Fast Food Nation Chapter Summary FULL

Fast Food Nation contains three interwoven stories connected
with Mickey’s, a fast food chain. It follows the lives of people
from different sectors of society who work for the company and
shows the impact the company has on their lives.
In the first story, Don is sent by Mickey’s to Cody to investigate
suspected meat contamination at a meat packing plant, UMP.
Don’s tour of the plant doesn’t reveal any problems, but later he
meets an old rancher who explains what is happening. They are
speeding up the production line to increase profit and the meat
is being contaminated as a result. Harry, Mickey’s meat buyer,
warns Don not to interfere or risk losing his job. Don decides to
let the matter rest.
The second story follows Amber, a part time waitress at
Mickey’s in Cody. She meets an environmentalist group and
decides to take action with them to protest about killing cows to
provide burger meat. Their plan fails and Amber resigns from
Mickey’s. She is the only character who manages to escape the
company's influence.
The third story is about three illegal Mexican workers. Raúl and
Coco see the real side of life at UMP. Coco forms a relationship
with supervisor Mike and develops a drugs problem. Sylvia works
in a hotel but when Raúl is injured badly in an accident at work
and UMP refuses to accept responsibility, she is finally forced to
work in the slaughter room to earn money.
The film Fast Food Nation is based on the non-fiction book by
Eric Schlosser. It aims to shock and it does this through some
very dramatic scenes. This is why it has a 15 certificate. The horrific
closing scenes were actually shot in a slaughter house. The idea
of showing what goes on in a slaughter house is not new. A book
called The Jungle was written in 1906 by Upton Sinclair and this
revealed the terrible conditions for workers and animals in these
places. The book led to the development of regulations for the
industry, including the formation of the FDA – the Food and Drug
Administration. As Fast Food Nation makes clear, much more still
needs to be done.
Fast Food Nation has many themes. It is about big business
and the control it has over all our lives. It also makes us think
carefully about environmental and ethical issues. It raises
questions about illegal workers. It certainly doesn’t have a happy
ending. We are left at the end with a scary feeling of inevitability
– that we are all like cogs in the wheels of a big machine.
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Eric Schlosser in Fast Food Nation says, J.R. Simplot is the main man behind McDonald’s source for
potatoes. He started his own business right out of the eighth grade, after dropping out. He started out
small but eventually became one of the riches men in America. He owned then 160 acres of land to
start off this business. He sold his potatoes to companies at first all natural. But he soon discovered
that if you dry out the food it will keep for longer, more companies then bought from him. Then in the
1950's he found out about freezing them, and the method of frozen food. McDonald’s started buying
and selling Simplot fries. The customers seemed to like it, they didn't mind the change or even realize
it. As a result though from freezing the potatoes, they lost a lot of the natural flavors. Companies
began cooking their food in a high percentage of animal fat to capture that flavor, but soon they
switched. They traded beef fat for more chemicals. The fries flavor all depends on the chemicals, it is
all fake, and there is even more saturated fat from their fries than in their burgers.
The fries people eat today are so unnatural that each fast food place has a different taste. "Their
distinctive taste does not stem from the type of potatoes, that McDonald’s buys, the technology that
processes them, or the restaurant equipment that fries them"(119). McDonald’s and other companies
use fries now with distinguished taste, one that is different than its competitor. They also put
chemicals in other things like their milk shakes and burgers. Almost everything there is chemically
enhanced.
They also rely on scent of their product, Schlosser says, the aroma of the product is again chemically
done, and the scent influences the flavor.
Although flavors usually arise from a mixture or many different violatile chemicals, a compound often
3supplies the dominant aroma. Smelled alone, that chemical provides and unmistakable sense of the
food. Ethyl -2-methyl butyrate, for example, smells just like an apple. Today’s highly processed food
offer a blank palette: whatever chemicals you add to them will give them specific tastes. Adding
methyl-2-peridylketone makes something laste like popcorn. Adding ethyl-2-hydroxybutanoate makes
it taste like marshmallow. The possibilities are now almost limitless. Without affecting the appearance
or nutritional value, processed foods could even be made with aroma chemicals such as hexenal (the
smell of freshly cut grass) or 3-methyl butanoic acid (the smell of body odor). (Schlosser 111-112).
Fast food today is just all chemicals, hardly any of the flavor come from the actual burger, fries, or
even milk shake. Even the things that don’t come from artificial flavorings, are still man made.
"Natural and artificial flavors are not manufactured at the same chemical plants, places that few
people would associate with Mother Nature"(127). People don’t eve know when they are eating this
highly processed food. Sometimes the company doesn’t disclose this information, and they can get away
with it, it is totally legal. "The Food and Drug Administration does not require flavor companies to
disclose the ingredients of their additives, so long as all the chemicals are considered by the agency to
be GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe)"(125). This means that the millions of people served everyday
at fast food restaurants don’t know that they are consuming chemically enhanced food and not just
food itself. They say that it keeps the recipe secret and that it keeps the food more appealing to their
customers.
Fast food today is not only bad for your from their high fat content, but also because of all the
unnatural, and "natural" products used to make it what Americans know of as fast food. "The human
craving for flavor has been a largely unacknowledged and unexamined force in history" (123). Humans
are eating fast food just because of the taste. They like the taste of the product and how its always the
same, no matter what. Fast food is very appealing both with the taste, and that it is a very easy way
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of getting food, fast.
Fast food can be one of the most unhealthiest foods on earth, but people will still eat it. The intence
flavor of all their products, fries, milk shakes, and burgers are all made by chemicals. Even if the public
did know about all the chemicals which make up all the flavor, still, again they would eat it.
Americans just love fast food. We, as Americans eat a ton of fast food. We even give more money
towards fast food than education. Children’s obesity is also very high, and it is still raising. People
here just eat a lot of fast food, with no exercise. Americans are just becoming unhealthy in general, and
its happening very quickly.
We as nutritionists need to make people aware of the huge side effects of eating fast food. They need
to know the huge dangers about what they are doing to their bodies. And if America still wants fast
food, we need to have people exercise more, a lot of Americans out there eat a lot of fast food and then
just don’t exercise. A lot don’t exercise at all. America is becoming obese.