From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. (Shortform note: According to The Atlantic, over 60 percent of the fast-food workforce is under 24). Teachers and parents! The USDA should be given increased funding and new authority to enforce the strictest possible food safety standards, especially for ground beef that it purchases through the federal school lunch program. Because kids exert a strong influence over what adults purchase, marketers know that kids can be powerful surrogate salespeople for their products—and no one has internalized this lesson better than the fast food industry. We’re going to explore how the economics of the fast food industry have reshaped American agriculture, examine where your fries really come from, and why they taste the way they do. The business model was a runaway success, enabling McDonald’s to save labor costs and undercut their competition. They are often the first international corporations to arrive after a country has made the decision to open its markets to foreign investment. The meat you see at your local supermarket (or in your Big Mac) gives little hint of the gruesome and dangerous process behind how it got there. The McDonald brothers may have started the company and given it its famous name, but their vision for it was relatively limited. But major changes were just around the corner. The novel inspired the creation of the Food and Drug Administration, which was tasked with ensuring nationwide food-safety standards. They're like having in-class notes for every discussion!”, “This is absolutely THE best teacher resource I have ever purchased. The chains’ purchasing power has created a similar situation in both the beef and chicken markets, with once-independent agriculturalists now working as little more than hired hands for the major agribusiness firms. McDonald’s and other fast food companies are enormous businesses with impressive buying power that gives them the ability to affect large portions of the American economy—and Schlosser makes plain that the relationship between the American food industry and the US government is a complex and important one. Outbreaks of E. coli, a virulent pathogen primarily found in beef, have become far more common since the rise of fast food. And he does not consider the explosion of fast food in American to be a sign of “weakness” on the part of lazy consumers. Do you think fast food chains should be held responsible for the violations committed by the meatpacking plants and slaughterhouses that supply them? He also provides the results of his research into the current practices of fast food businesses, including research into the chemical composition of the foods served in fast food … And it’s hard to do that without telling the story of John Richard Simplot, America’s potato king. Think about how fast food’s practices might have impacted your life. In 1906, Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, which shocked the conscience (and turned the stomach) of the nation by exposing audiences to the dangerous and unsanitary conditions in America’s slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants. By 1941, he was the largest shipper of potatoes in the American West, owning dozens of warehouses across multiple states. This population explosion was also driven by another stream of federal investment in Southern California—defense spending. McDonald’s “speedee service system,” a way of making burgers more efficiently and with little skill on the part of employees, marked, as Schlosser writes, a series of sweeping changes in fast food, causing it to become ubiquitous in America. Fast food has contributed to a national and global epidemic of obesity. During World War Two and the years immediately following, the US government pumped nearly $20 billion into California, building airplane factories, steel mills, military bases, and naval ports. He used his massive market share and dehydrating technology to become one of the principal suppliers of foodstuffs to the US Army from 1941-1945. LA’s growth happened precisely at the time when mass-produced cars were becoming affordable to the growing middle class—indeed, from 1920 to 1940, the region welcomed 2 million residents from all across the rest of the US. Explain why or why not in a few sentences. China also saw its proportion of overweight teenagers triple during the 1990s; meanwhile, at the dawn of the 21st... Unlock the full book summary of Fast Food Nation by signing up for Shortform. From its origins in the new suburbs of California in the 1950s, fast food has spread across every corner of the nation and profoundly altered the way American food is produced, sold, and consumed. Have you ever felt exploited by an employer? Major toy crazes like Pokemon cards, Beanie Babies, Tamogotchis, and Cabbage Patch Kids have all been boosted by synergistic fast food tie-ins. Explain why or why not. Born in 1909, his family moved to Idaho shortly after he was born to establish a farm (made possible thanks to government-funded irrigation projects and free public land). LitCharts Teacher Editions. They did not see the global potential of what they had created—that vision was Ray Kroc’s. By 1940, LA had roughly one million cars, more than the vast majority of most of the states. The second is an appeal to reform. Meatpacking, once a heavily unionized, high-skill, and well-paying profession, has been transformed into a dangerous and low-paying job performed by some of the most vulnerable and easily exploited members of American society. Although Schlosser’s account attempts to describe the attitude of all—or a great many—Americans toward fast food, and the impact of fast food on all Americans’ eating, Schlosser chooses to set his narrative in a particular place. Schlosser writes that most fast-food companies make the bulk of their profits from the “franchise” system, wherein the conglomerate is actually the landlord for the franchisor, who “rents” the brand. Perhaps most insidiously, fast food chains have even brokered deals with school districts, enabling them to promote their high-fat, high-sugar products directly to children through bus and hallway advertisements, endorsement deals, and even direct provision of school lunches. The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of. Why do you think the major fast food chains have such a powerful economic grip over the nation’s food producers? Because fast food was so successful, its labor practices have been exported throughout the food service industry and up the supply chain to farmers, ranchers, and meatpackers. Tragically, some of the worst stories of fast food-related foodborne illness are those involving children. Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by: Here's a preview of the rest of Shortform's Fast Food Nation summary: Most Americans have eaten fast food at some time or another in their lives. Rather than using skilled butchers, IBP used an assembly line model, with each worker performing the same repetitive tasks and making the same cuts and stabs to the cattle carcasses that came past them during the course of an eight-hour shift. These health conditions are now increasingly seen in other parts of the world: between 1984 and 1993, fast food locations in the United Kingdom doubled, bringing American-style obesity in its wake. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does. When he first visited the McDonald’s Self-Service Restaurant in 1954, he was already in his fifties, with a largely unremarkable career as a travelling salesman behind him. From the view of the fast food executives and franchisees, teenagers are the ideal candidates for these jobs. Critically, he understood that children would be the chain’s most valuable customers and directed the bulk of its marketing at them.

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