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October 25, 2005
The mass-produced hamburger is the sign of fast food for me, rather than french fries. It stands for the dark side of food. For others--the free-market enthusiasts--- the inexpensive, franchised chain of restaurants is a highly efficient business model of McDonald's and other chains, such as Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Fast Food Nation is about food, its production and consumption. It is also about an America Triumphant over all competing political philosophies: rich, powerful and confident – yet often mean-spirited and scared. McDonald's represents Americana and the promise of modernization.
Eric Schlosser's historical and critical analysis of the fast-food industry is an indictment of the fast food industry. Schlosser argues that processed food "has helped to transform not only the American diet, but also our landscape, economy, workforce and popular culture." Schlosser argues that the fast-food joint near your neighborhood petrol station, is more than just a quick-meal fix; it's the end point where several long roads converge.
Schlosser explores the meatpacking plants, flavor-engineering factories, a day in the life of a teenage server, and fields of ranchers losing the battle against an enormous, industrialized agriculture industry. What is constructed is the degree to which the modern fast-food business is defined by the industrialization of most of its parts, and the nasty abuses in food production and handling.
Should there be increased regulation?
Reason magazinesays that:
Fast food is, certainly, a choice, and one's food choices ought to be personal matters. There seems to be no market as open and as accessible with as many options as the restaurant industry, with thousands of choices in any mid-sized city.The explosive growth of fast food restaurants over the course of the past several decades should tell us something: Fast food does not always satisfy one's highest aspirations -- much less the refined sensibilities of journalists. But it certainly fills one's tummy passably well.
And our health? What about obesity from fatty foods? Isn't public health a concern of governments as well as a concern of public opinion? It is not just consumer choice at play here.
Should we address the issue of what needs to replace fast-food meals -- the kinds of fresh foods that would be affordable, and accessible to replace the taste for fries, burgers and other processed, taste-engineered foods? Isn't a key question of one finding a healthier and more varied way of eating for the low-income people who are the market for fast food right now? Is it not about creating a food culture that insists that there are some things that really ought to be left in the food not watered down.
In the Afterword, Schlosser writes:
"Whatever replaces the fast food industry should be regional, diverse, authentic, unpredictable, sustainable, profitable--and humble. It should know its limits....This new century may bring an impatience with conformity, a refusal to be kept in the dark, less greed, more compassion, less speed, more common sense, a sense of humor about brand essences and loyalties, a view of food as more than just fuel. This don't have to be the way they are."
As Russell Arben Fox over at In Media Res observes this is a shift from liberal regulation to a criticism of our whole culture of consumption and growth and speed.
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And an interesting observation made by Schlosser is that the whole fast-food movement evolved around the car culture of Southern California in the late 50s, early 60s, where effective mass transit didn't exist and commuters relied on the newly constructed freeways of Los Angeles.
As California goes, so goes the world...or as the Chili Peppers noted, "Tidal waves couldn't save the world from Californication."
Schlosser is a great critic and observer, but his "Reefer Madness" wasn't nearly as coherent as this excellent expose.