Fast Food Kills Culture

After reading chapter 7: Cogs In the Great Machine, I immediatly thought of a Wall-Mart documentary I watched about how buisness chains like Wall-Mart plow through towns destroying local buisnesses that can't compete with such low prices. Now at first you'd think, "Well too bad for the local buisnesses, I need the cheaper price," which the majority of Americans do. To some it might sound a little insensitive, but only if your the small buisness. Because at the end of the day buisness is about profit and mass production coincides with chain department guarintees maximum profit. However the employees of these multi-billion dollar companys are payed minimum wage salaries that make it impossible to make a living. Also, the company relies on government assistance to provide their employees with expensive but low coverage insurance. Many full time employees couldn't even afford food after paying their insurance cost, which should have been covered by the company for working full time hours. This reminded me alot of FFN and how the employees of large chain restaurants are treated, getting payed minimum wages because the employees only work one station. I was pretty disgusted at the way large companys put profit in front of employees and even more disgusted at the senes dipicted at Greeley, Colorado, a small meat-packing town whose values and culture was destroyed by the IBM revolution. This applied the same labor laws in meat-packing that the McDonald brothers applied to making hamburgers.

Burger: Then and Now

So far, "Fast Food Nation," is an incredibly interesting and slightly disturbing story of how the multi-million dollar industry of fast food chains made evolved over time. Originally a job for hard-working entrepenuers like Carl Karcher who bought a small hot dog stand in California and slowly expanded. As the fast food industry began to catch on as a way to make quick money, buisness pioneers such as the McDonalds brothers began perfecting the art of "Good food, fast." I think its interesting how the fast food industry really came up off the automobile industry, how with the rising stock of one product and fuel the growth of another. The stories behind such infamous fast food chains like "Taco Bell," "Dunkin' Donuts," "Wendy's," "Domino's," and "Kentucky Fried Chicken," are amazing in the sense of how many buisness ventures these pioneers were into. Its incredible that an industry, birthed by the blue collar farmer or salesman, had become an industry formatted and mass produced as if food was being assembled in the same factories you buy your family Ford. I was also unaware at how close Fast Food was to never becoming an established industry during the "Arab oil embargo of 1973," due to rise in oil cost, a decrease in automobile sales and use, resulting in a decrease in people driving to these new "drive thru" restaurants. On one hand, men like Carl Karcher and the McDonald brother's made it possible for the average American family to feed his entire family on a budget. On the other hand, they are partly responsible for the health risks that accompany regular fast food consumpsion.

What We Eat/ The American Way

After reading the Introduction and Ch. 1 (The American Way) I learned so much information about how the multi-billion dollar Fast Food industry got its start. I loved how the book opened up with the discription of the Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, a heavily armed, practically indistructable, top-secret military combat center. "...the facility is entered through steel blast doors that are three feet thick and weigh twenty-five tons each..." At first, I didn't know how Schlosser was going to make a connection to this incredibly designed "super base" and fast food, however when they talked about how the employees and soldiers stationed at the base would get sick of cafeteria food and would go out and get Burger King or even more comical, having a Domino's delivery boy pass through the extensive security to bring in some mass-produced pizza as an alternative lunch. The idea that automobiles played a keystone role in the early developmental stages of "fast food," fascinated me and made alot of sense. As soon as people began driving every where, it became an American cultural dependency on never leaving said vehicle. The fact that people would spend more money over their life time on fast food than on car expenses, home repairs and upkeep, or even investments. The idea that you can have consistancy along side convenience seemed to be the foundation of fast food principle. Though, at what cost do American's indulge on their own lazyness. The fact that people have become accustom to the revelation of a "chain restaurant" as mundain or unimpressive trully shows how spoiled the American way of life has become. I'm enjoying getting further insight on how such monopolys as Mc Donalds came to cover ever corner of American culture, essentially making the small buisnesses obselete. The fast food industry is sickening, shamefull and under appreciated all at the same time, exploding on American culture over the past three decades.

Would you like fries with that?

I've decided to tackle Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser for my Book Club book. I was never allowed to eat fast food when I was a child because of its obvious lack of nutrition. My family has many self proclaimed chefs and i've always been comfortable around the grill and in the kitchen. I will occationally indulge in some chicken nuggets with my daughter Jazmin, but other than that I tend to stay away from fast food. I am interested to read Fast Food Nation to find out how such a lucrative industry like fast food thrives. I've seen some documentaries about how the fast food industry works and it's incredible how much goes into the operations of a fast food chain.

Monster's In My Head

After reading "Mrs. Kelley's Monster" by Jon Franklin, I was amazed at how well the writer was able to keepme interested throughout the entire story. The words that Franklin used throughout the piece stuck out and drew my attention in, such as "skull" instead of just saying "head," when describing Mrs. Kelley's illness. The ending was pretty sad but it defintly left me satisfied as a good ending point. I think the way that Franklin structured the story was interesting because of how short some of the paragraphs were like "It is 6:30 a.m. was a full paragraph by itself. All and all I enjoyed the story and hope everyone else did too!