Over the last several decades, fast food companies have aggressively targeted children in their marketing efforts.Since these companies are providing a steady paycheck, is it really the obligation of fast food chains to take an interest in their workers and to teach them job skills? Also, since many of the workers are recently arrived immigrants, doesn't employment at fast food restaurants offer them a toehold in the American economy and an opportunity to move onto a better job? In fact, some chains openly embrace 'zero training' as their ultimate goal. Schlosser discusses the eagerness of fast food companies to avoid hiring skilled workers and to rely instead upon highly unskilled workers.

He also examines the alarming obesity epidemic among children and adults in the United States and stresses that this 'supersizing' of Americans into the context of an epidemic that needs to be urgently needs to be addressed. He reveals the collusion between the federal government and corporations that fosters unsafe working conditions for fast food workers and meat packing employees. coli and other potentially harmful bacteria.

Schlosser goes out into the field to interview workers and to see the current beef processing practices that have allowed ground beef to become efficient carriers of e. In the critically acclaimed and nationally bestselling Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser embarks on a journey that raises some disturbing questions about the practices and the food of those big corporations with the family friendly mascots. These ubiquitous chain restaurants have assumed such a large role in American life that they are largely taken for granted.

Fast food restaurants are not only a staple on street corners but are becoming fixtures in schools and even hospitals. In an age when Ronald McDonald is the second most identifiable fictional character to young children (after Santa Claus), fast food embodies a number of modern American characteristics: the familiar, the ready-made, and the easily disposable. Next to death and taxes, fast food might be the most unavoidable experience for Americans.

Fast food nation pages