Students are required to read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser.
Please answer these questions with short essays. We will discuss these the first week of class.
1. Fast food chains, despite the myriad problems documented by the author, have an undeniable appeal -- they are convenient and offer inexpensive and tasty food. Even if you are disturbed by the practices of these corporations, could you realistically swear off their food, given its ubiquity and mainstream appeal?
2. One of Schlosser’s primary concerns is with the impact of fast food on children and adolescents. What details of that impact does he present? How does the fast food industry “both feed and feed off the young” (p. 9)? In what ways do the major fast food chains appeal to, and market to, children (p. 47)?
3. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle was the first book to sound the clarion call about the appalling abuses inherent in mass-produced beef. In the decades since its publication, the state of meatpacking has received scant attention. Were you shocked that Fast Food Nation documents some of the same unsafe conditions and practices that Sinclair revealed nearly 100 years ago? Were you under the impression that the unsafe conditions in meatpacking had largely been eliminated and that the United States' beef and poultry industry set the standard for other countries?
4. Schlosser contends that “the industrialization of cattle-raising and meatpacking over the past two decades has completely altered how beef is produced -- and the towns that produce it” (p. 149). How has the “new meatpacking regime” changed beef production, the towns where beef is produced, and the lives of those who work and live in those towns? What economic, social, and political realities have resulted from the meatpacking industry’s efforts to increase productivity, efficiencies, and profits? What are the main pluses and minuses of introducing McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, and other fast food restaurants—along with “the values, tastes, and industrial practices of the American fast food industry”—in countries around the world?
5. “No other nation in history has gotten so fat so fast,” Schlosser exclaims (p. 240). How successful is he in presenting the incidence and seriousness of obesity among American adults and, in particular, among American children (p. 240)? What links does he present between the dramatic rise of obesity in America and the dramatic increase in the consumption of fast foods, including carbonated soft drinks? What other contributory factors may be involved? What actions taken to combat the rising rate of obesity have you observed?