Fast Food Nation Book Report

Have you ever wondered what the food used in fast food a restaurant is made up of? In the book Fast Food Nation, authored by Eric Schlosser, he explains many of the tactics used by the fast food industry in an effort to inform society. Fast food started around the 1950’s when all the men were fighting in World War 2. Women were forced to leave their homes in search for jobs to support their families; this led to the idea of getting quick meals for the family after work. What started as a war time effort to support families became as we know as the fast food industry. Over the years we have seen this industry grow at a staggering rate, which has led it to be one biggest if not the biggest industry in the world. One cannot go down the street without seeing a
McDonalds, Burger King, Carl’s Jr, and KFC etc.
They are everywhere. In this essay I will explain how the fast food industry has embedded itself into American society, how a cultural norm has emerged in southern California, and the radical new method that has developed in food preparation. In the book Fast Food Nation, Schlosser tells us about how the fast food industry has created a fundamental change in American society. What I mean by this is there is a huge cultural change going on than there was in the past 100 years. We see how wages fluctuate in 1973 “the hourly wage of the average U.S worker peaked” (Schlosser, 4). In the next 2 decades we see that it declines at a steady rate, this is allowed women to enter the workforce, and not in a viewpoint to fight for women’s rights but with the prospective to pay the bills as Schlosser explains. This was a huge change in society because it was when women and men were integrated into the workforce, and they were working as equals. We
see less independently owned restaurants, stores, and markets. As we look at shopping centers, malls, outlets, etc. we see that “Customers are drawn to familiar brands by an instinct to avoid the unknown.” (5) We live in societies now were everyone wants to go by “uniformity” as Schlosser explains is the process of a franchise to create the same experience in all their locations. For example people no longer want to go to Paul’s burger & fries that is an unknown burger joint, with the fear that they will be unsatisfied with their experience. They would rather go to a McDonalds and know that when they walk in that door they can order the same 20 piece chicken nugget meal they get by their house. This makes it hard for entrepreneurs to enter the market and start their own fast food type restaurant like the McDonald brothers did, due to the overwhelming dominance that fast food restaurants are everywhere we go now. So we see how people are very weary to try new things when it comes to anything, and how American society has changed over the years. As the U.S recovers from a War to, Southern California has a new type of lifestyle emerging.