It is an alarmist rant about nutrition, capitalism, suburban sprawl, the influence of big business in politics, urban blight, and other loosely connected themes, sprinkled with a twist of conspiracy theory. He even ventures to England and Germany to clock the rate at which those countries are becoming fast food nations.įast Food Nation is a groundbreaking work of investigation and cultural history that may change the way America thinks about the way it eats.ĭon't be misled into thinking, as I did, that this book would offer a critical, well-reasoned, and empirically supported analysis of the fast food industry. He travels to Las Vegas for a giddily surreal franchisers' convention where Mikhail Gorbachev delivers the keynote address. He hangs out with the teenagers who make the restaurants run and communes with those unlucky enough to hold America's most dangerous job - meatpacker. Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from the California subdivisions where the business was born to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike where many of fast food's flavors are concocted. That's a lengthy list of charges, but Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning. Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism abroad. Though created by a handful of mavericks, the fast food industry has triggered the homogenization of our society.

To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar America.

Fast food nation book