Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

It’s taken me a few years to come round to reading “Fast Food Nation”, Eric Schlosser’s much praised and devastating account of how fast food is processed and marketed in the US. It’s a bloody good read, thoughtful and methodical, taking the reader on a journey through the origins of McDonalds, to the marketing tricks that have been used to sell its products to children, through to the labour and production methods that have hitherto been unknown. The big revelations are the way that fast food companies have used government handouts to bolster their business, exploiting revenues available for worker training whilst investing in machines that require little or no training; campaigns to prevent improved safety at meatpacker plants; and the exploitation of illegal or immigrant labour.

It’s an uncomfortable read and the evident outcome is that the happy smiley Ronald Macdonald comes across as an evil, malevolent monster. A vital book for anyone who wondered where it all started to go wrong. M