As one review of Eric Schlosser's book, Fast Food Nation, observes, "like pornography, fast food gets no respect" (Fine). It may taste pretty good, as Schlosser admits, but neither dieticians nor gourmets regard it as "good" food. Its virtues of convenience, predictability, and low cost are not uplifting ones, an it is shoveled at us by low-paid employees working for giant corporations. Fast food is thus neatly symbolic of everything we find embarrassing, or even repulsive, about corporate capitalism and contemporary American culture in general. This, it may be argued, is precisely how Schlosser uses it in Fast Food Nation.
The sins of the fast food industry are not hard to identify. The industry discovered early on that it could market its products to kids, who would then pester their parents into pulling into the next McDonald's or Burger King selling to kids (Schlosser 40-51). The full weight of social science has been pressed into service in this endeavor. One author on marketing to children has for example identified seven distinct kinds of "nags," from pleading to emotional blackmail to throwing a tantrum (Schlosser 44). Parents might well be glad that their seven-year-olds will not read this book and learn how to improve their techniques, though admittedly the insight of the marketers seems to be that children are quite competent at nagging their parents on their own.
The fast food industry has explored some other dubious innovations as well, such as enlisting schools in its marketing campaigns (Schlosser 51-57). They are in effect exploiting the reluctance of voters to approve taxes for schools, leaving school districts to scrounge for funds wherever they can, including marketing fast food to their semi-captive audience of students.
The fast food industry has also shown itself ready to dine on pork at the federal trough, collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in job-training funds, while doing all t...