Key Messages
The Dark Side Of The Fast Food Industry: Exploring The Devastating Consequences On Towns, Workers And Health
When you don’t feel like cooking and fast food seems like the best option, it can be hard to realise what’s actually hiding in your burger.
Yet the truth is not pretty; there’s a dark side to the fast food industry that we rarely hear about.
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That’s because Discovering what lies beneath the layers of sauce and bun may shock you – yet it’s vital that we all discover the secrets hidden in our fast food.
From reduced meat quality, to the exploitation of vulnerable workers, Fast Food Nation shows us the devastating consequences this industry has caused on both society and health.
It also reveals how easily unscrupulous tactics are used by fast food corporations, driving poverty and crime in towns across America.
And finally, this book demonstrates how drastically fast food has changed our global food production system – with permanent effects – which are overwhelmingly negative!
So next time you crave a quick fix burger, consider just what your taste buds might really be tasting beneath that succulent top layer…
How The Mcdonald Brothers Revolutionized Fast Food With An Assembly Line Approach
The success of American fast food is widely attributed to the McDonald brothers, who revolutionized the industry by applying factory production principles.
This was in stark contrast to the drive-in restaurants which were popular prior to their arrival.
At these drive-ins, customers received waitresses on roller-skates and meals that needed cutlery.
In making changes, the brothers saw an opportunity to save time and money – which they seized.
They imposed a model of simplicity, serving only a few simple meals with paper packaging, removing service in cars and introducing easy-to-learn tasks like flipping burgers or dressing salads that could be allocated to employees in order to optimize speed and costs.
This gave birth to their renowned “Speedee Service System”, leading customer bases from teenagers looking for hangouts to families who could finally take their kids out for a meal.
Following this success, successful chains such as Burger King, Wendy’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken all adopted traits of the McDonalds model to become what you see nowadays; modern, fast food restaurants known around the world.
Fast Food Companies Target Children To Increase Sales And Profit Margins
Fast food chains have been targeting children and teenagers as potential customers for decades.
By luring kids in with playgrounds, free toys, and targeted commercials, fast food restaurants are able to double or triple their sales in a week .
This is even true of the most popular ones; 90 percent of American children between three and nine visit a McDonald’s every month.
It doesn’t stop there – fast food chains have started infiltrating schools too.
Many school districts allow for delivery contracts with brands like Subway and even use corporate-sponsored textbooks which promote their brand messages.
The result? Fast food ads not only playing on TVs, movie screens or billboards but in textbooks too!
Children remain the perfect customers in that they’re highly vulnerable to suggests made through advertisements, as well as pressure from parents when it comes to new products.
Despite this knowledge however, corporations are still preying on our youth by exposing them to unlikely messages regarding nutrition and health promotion – making them susceptible to long-term issues associated with processed foods.
Fast Food Industry Jobs Come With Severe Downside: Poor Working Conditions, High Turnover Rate, And Increased Risk Of Crime
Fast food restaurants often target the weakest members of society with their employment practices, exploiting them to maximize profits.
They primarily hire teens who are willing to work for lower pay and without much attention or focus on their employee rights.
Those same employees also demand less from their employers, making them cheap, easily replaceable labor.
The turnover rate for fast food workers is incredibly high due to this exploitation – typically a worker will be fired or quit every three to four months.
When teens are employed by these companies, they’re asked to work more than twenty hours a week which has been shown to have a detrimental effect on their education and health.
These same workers have an increased risk of becoming targets of crime since many fast food restaurants are frequently robbed.
Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for current or former employees of the restaurant to commit those robberies due to their poor working conditions and low wages.
Franchises May Not Be The Best Choice For Those Dreaming Of Opening Their Own Businesses
The franchise business model is one that has been used by fast food corporations around the world to great success.
But while it offers those looking to own their own business a mix of independence and security, there is an unfortunate truth – the advantages for the fast food companies outweigh those for franchise owners.
Franchisees must invest a lot of money just to get started, and are forced to follow the corporation’s punishing rules.
For example, McDonald’s franchisees are unable to stop other franchises from being set up in close proximity, increasing competition and decreasing profits.
Meanwhile, studies showing the success of most franchises tend to omit bankrupted franchises from the results – making it clear that franchises are actually more likely to fail than independent businesses!
What’s more, these franchise owners, whose money is always at risk, can barely rely on legal protection either.
Though they have invested like businessmen, they must obey corporate orders without being covered by employment laws; even when purchasing supplies they’re not protected by consumer protection laws.
How Artificial Flavors Trick Our Taste Buds And Shape Our Food Choices
When people eat fast food, they often think they are getting a real flavor of the ingredients that it claims to have.
But, as we’ ve seen in Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, what you’re tasting more likely comes from laboratory-crafted artificial flavors than anything else.
This means that when you get a burger, you are probably tasting more artificial flavoring than the actual beef.
A McDonald’s fries for example can contain “animal product” flavoring and a Wendy’s chicken sandwich paradoxically contains beef extract flavoring.
Not only that, but even “natural” flavors like almond flavoring are produced in Chemistry labs and can still contain dangerous contaminants like hydrogen cyanide!
So next time you grab some fast food for lunch or dinner, remember that what you’re tasting is most likely artificial rather than natural.
The Reality Of America’s Farmers: How Monopolies And Mega-Buyers Put Them In A Vicious Cycle Of Debt And Dependence
The fast food industry has had a devastating effect on the lives of U.S.
farmers.
