Fast food Nation by Eric Schlosser
Introduction
Cheyenne Mountains is located on the eastern slopes of Colorado Front Range rising steeply from the prairie and overlooking the city of Colorado Springs. At a distance, it appears beautiful and calm covered with rocky outcropping, ponderosa pine and scrub oak. Despite this, one of the major military installations of the nation lies deep within it where the United Sates Command plus the Air Force space command are located. It was chosen as a site for top secret underground combat operations center after senior officials of the Pentagon feared that America’s Air defenses were vulnerable to attacks and sabotage.
Tunnels and passage ways extending for miles were constructed forming a maze as well as fifteen buildings most of them three stories high within the mountain. This forms a four acre underground installation designed to withstand a direct hit by an atomic bomb. Today its officially called Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station and it is accessed through three feet steel blast doors weighing twenty- five tons each which swing shut in les than twenty seconds.
The public is kept off from the facility. Heavily armed quick response team ensures there are no intruders to the facility. Radioactive contamination and biological weapons are kept at bay by the pressurized air within the complex. Earthquakes and thermonuclear strikes are removed by the gigantic steel springs upon which the buildings rest. Staircases and hallways have slate gray paint, many doors have combination locks and the ceilings are low. There is a narrow escape tunnel that is accessed through a metal hatch twists and turns out of the mountain through solid rock.
Workers within the mountain collect information from worldwide network of spy satellites, radars, ground- based sensors, airplanes and blimps as well as maintain the facility. The center tracks every artificial object that orbits the earth or that enters North American airspace. It is the most significant in the nation’s early warning system which can detect a long-range missile even before it has been fired from anywhere in the world.
This advanced military base located inside the mountain has the capacity of being self sustainable for a month and over. Its generators are capable of producing enough electricity to power a city as large as Tampa. Its underground water reservoirs hold millions of gallons of water. There is a medical clinic, a dentist’s shop, a barber’s shop, a chapel, a cafeteria and a fitness center. However, when the soldiers stationed at the facility get tired of the food found in the cafeteria they call Domino’s or send someone over to the Burger King at Fort Carson, a neighboring army base for some pizzas. If Cheyenne Mountain was destroyed as a result of American defeat in nuclear war, then future archeologists would find within the mountains hardened crusts of cheese bread, Barbeque Wing bones, Big King wrappers and the white, red, and blue Domino’s pizza box.
What we eat
Fast foods have infiltrated every sphere of the American society. It started with a few modest hot dogs and hamburgers stands in Southern California. It is now served in restaurants and drive-through, at airports, zoos, stadia, high schools, cruise ships, gas stations and many other locations. Consequently Americans spend more money on fast foods than on higher education, computers and other necessities. The process of getting fast food is convenient and has become a routine just like brushing one’s teeth or stopping for a red light. This book highlights the issue of fast food as a revolutionary force in American life, the values it holds and the world it has created. Commodity is seen as a commodity and as a metaphor. What we eat is determined by a combination of social, economic and technological factors. The fast foods industry has greatly transformed the American diet and society. The economy, landscape, popular culture and workforce owe greatly to the influence of the fast foods. Everyday in the United States a good number of adults visit the fast food restaurants. We cannot escape from contact with fast food. We eat it twice a day, are avoiding it or have never taken a bite.
Changes in the American society have influenced the growth of fast foods. Americans wish to save to avoid inflation resulting to many opting for the otherwise convenient fast foods. Many American mothers are employed and therefore work away from home leading to the need to make use of money to buy fast foods rather than using the money to prepare food at home which is so demanding to the employed women.
An example of a good food firm is the McDonald’s corporation that is the symbol for American service economy. It operates thousands of restaurants in America and all over the world. The company opens about two thousand new centers annually and has employed many Americans. It purchases the largest quantity of beef, pork and potatoes. It is the biggest player in advertising and marketing and is consequently the world’s most famous brand surpassing even coca cola. This prompted activist Jim Hightower to warn against the McDonalization of America since people saw the emerging fast food industry as a threatening to the independent businesses. The fore goings have entrusted an overwhelming degree of power over the nation’s food supply on the fast food industry.
