American Culture: Money! Money! Money!

American Culture: Money! Money! Money! Fast food is probably the most popular form of diet here in America. Because most of the people are busy trying to make money, they do not have enough time to spare to prepare a nutritious home-cooked meal. Since life these days is fast-paced, people settle for fast food chains located near their work place and house; fast food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner most days of the week. While reading Eric Schlosser’s best-selling book, the Fast Food Nation, it would seem like the fast food industry is responsible for shaping the American culture. But after understanding the book carefully, the readers will see that Schlosser is making a point about the American culture using fast food as one of its tools for its benefits; businesses doing everything to make profit, to the point of disregarding the moral values and ethics in life. The quantity of money, not the quality of the item seems to be the theme of their objectives. People think that eating at these fast food chains is better because they are able to spend less money. What they may have missed to remember (or to know) is that in the process of saving money, they have sacrificed their own health and helped these gigantic fast food industries and their suppliers earn more money by letting these chains sell them continuously with corrupted food. One way of seeing that businesses try to do everything to make profit is the exploitation of the teenage workers at fast food chains. They figured out that these adolescents who cannot wait to separate themselves from being a child and go on to the path of adulthood will take any job to fulfill their sense of independence. Same goes with the not-so-fortunate students that need money to help out their family. Teenagers, usually fast learners, do not need that much training at all but these chains “. . . accept hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies for ‘training’ their workers”(72). According to Schlossser, while

Cited: McCormick, Erin. “Elderly immigrants used in Medicare scam.” San Francisco Chronicle. April 17, 2005. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/04/17/ MNGA0CASR81.DTL Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of all American Meal. New York, NY: Harper Perennial. Re-issue 2006