Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

OVER THE LAST THREE DECADES, fast food has infiltrated every nook and cranny of American society. An industry that began with a handful of modest hot dog and hamburger stands in southern California has spread to every corner of the nation, selling a broad range of foods wherever paying customers may be found. Fast food is now served at restaurants and drive-throughs, at stadiums, airports, zoos, high schools, elementary schools, and universities, on cruise ships, trains, and airplanes, at K- Marts, Wal-Marts, gas stations, and even at hospital cafeterias. In 1970, Americans spent about $6 billion on fast food; in 2000, they spent more than $110 billion. Americans now spend more money on fast food than on higher education, personal computers, computer software, or new cars. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music -- combined.

Reading Fast Food Nation isn’t eye-opening on a page-by-page basis. That isn’t to say that all the information contained in its covers is common knowledge, but it’s fair to say that most Americans are familiar with the broad strokes. Who among us believes that a Taco Bell taco is a nutritious meal, or that the person taking our order is a skilled worker—and I say this as a semi-long-term employee of McDonald’s. We’re aware that the meat we eat is frequently raised and slaughtered using inhumane and sometimes grotesque methods, and, to all these things, we’re more or less forced to give semi-informed consent, either by pretending that they’re not so bad or pushing them out of our minds entirely so that we can eat our Big Mac in peace.

Fast Food Nation’s power comes not from its depth—although it is one of the most detailed studies of America’s #1 export—but from its breadth. Where many micro-histories take a narrow view of their topics and trust the reader to place it in a larger context, Fast Food Nation covers nearly every facet of the fast food sprawl, from its growth in post-WW1 America to its impact of school lunches, food science, the meat-and-potatoes industries and beyond and, ultimately, offers a solution. One of the blurbs on the back cover describe the book as a seminal work of muckraking, and that seems a fair assessment, even if this particular work’s assertions are backed up by copious footnotes. Fast Food Nation is definitely, for better or worse, a book with an agenda—reforming the eating habits of a country.

There are points at which it becomes a bit too didactic, but for the most part, author Eric Schlosser maintains a remarkably even-handed tone while dealing with some fairly infuriating material. While the chapters on the quality of meat used by restaurants—spoiler, there’s poop involved—and school lunches—which are held to lower federal quality standards than fast food—are gross and disturbing, it’s the chapters about individual workers caught up in the unforgiving system that sting the most. From an immigrant Subway franchisee who purchased a money pit disguised as a gold mine, to the story of the man who literally gave his body and his life to a slaughterhouse that didn’t even tell him, after twenty years on the job, when he was fired, the inhumanity of the great machine is what got to me the most. Like the helpless immigrants in Upton Sinclair’s Jungle, the real-life characters throughout Fast Food Nation are tragic, everyday people—mostly poor ones—sold a dream and a vision that was never really going to happen, but at least the hamburgers are only 99 cents.

Benjamin Franklin on the Art of Eating edited by Gilbert Chinard

I was in Philadelphia for work back in March and on a day off went to an exhibition of some of Charles Darwin's personal papers at the American Philosophical Society. On my way out, I picked this book up on a whim because it sounded interesting and because it was only available directly from the APS.

The first 40 pages were written by Gilbert Chinard, who I guess works
(or worked) for the APS. Some of Franklin's writings about food and a few of his recipes make up the rest of the book. Well...as far a I could tell anyway. At various points it was confusing as to who was doing the writing. I was hoping for commentary and footnotes on each of the recipes, or at least on some of them. I thought I would get some interesting analysis. I didn't. This book was a big let down.

A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle

This is good, simple travel writing. A Year in Provence is part satire, part cookbook, part narrative and part guide. Mayle and his wife moved to Provence from England after vacationing there inspired them to buy a 200 year-old farmhouse. Mayle lives what so many travel enthusiasts and Francophiles only ever dream of. The life he describes is incredibly bucolic: his only responsibilities are to buy new vines at the start of each grape growing season, and collect his profit in either cash or bottles at the end of it.

Through the open door we could hear the croaking of our resident frog, and the long, sliding song of a nightingale. We took a final glass of wine outside and looked by the light of the moon at the new lavender bed while the dogs rooted for mice in the Lucerne fields. The rabbits would eat well this summer and, Faustin had promised, would taste all the better for it in the winter. We realized we were becoming as obsessive about food as the French, and went back indoors to attend to some unfinished business with a goat’s cheese.

Mayle and his wife live in the Lubéron, a Provençal mountain range, supposedly out of the way of so much of the Côte d’Azur tourism. However, even in 1989, he talked about how the region was changing to become more commercial. The impression that I got was that, in France, Provence is viewed as its own, culturally isolated country. Parisians scorn the rustic, simple Provençal life, yet flock there in the millions (along with Germans, Belgians, Swiss and English) to weekend and vacation homes. Mayle occupied a sort of middle ground, not quite tourist and not quite native, from which he could satirize both. It’s interesting, to me, to learn more about a small corner of the world that dealt with so many of its own localized problems when I was only three years old, still learning to feed myself properly. All of his anecdotes about rural life were interesting, but where he really excelled were his descriptions of fresh, country food. This book actually made me hungry; Mayle spent pages on thick stews, roasted lambs with rosemary, black truffles, local wines, fresh cheeses and hearty, crusty breads that made my mouth literally start watering.

He describes so well such a simple, idyllic lifestyle that I wonder, and hope against, how much change the region must have gone through in the past 18 years. But Mayle is very impersonal, and, for that reason, Bill Bryson is still my favorite travel writer. Where Bryson really helps you relate to him, and see experiences through his eyes, Mayle keeps the reader at arm’s length. The book is minimal on dialogue, at least on Mayle’s part, and relies more on observations and briefly summed up conversations. It’s a quick read, and often very humorous, as only an outsider’s perspective can be. You could probably get through it on a slow afternoon if you wanted too, and it’s definitely worth the time.