America’s malls and main streets have identical Taco bells, pizza huts, Gaps and Banana Republics, Sunglass huts, Hobby town USAs, Snip N’ Clips, Jiffy Lubes and Foot Lockers.
The fast food industry has emerged as the system of current retail economy getting rid of small businesses, changing regional differences and spreading similar stores all over the nation. Uniformity goes hand in hand with franchise. This is the case observed with regard to fast food stores since customers like familiar brands since the wish to avoid the uncertainties. A brand is reassuring to customers if its products are everywhere and always identical.
American fast food chains have been established mostly by entrepreneurs who wish to challenge conventional opinions and take risks notwithstanding whether they went to school or not. The gap between the rich and the poor has been widened by fast foods since it embodies the American capitalism as streams of new products and innovations. The development of restaurant kitchen leads to food chains relying on unskilled labor that hung from job to job since they have no job security and fringe benefits compared to the few who climb up the corporate ladder.
Hamburgers and french-fries have become very essential in today’s American lifestyle. Americans take around three and four orders of French fries every week. The numerous fast food advertisements full of thick juicy burgers and long golden fries mention rarely the origins of these foods or the ingredients contained in them. The fast food chain development has coincided with technological advancement like that one of the Disney Empire where reverence is shared on electronics, sleek machinery and automation. The fast food chains has embraced science and technology and this will have a significant impact on what Americans eat as well as how their food is prepared. The fast food preparation methods are hardly found on cook books. They are easily accessible from trade journals like ‘food engineering’ and ‘food Technologist.’ Fast foods are frozen, canned, dehydrated, or freeze dried on delivery to restaurants.
- The American Way
- The founding fathers brief history.
One of the fast food pioneers is Carl. N. Karcher whose career extends from the current hamburger to the modest origins. This person’s life seems to be the fulfillment of the American dream and a parable of how an industry can start and to where it can lead. The southern California’s love for the automobile changed what America looks like and what Americans eat.
Carl was born in the year 1917 in Ohio to a father who was a sharecropper thus the family moved frequently. The Karcher family had a German descent and the family consisted of six brothers and a sister. Their father’s motto was that the harder one worked, the higher their chances of luck. Carl dropped out of school at the 8th and ended up working on the farm for long hours on end. His errands included, bailing, harvesting feeding and milking their cows. The year 1937 presented a chance for employment for Carl as one of his uncles offered him a job in Anaheim, a small town surrounded by ranches and farms in California. Carl through the consultation with his parents agreed to the given offer and he immediately loved Anaheim the minute he set foot there
Anaheim boosted approximately 70,000 acres of Valencia oranges, lemons and walnut groves. Anaheim had been settled by German immigrants hoping to make a killing in the wine industry. Wineries flourished for three successive decades but the art colony collapsed after world war one. The Ku Klux Klan has is roots in this town and it even ran the towns daily paper. The clan is widely known all over the world.
Carl soon fell in love with a girl, Margaret Heinz who had visited his uncle’s store and through an ice cream date their love and relation grew. Soon Carl found a better paying job after a brief visit to Ohio Carl and Margaret married in 1939 getting their first child within the year. This helped to strengthen their relationship.
Having seen that the hot dog sales was booming, Carl could not resist the temptation to own one when one of the hot dog carts was up for sale, he sought a loan from a bank. The first cart soon gave way to a second cart mainly run by Margaret.
The craze that soon hit town was the craze to own an automobiles and this lead to a conspiracy by General Motors to ruin the cable networks to enable increased purchased of cars. The craze for cars brought with it a group of lazy individuals who didn’t want to leave their cars thus the rise of drive
- Trusted friends
The MacDonald’s plazas headquarters is located in Illinois with oval windows and a grey façade. This also holds the eighty acre Hamburger University which is the managerial center for McDonalds. A statue of Ray Kroc marks the entrance to this museum. Artifacts of Krock’s life will be found in the museum. The rise of this empire runs an year after Walt Disney successfully built his empire.
