Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
¶ … Trusted Friend
Summary of Eric Scholosser's Essay
There are very few living persons in the United States above the age of 5 or 6 who do not know about the Walt Disney Company (Disneyland and Disney World) or about McDonald's ("I'm lovin' It!" is their current ad slogan) fast food franchises. But it is not likely that many Americans know the history of McDonald's and how their founder, Ray Kroc, built this chain from the ground up with guile, guts, aggressive marketing and by making political deals. Nor are many Americans aware of the Walt Disney's anti-union strategies or the fact that he was a secret FBI informer. Disney sided with the House Un-American Activities Committee -- chaired by disgraced U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy -- and supported the idea of the House of Representatives blacklisting Hollywood actors and writers.
In Schlosser's book (Chapter 2) the author traces the steps that Kroc and Disney followed to achieve their smashing successes in their fields. The way that Kroc marketed his greasy French fries and burgers and sugary shakes to children was brilliant, but in hindsight, the public now knows that fatty foods that are also high in sodium are not healthful for children to eat. As for Disney, he was also brilliant at marketing his stories and characters to children, using corporate sponsorships and employing the concept of "synergy" to subcontract the manufacturing of his characters' toys for greater product recognition. Basically Schlosser was linking Disney and Kroc at the hip so to speak, in terms of their near-fanatical drive to profit and expand their empires -- on the backs of American children.
Of course...
Schlosser also takes issue with the way that fast food is marketed to kids on television, in magazines, in places like Disneyland and elsewhere.
An Intriguing Passage
"The Nixon administration supported the McDonald's bill [to lower the pay for 16-and-17-year-olds] and permitted McDonald's to raise the price of its Quarter Pounders, despite the mandatory wage and price controls restricting other fast food chains… [which] sparked Democratic accusations of influence peddling." Kroc later arrogantly, defiantly called critics of the deal he got from Nixon and Congress "sons of bitches" (Schlosser, 37).
In 1972, the year of the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon was running for reelection and because both Kroc and Disney supported conservative causes, they both backed Nixon. In fact Kroc donated $250,000 to the Nixon reelection campaign. The Nixon-Kroc connection was because Kroc wanted Nixon to support the so-called "McDonald's Bill" that would give employers the legal right to pay young people sixteen and seventeen years of age "20% lower than the minimum wage" (Schlosser, p. 37).
It would be hard to imagine anything that smacked more of a dirty political back-room deal than Kroc giving Nixon a quarter of a million dollar campaign donation and in turn receiving Nixon's public support for raising the price of McDonald's Quarter Pounders when…
Works Cited
Bendery, Jennifer. "Paul Ryan Tries To Create Tax Loopholes For His Biggest Donors." The
Huffington Post. Retrieved August 24, 2011, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com. 2011.
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York:
HarperCollins, 2004.
Eric Schlosser's book "Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal" is, first of all, "a fierce indictment of the fast food industry" Everything ranging from the content of the food and the way it is made, to the lowest wages in all industries practiced in fast food outlets and to the 'burger culture', with everything this implies is thoroughly criticized in this book. As a first criticism, one may
Jungle and Fast Food Nation The American meat industry has been a source of public contention ever since industrialization, periodically brought to the fore by investigations into and revelations of unsafe labor and food safety practices. In particular, Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle reveals the realities of the meat industry at the beginning of the twentieth century, and Eric Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation reexamines this same industry nearly a hundred
Schlosser emphasizes his point by recognizing Supreme Beef Processors, "one of the main suppliers of ground beef to the National School Lunch Program" ("Hamburger with Those"), as a company who repeatedly failed food safety testing and opposed further testing and regulations. In this case, the ultimate subjects of improper handling are children, who can have no control over (or even awareness of) the proper handling of their food, and
Schlosser: Fast Food Nation The fast food industry has been infused into the every nook and corner of American Society over the last three decades. The industry seen to have originated with a few modest hot dog and hamburger of Southern California have been perceived to have extended to every nook and corner of the nation, marketing an extensive range of food products to which affordable customers are found widely. Fast
However, as bad as the conditions may be working inside the restaurants, conditions in the meat-processing plants that provide the animal products used by the industry are far worse. Workers safety laws are ignored, and disease is prevalent. Schlosser reports a heart-rending tale of a young boy who died from E.coli bacteria after eating a tainted Jack-in-the-Box burger. It is difficult to track the source of an infection because
This is the construction Schlosser follows in this chapter. Schlosser's style and progression in this chapter both builds and strengthens his argument in several ways. The picture plays on typical views of families while also detailing a specific instance of the problems that occur in the slaughterhouse and meat packing world. The passage that follows does the same thing, at first noting that nothing seems especially amiss, but then notes