Although we may picture those traditional, all-American farmers working in vast fields in the Midwest, today’s reality is quite different.
A few large companies and buyers control the markets for potatoes, poultry, and beef, with McDonald’s as the nation’s biggest purchaser of beef and just five suppliers for all burgers.
The domination of these monopolies reduces farmers to accepting extremely low prices from their buyers and losing leverage over their contracts.
For example, when one portion of French fries sells for 1.50 at a fast food restaurant, the potato farmer earns only 2 cents; this pay gap forces many out of work or even off their land altogether since they are unable to make a living wage farming anymore.
Moreover, these big companies often take advantage of that power by pressuring farmers into unfair and untenable agreements where they cannot own the produce but only contribute their labor and resources – leaving them with no way out other than more debt if they wish to protest any practices or prices set by the company.
All in all, the fast food industry has severely disempowered America’s farming community by creating an unjust system where large conglomerates control most agricultural resources and leave numerous farmers without access to proper income; this dangerous trend should be met with urgency so that everyone has a chance to thrive in our society regardless of profession or sector.
The Dark Side Of The Meatpacking Industry: How Cheap Burgers Affect Human Suffering
The meatpacking industry has brought a great deal of destruction to the towns it’s moved into.
This decades-long move from urban areas such as New York and Chicago aimed to break away from the grip of unions, but it left in its wake economic and social problems for many American towns.
Take Lexington, Nebraska for example.
When a big company opened a slaughterhouse there in 1990, serious crimes more than doubled in just ten years; state-subsidized care skyrocketed as did illicit drugs on the streets which were increasingly dominated by gangs.
Poor and unskilled populations flocked to these towns for jobs, creating poverty and desperation that further exacerbated existing issues.
As with fast food companies, the meatpacking industry cares more about cost-cutting production than protecting its workers or supporting their local communities.
This pursuit of efficiency at any cost is something that no town should have to endure.
The Meatpacking Industry Endangers And Exploits Workers For Profit
Working in a slaughterhouse is not only a dirty, hard and poorly paid job – it’s also incredibly dangerous.
In fact, the meatpacking industry has one of the highest injury rates in all of America, three times higher than any other factory or workplace.
This is because production cannot be fully automatized, and due to the size and weight of the cattle, much of it has to be done by hand with knives – resulting in numerous stabs and cuts.
The fast-paced assembly line adds another layer to these already existing dangers.
To stay competitive and maintain small profit margins, companies are always looking for ways to speed up production, creating an atmosphere that encourages workers to abuse drugs like methamphetamine so they can keep up.
Unfortunately, this not only puts their health in jeopardy but makes them less careful too – resulting in an even higher risk of injury.
But when workers get injured – which happens more often than people think – meatpacking companies don’t necessarily do anything to help them out: they’re pressured to not report their injuries or return to work before they fully recovered, otherwise they could face losing their jobs; plus compensations for lost limbs or body parts are kept incredibly low.
All this in pursuit of making more money faster makes working in the meatpacking industry especially hazardous.
The Fast Food Industry Poses A Serious Health Risk With Its Cheap And Unsanitary Meat Production
Fast food production has had an immense effect on the rise in foodborne illnesses in America.
This is because of the unsanitary working conditions, high speeds and unskilled workers that come with the assembly line system present in most fast food slaughterhouses today.
Further exacerbating this issue is the fact that cows are regularly fed unwholesome feed from dead pigs, horses and poultry feces, which can transmit dangerous bacteria like E.
coli 0157:H7 to anyone who consumes that meat.
That’s why it’s important to have high safety standards for all meat processing operations, including those connected to fast food restaurants.
Moreover, due to centralized production methods through these big corporations providing both supermarkets and fast food restaurants across the country, one contaminated batch could put potentially millions of people at risk.
It’s estimated that around 200,000 Americans suffer from food poisoning every day as a result of cheap and mass produced meats in fast food industry settings.
Thus, when considering how best to reduce the spread of foodborne illness, one must take into account how best to improve safety procedures and standards in the fast food industry production systems.
How Fast Food Restaurants Have Become A Symbol Of Globalization And How It Is Influencing Other Nations
The fast food industry has conquered the world – literally.
From Turkey in the 1980s to India and beyond, McDonald’s and other fast food restaurants have set up shop with great success, utilizing their first-mover strategy by being the first multinational to open in a new market.
This has made them a symbol of not only Americanization, but also of Western-style capitalism – both positively and negatively viewed.
This exponential takeover has happened not just through their presence, but also through their agricultural methods imported into each respective country to provide for local supplies.
In India for example, before McDonald’s opened it’s first restaurant, they taught farmers how to farm lettuce that would specifically thrive in the Indian climate.
And now with these restaurants all over the world, communities everywhere have started dealing with similar issues such as obesity being linked directly to fast food consumption due to its efficiency and availability.
Wrap Up
The final takeaway of Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation is that fast, cheap food comes at a high cost to both people and the environment.
Processed food usually contains unknown substances that you don’t want to trace, making it unwise to consume.
The industry uses exploitative practices, encourages obesity epidemics and decreases meat quality – all in an effort to make maximum profits.
To combat these negative effects, we must be conscious of the food choices we are making.
We should avoid processed foods and resist the temptation of fast-food advertisements.
By being mindful of what we’re consuming, we can make healthier choices for our bodies and our planet.