- behind the Counter
View of the Colorado Springs is very spectacular and a very breath taking view for that matter. Tourist buses tour the Cripp le Creak which over the years has been a loved spot by teens for partying North end of the city close to Colorado College; we have very old Victorian houses once very popular in between the two world wars. Tourist buses are used to the Cripple Creek found in highway 67.
Driving through Colorado neighborhoods seems like you are passing trough layers of deposited sedimentary rock, each providing a snapshot to the different historical eras.
The north end of the city closest to Colorado College has many Victorian houses and mansion style bungalows dating back to the early start of the century.
- Successes
From what the community has to offer, one can clearly tell that there is rampart success in the town. Take for instance Mathew Kabong a university student able to deliver fast food to the neighborhood and juggles this with attending school lectures.
The job that goes on at the joint where Kabong works is a clear indication of good life, from the division of labor to the orderliness of the company, one can clearly see success.
Feamster was born and brought up in the working class of neighborhood of Detroit.
Early life spent playing hockey and he later attended to an athletic scholarship. A gaming accident made him to permanently forget about his passions and he later had to change careers.
Chapter two: Meat and Potatoes
- Why the Fries taste good
The J.R. Simplot plant is located in Aberdeen towards the North past the dozen shops at Main Street. The place clean and neat but smells like someone is cooking potatoes. The aroma of fried French fries attracts one from afar in the Simplot firm; this is due to the care taken to have the best products in the market. Aberdeen is found in Bingham County where a lot of potatoes grow. The facility runs throughout turning potatoes into French fries. In the building workers in white coats monitor the controls and check for any problems with the fries as the machines wash, sort, peel, slice, blanch, blow-dry, fry and flash-freeze the potatoes as the move through the maze of red conveyer belts. This place has a cheerful and humble feeling of technological satisfaction. John Richard Simplot is the great potato baron who championed the French fries enterprise. He comes from a very conservative state but was able to achieve his ambition by taking risks and defying the normal convections.
The government began the Snake River reclamation project that offered cheap water for irrigation in order to convert the desert of southern Idaho into farmland. Simplot’s father acquired land for free and became a homesteader. Simplot worked on the farm as he grew up. He dropped out of school and left home when he rebelled against his domineering father. He got a job at a potato warehouse In Declo town where he sorted potatoes with a shaker sorter, a hand device. At the place where he rented a room he met a group of schoolteachers who inspired him to be wise with his money. Soon he bought a rifle, 600 hogs and an old truck. He built a cooker in the desert, stoked it with sage brush shot and cooked the meat of wild horses which he fed to his hogs in winter. He sold the hides after skinning. After sometime he got enough money to enable him become a potato farmer. The potato industry was initializing. The altitude of Idaho which was warm during the day and cool at night, abundant rainfall and the light volcanic soil was ideal for growing potatoes. Simplot leased 160 acres and used the proceeds to buy farm equipment and a team of horses and horses. He was taught how to grow potatoes by his landlord, Lindsay Maggart who raised yields by planting seeds annually. They bought an electric potato sorter which Simplot used to sort potatoes for his neighbors and friends. However, Maggart did not support the idea so they fought over the sorter and settled the matter using the toss of the coin which Simplot won. He sold his farm equipment and started his business in a potato cellar in Declo. He went all round the countryside with his machine to sort potatoes for the local farmers.
- on the Range
According to Schlosser, he met Mark first in Colorado Springs. At that time Mark was a prominent local rancher practicing range management motivated by the grazing patterns of elk and buffalo herds. The team of scientists who come up with the flavors in most of the fast food being consumed in the America are called flavorists. They draw research from a wide range of subjects namely: Psychology, Physiology, Biology and organic chemistry.
- Cogs in the Great Machine
There were some cogs in the great packing machine easy to replace and entirely disposable. Sinclair noted this just like president Roosevelt had once observed. These are the conditions that are futile. These cogs can be perceived by the sense of smell.
- The most dangerous job.
