The book of Eric Schlosser ‘Fast Food Nation’ is about the growth of fast food industry in America, the values the business embodies, and the way it has changed the world. Fast food business in American proves to be a radical force in the nation’s life. Eric Schlosser argues that the complex interplay of economic, social, as well as technological forces determines what people eat (3). Citizen farmers and slave used to feed in the early Roman Republic. Currently, more than a quarter of the American adults visit the fast food restaurants. Eric Schlosser further states that the business of fast food has not only changed American diet, but also the country’s landscape, workforce, economy, and people’s culture. The consequences of fast food business are currently inescapable even if you eat them twice a day, have not taken them, or try to avoid them (4). The fundamental societal changes in Americans play a vital role of driving the extraordinary spread and growth of the business of fast food. United States worker was high in the year 1973 and declined steadily in the following twenty-five years (4). During this time, the number of women who entered the workforce increased motivated by the perspective of feminist. In the 1975, only a third of the women with young kids worked outside their homes. Currently, more than two-thirds of mothers with young kids are under employment. Sociologists Carmen Sirianni and Cameron Lynne Macdonald noted that the increased rate of women entering the workforce has increased the demand of the duties that traditional women used to perform such as cooking, childcare, and cleaning. Some years ago, a large amount of the money used to buy food was used to prepare family meals at home (4). Nowadays, more than half of the money spend on food in America is spent at fast food restaurants. A good example of fast food restaurants in America is the McDonald’s Corporation. In the year 1968, the Corporation operated only a thousand restaurants, but currently McDonald’s Corporation has more than twenty-eight thousand restaurants (49). Studies show that one out of eight employees in America has at some time worked with the McDonald. The Corporation hires an approximate of 1,000,000 workers annually more than any other public or private organization in America (4). It is the American’s largest purchaser of pork, beef, and potatoes. It is the second biggest purchaser or chicken. According to Jim Hightower, the fast growth of the fast food industry poses many threats to other independent businesses in the world. However, much of what he warned against has happened. The fast growth of fast food industry has influenced other business to adopt similar methods. The basic thinking, lying behind the fast food business is now becoming today’s retail economic operating system, hence wiping out all small businesses and spreading identical fast food store throughout the nation. Fast food business is currently commonplace, and it has acquired an inevitable air as if it was something unavoidable (7). The vast purchasing power of fast food chains and their demand due to uniform products have highly encouraged fundamental transformations in the way people slaughter and raise cattle, and processed to manufacture beef. These changes have changed the process of meatpacking, which was once a highly paid occupation and highly skilled in the most dangerous and risky job in American carried out by poor immigrants armies whose injuries are often unrecorded and uncompensated. Additionally, the same meat industry operations that cause injuries to the workers facilitates introduction of harmful pathogens into US’s hamburger meat such as E. coli 0157:H7, a food to children (8). Additionally, the efforts to ban the selling of tainted meat end in vain due to the meat industry’s lobbyists as well as their allies in the Congress. However, the federal governments have the authority of recalling a stuffed animal or a defective toaster, but they still lack the power to enable them to recall thousands tons of contaminated lethal meat. Eric Schlosser suggests that the business of fast food solely is responsible for all social effects currently haunting the well-being of the United States. In some case, for example the sprawling and malling of the West, the business of fast food serves as a symptom and catalyst to larger economic trends. In different cases such as obesity and franchising, the business of fast food plays a vital role (9). By tracing all the diverse influences caused by fast food business, Eric Schlosser hopes to shed light to practices of important industries and on a distinctively US mode of viewing the globe. The elitists have always been against the business of fast food criticizing the taste of the food and regarding this business as the main cause of American cultural changes. The fast food’s aesthetics are of less concern to Eric Schlosser as he tries to focus on the impacts fast food brings to the lives of both the workers and consumers. Most of all, Eric Schlosser focuses on the impacts fast food causes to the children since they are the major consumers of fast food (44). Fast food is highly sold to children and manufacture by older people. This industry does not only feed the children, but also feeds them off. Eric Schlosser asserts that the main reason why many people are attracted to buy fast is its good taste, its inexpensiveness and convenience. In the entire United States, most parents are working hard to ban fast food business in schools (82). The sale of vegetable and fruits from home gardens is deteriorating due to fast food business. Ideally, most college students in the United States dream to be farmers or chefs instead of lawyers and doctors. The fast food network has made cooking as a type of mass entertainment as well as transforming the individuals who cook during celebrity events. The fast food sold by large fast food corporations such as McDonald, Burger King, and KFC are the type of products that the current generation wants to most hence affect other businesses. Even the US National Restaurant Association is now acknowledging this change. Conclusion To sum up, fast food business has infiltrated every cranny and nook of the American society. Millions of people around the world to purchase and consume fast food with the majority not giving the food and the type of business much thought. Most consumers of fast food rarely consider the source of this food, its manufacturing process, and the side effects the fast food business causes to other businesses. As the saying states, ‘we are what we eat’ consumers should try to consider what lies behind these fast foods and the side effects of the business. Work cited Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Print. Read More