Just read the new book “Fast Food Nation” by American journalist Eric Schlosser to discover why the backlash to this early catalyst of globalization is on the rise. According to Schlosser, “the fast-food industry embodies the best and the worst of American capitalism.” In the best muckraking tradition, he concentrates on the worst, connecting the dots between fast food; the transformation of food production; the reliance on low-paid, unskilled labor, and alarming health trends and scares. While fast food can’t be blamed for mad-cow disease in Europe, there’s something eerie in the fact that Italy’s first suspected case of mad cow was found recently at a slaughterhouse that supplies the country’s 295 McDonald’s.
To be sure, for every Jose Bove–the farmer who trashed a McDonald’s in southern France in 1999 to protest “fast-food imperialism”–there are millions of satisfied customers. In the United States, fast food has become a way of life. Schlosser offers the startling assertion that on any given day “about one-quarter of the adult population visits a fast-food restaurant.” But McDonald’s recognizes it is encountering more resistance, and that there’s a limit to how many hamburgers it can sell. The company began diversifying recently by buying smaller chicken and pizza chains, and earlier this month it snapped up a 33 percent stake in Pret A Manger, the British chain that prides itself on fresh sandwiches that spurn chemical additives. So something is afoot in the empire of the golden arches, even if the numbers still make such ventures the tiny exceptions to the general rule.
Schlosser’s avowed aim is to strengthen the backlash. To that end, he presents a long, damning indictment of the impact of the fast-food industry on American life, warning other countries of the dangers. First, of course, is diet. As Americans have spent more and more of their money on fast food (more than $110 billion in 2000, compared with $6 billion in 1970), obesity rates have soared. No wonder. Schlosser points out that burgers are only a part of the problem. In 1960, the average American ate four pounds of frozen french fries a year; today the figure is more than 30 pounds, almost all purchased in fast-food outlets and, until 1990, usually cooked in beef tallow. Chicken McNuggets, he adds, contain twice as much fat per ounce as a hamburger. The typical can of soda contains the equivalent of 10 tablespoons of sugar, and consumption has quadrupled over that period. Kids are targeted–and hooked–early.
Fast food has changed much more than waistlines. Aside from accelerating urban sprawl, Schlosser writes, it has been the driving force behind the consolidation and industrialization of the entire food-production process, driving independents out of business. Huge food companies effectively dictate conditions to farmers and ranchers, and slaughterhouses increasingly rely on a largely migrant work force with a high turnover rate similar to the pattern established in the fast-food industry. Low wages, hazardous working conditions and blatant union-busting have meant that many workers are trapped in a permanent underclass. Schlosser also maintains that industrialized production and inadequate government oversight means that meat infected with E. Coli and other pathogens are distributed far and wide–although he acknowledges some progress in imposing new standards. In Europe the same industrialized production has spread mad-cow disease.
Schlosser visits a McDonald’s in Plauen, a grim town in what used to be East Germany, and concedes that it’s “the nicest, cleanest, brightest place” around. Which made me feel a bit better about my initial reaction to the arrival of the fast-food outlets in the old Soviet empire: after all, they did provide a quick fix and taught some useful lessons. But it’s hard not to agree with his thesis that the fast-food phenomenon has gone haywire–and that it didn’t have to be this way. His prescriptions: stricter enforcement of antitrust laws against huge food processors to make it easier for independent ranchers and farmers to survive; a ban on fast-food advertising aimed at children; pressure on fast-food chains to demand better conditions for workers in the meatpacking industry. But his key message is for consumers to reconsider what they’re doing, and to recognize that they’re paying a high price for ostensibly cheap meals. In other words, don’t just hold the fries–go elsewhere.
Fast Food NationEric Schlosser (Houghton Mifflin) 356 pages. $25