A visit to the Latino meatpacking revealed what seemed to be the most dangerous job. The name given to the different job assignments in the modern slaughterhouse conveys brutality that exists in this job sector.
The late night packaging crew undertakes the most dangerous job due to the high risks like, diseases. Changes within the meatpacking that was once a very highly skilled profession into a very dangerous undertaking. This is due to the fact that the jobs are done by poor transient immigrants whose injuries often got during travel often go unreported.
- What’s in the meat:
From the look of the meat it did not seem fresh and the tacos tasted gross and slimy and in less than an hour after leaving the restaurant, Harding began to experience very severe abdominal pains.
The food poisoning incident could have been due to toxins in the meat due to the goings on in the slaughter houses and it could have been going on for decades.
- Global realization
Plauen which is located halfway between Berlin and Munich in apart known as Vogtland, it is a small provincial city that is surrounded by rolling hills and forests. To the Berliners, it was a town that was on the wrong side of the then Berlin Wall. The city has had both devastation and transformations.
The small market town where farmers came to buy at the end of the century had a vibrant textile industry that had its roots to the weaving tradition. The new textile industries dealt with fabrics that where mostly exported to the United States. This flourishing business soon collapsed in world war two. The town was among the first to organize the chapter on the Nazi party.
Hitler youth movement was launched in this small town and thus subsequently became the Nazi headquarters. The small city survived most of the world war two destructions but it later was destroyed and soon what was left of it taken over by the United States who later rolled out soon to be replaced by the soviets thus rendering the town a communist thus the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the town languished under the communist rule.
Soon mass demonstrations began against the Communist rulers especially on the fortieth anniversary of the GDR’s founding. Most demonstrators were students and members of the intelligentsia. The demonstrations soon went over to the fight for freedom with demonstrators yelling Mikhail’s nickname “Gorby! Gorby!” demonstrators were demanding for reforms in their country and that day marked the day when the leaders cowed away from the crowd with their formed communist system. This day marked the start of events and almost a month later the Berlin wall collapsed.
Epilogue: Have it your way
The views of Schlosser on how to restructure the nation’s food safety system were influenced by a report from the National Academy.
Notes
Schlosser did a lot of first hand reporting and research on the issue of fast food situation in the country. In addition to this, he relied on the hard work performed by other people on the same matter. For example there was a study published a few years back then in Preventive medicine that noted that in Arkansas only about 3 million pounds of chicken manure was realized from chicken product fast foods.
There is a problem of theft in the fast food industry in America. Kinney as well as Schlosser note that the employees frequently frequently rob the food. A case in point is the young employees in Colorado Springs whom Schlosser encountered.
Global realization
Plauen which is located halfway between Berlin and Munich in apart known as Vogtland, it is a small provincial city that is surrounded by rolling hills and forests. To the Berliners, it was a town that was on the wrong side of the then Berlin Wall. The city has had both devastation and transformations.
The small market town where farmers came to buy at the end of the century had a vibrant textile industry that had its roots to the weaving tradition. The new textile industries dealt with fabrics that where mostly exported to the United States. This flourishing business soon collapsed in world war two. The town was among the first to organize the chapter on the Nazi party.
Hitler youth movement was launched in this small town and thus subsequently became the Nazi headquarters. The small city survived most of the world war two destructions but it later was destroyed and soon what was left of it taken over by the United States who later rolled out soon to be replaced by the soviets thus rendering the town a communist thus the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the town languished under the communist rule.
Soon mass demonstrations began against the Communist rulers especially on the fortieth anniversary of the GDR’s founding. Most demonstrators were students and members of the intelligentsia. The demonstrations soon went over to the fight for freedom with demonstrators yelling Mikhail’s nickname “Gorby! Gorby!” demonstrators were demanding for reforms in their country and that day marked the day when the leaders cowed away from the crowd with their formed communist system. This day marked the start of events and almost a month later the Berlin wall collapsed.
Work cited
Eric Schlosser.Fast food nation: the dark side of the all-American meal, Part 10. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001
