My Fast Food Meal Summary

Throughout part I of Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser writes about the ins and outs of the fast food industry. From the founding fathers to the dirty little secrets that fast food corporations would never want us to know, he reveals it all. As corporations look for every opportunity to cut costs and increase profits, we start to reexamine what type of behavior governs businesses in America. As the days of traditional ‘sit down restaurants’ dominating the market quickly disappeared, large corporations are making use of new machinery and money saving business strategies. The drawback to these business tactics is that the burden lies on another individual.

In the book Fast Food Nation, the author, Eric Schlosser provides facts and evidence that fast food isn’t healthy and how they process the food is very bad. At first he starts off by showing every human eats fast food, even at the undercover Military Base in Colorado that is in a mountain. He says that, “almost every night, a Domino’s deliveryman winds up the lonely Cheyenne Mountain Road”, when they have nothing else to eat, says Mr. Schlosser(2). Once you start getting into the book you notice how he is comparing fast food to the Military Base. He goes off starting in the beginning how the first fast food restaurants started and how it led the people to end up making a fast food restaurant.

So what is causing so many Americans, of all social classes, to consume fast food regularly? And how did the steady monopolization of chain-restaurants over local diners come to be? This is the focus of a book entitled Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal in which the author hones in on foul untold secrets of corporate restaurant chains.

“Fast food is popular because it’s convenient, it’s cheap, and it tastes good. But the real cost of eating fast food never appears on the menu.” When the idea of fast food was first created, it was met with mixed reactions. White Castle and A&W--the first two fast food restaurants ever created--worked very hard to create a service that could provide meals quickly to the people around them. Customers, at first, refused to eat hamburgers because of their tarnished image influenced by Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

”(MSPCK) The breeders and farmers are trying to put lots of cows in a little space. cows need room to rome and graze. the food that farmers are feeding the animals now a days are corn. cow naturally eat grass and corn isn’t even in there region, corn is hard on a cow's digestive system.

More cheaper and “efficient” products mean more money coming their way. As people are getting more greedy with their income, the people who can not afford the better choice of a healthier diet are getting unhealthy. “More sweeteners, salt, and trans fat. Cheaper meat, more animal fat”, Saletan expressed. As a server at a ramen restaurant, I fully understand how this works.

For starters, the price gap between actual groceries and fast food is astronomical. When you can buy a burger at a fast food restaurant for a dollar but a salad at the same place cost 7 dollars, the cheaper option—more times than not— appears to be more desirable. In many cases, the financial burden forces them to sacrifice a healthy lifestyle for full bellies. While accessibility to healthier food choices is scarce in many areas, fast food restaurants have managed to appear on just about every corner.

In the article “It’s Portion Distortion That Makes America Fat,” by Shannon Brownlee explains how fast food companies persuade you to eat. In fast food places, they use fast food marketing strategies to induce an amount of people to eat more. Another strategy was called “smart research”. This strategy targeted “heavy users” and people who to go restaurants on a daily basis. Brownlee said that cheap products would influence us to buy more of them.

Chapter 7 of Fast Food Nation discussed the starting of meatpacking industry and its downfalls. At first, Iowa Beef Packers (IBP) used the same principle as McDonald’s principle to make fast foods. IBP hired unskilled workers just to do simple and repeated work all day. However, competition with other companies made IBP low wages and health insurance options. This caused slaughterhouses to move West to gain cheap labor and land.

1. Explain why Michael Pollan finds the questions “What am I eating? And where in the world did it come from?” so difficult to answer. Michael Pollan finds this question so difficult because all food is made up of other foods, mostly corn. On page 17, he states, "any food whose provenance is so complex or obscure that is requires expert help to ascertain."

Due to the range in prices, it makes it accessible for working class families to afford the food they desire. Local stores support the use of pesticides and GMO’s therefore their prices vary from processed goods to organic goods, and the price difference is enormous. The excessive use of pests in the farms makes the food unhealthy and rich in Calories from Fat and usually the prices for these goods are low, making them the top selling products. For example, a packet of chicken breasts usually costs around $4-5 and the organic ones cost around $8-9, taking this everyday necessity for most families, this $4-5 makes a huge difference in the buying power and the demand for the over processed chicken rise. Another gateway for customers to food is farmers markets, which are known for their healthy produce and higher price.

As they collect huge amounts of profits through the food they make for their customers, their popularity increases. In terms of money, they tend to get competitive with each other; thus, they try to upgrade their food to a more healthy direction to attract more customers,

That’s the main reason why so many people are obese and overweight in the United States. Although they do have some excuses for eating so much fast food. McDonalds restaurants are everywhere. Wherever you go, if you ever want McDonalds, you can be sure that there is one nearby. Advertisements for fast food are everywhere; street signs, advertisements

The Employer-Friendly Case for Pricier Big Macs Fast food, what a lot of people generally view as a quick way to get some good food, whether it be breakfast, lunch or dinner, is actually killing more people than you might think. In this modern time, almost everyone knows that fast food isn’t particularly the best thing for you to eat, but that won’t even come close to stopping us from eating it. I wonder why do we not ban fast food or limit it? The answer is simple; it makes us money.

Title: FAST FOOD POPULARITY A. Introduction: Nowadays, most people -especially kids and youngsters- prefer to eat fast food, such as McDonald, pizza, fried food, and etc. Why it has become so popular? It is tastes better than homemade food? B. General Statement: Fast food industry has grown dramatically and become so popular. According to the research, people spend more money on fast food than the education.