Evaluating the Book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

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 notice that the author writes some 350 pages on the subject of fast food and the fast food industry finding almost no positive aspects whatsoever. It isn't much to say that, at the end of the book, you will be able to assimilate the fast food industry with some of the most criminal and degrading industries in the world, drug and human traffic, for example. It is not necessarily his vehemence (which almost doesn't exist throughout the book, as I will refer to further below), but the thoroughness with which he covers the disturbing aspects in the fast food industry, ranging from the managers and founders who barely have a high school diploma, to the "overworked and underpaid teenage workers"

and to the chemicals that are behind the tasty flavors we find in fast food outlets.

Generally speaking, many of these negative aspects should have their positive counterpart. For example, it is true that the teenagers are underpaid and overworked, however, the fast food industry provides excellent means to make extra money by working part time, stimulating teenagers to understand the value of money. Similarly, the successful managers should not necessarily be judged by their level of education, but rather by their success in life. Additionally, the author himself points out that McDonald's has become the country's largest private employer.

I am not necessarily saying that Mr. Schlosser is not being objective when describing the fast food industry. I am simply pointing out towards the fact that there is a significant tendency of presenting only one side of the story. The book is not about a description of the fast food industry and its characteristics, but about describing the negative aspects in the fast food industry. Fairly, their positive counterparts should also be reasonably presented, so that the reader may have the complete picture of things.

Closely linked to the issues discussed here above is the fact that Mr. Schlosser tends to "blame that industry for virtually every contemporary ill"

. If we read the book carefully, we may have the impression that the fast food industry is guilty not only for obesity and illness (the accusations in this sense seem rather strong nonetheless), but also for the high rate of high school dropouts, teenager promiscuity, etc. This may undermine the strength and power of conviction that some of the passages of the book may have, because the reader senses again the author's subjectivism.

Some of the details in the book are too gruesome and may turn disgusting. The part where the mechanisms that work in the meatpacking plants and slaughter houses are described may turn you away from eating beef for the rest of your life. In my opinion, many of these details could have been avoided without damaging the author's goal of pointing out to the disorders in the system.

On the other hand, one cannot help while going through the book to be impressed by the size of Mr. Schlosser's research and documentation. From the historical background of the industry (which we may assume could have been easier researched), the author moves on to describe some of the recipe backgrounds. Revelatory in this sense is the reference to the way French fries are made and why they taste so good, what artificial flavoring is all about and what happens at the meatpacking plants. One cannot help, when reading the book, feeling that the author uncovers almost any aspect related to the industry one may think off. At the end of the book, you may simply believe that you have full knowledge of all the underlying things related to the fast food industry.