Chew On This: Everything You Don’t Want To Know About Fast Food

“The companies that sell fast food don’t want you to think about it. They don’t want you to know where it comes from and how it’s made. They just want you to buy it.”

Having introduced the notion that fast food consumption is a mindless act for many people, Schlosser and Wilson now say that consumer thoughtlessness goes hand in hand with fast food corporations’ agenda. The more one considers what goes on behind the scenes in the fast food industry, the less likely it is for one to want to eat there. Consumer ignorance is bliss for these corporations. 

“[…] the Happy Meals, two-for-one deals and free refills of soft drinks give a false sense of how much fast food actually costs. The real price never appears on the menu.”

Schlosser and Wilson are here encouraging the reader to think again about the real, societal cost of fast food. While the consumer may think that a Happy Meal is a cheerful bargain, in actual fact, the real price of consuming fast food will emerge elsewhere, either in their own bodies or in the exploitation of workers, producers or animals. 

“Charlie suddenly had an idea: if he squashed the meatballs and put them between two slices of bread, people could walk and eat. And so Charlie invented the hamburger.”

The invention of that classic fast food item, the hamburger, is interesting, because it shows how the production and makeup of food changed to accommodate a multi-tasking attitude. Eating alone, and slowly, was no longer the primary objective; instead, Charlie, was tasked with finding a way of selling his product (meatballs), while people got on with the more exciting business of walking around a county fair. This is the first example of many that illustrates how mobility and efficiency, in regard to food production, became increasingly important for an impatient society increasingly on the go. 

“The first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant opened in 1952, near Salt Lake City, Utah. Lacking money to promote the restaurant, Sanders dressed up like a Kentucky colonel, wearing a white suit and a black string tie. The outfit gained a lot of attention, and Sanders helped turn KFC into the largest fast food chicken chain […] But the truth is, Colonel Sanders never really was in the military. He just liked to dress up like a colonel.”

This example of a fictitious but highly successful image behind a brand shows the prominent role of advertising in the success of fast food. Behind Colonel Sanders’ image is the desire to display genuine Southern heritage in order to sell product.

“The key to a successful franchise can be described in a single word: sameness. Ray Kroc insisted that everything be the same at every one of the new McDonald's restaurants. The signs had to be the same. The buildings had to be the same. The menus had to be the same. And most importantly, the food had to taste exactly the same.”

The value of conformity lies at the heart of fast food franchises. Given that food in its natural state is organic, Kroc’s mission goes against nature to achieve a factory-style sameness in his comestible products. It also shows Kroc’s awareness that the experience of eating is not only bodily, but psychological, meaning that all the paraphernalia—the signs, the toys, the wrappers—is just as important as the food.

“Altogether, Americans now eat about 13 billion hamburgers every year. If you put all those burgers in a straight line, they would circle the earth more than thirty-two times.”

Here, Schlosser and Wilson show the simply astronomical scale of burger consumption in the United States and how quickly and massively the scale of fast-food consumption spread across the US.

“Hundreds of business people had paid thousands of dollars to learn the secrets of how to sell things to children.”

By highlighting the large numbers of people who paid even larger amounts of money to learn how to sell their products to children, Schlosser and Wilson demonstrate the reality of the child consumer market. However, there is also something surreal and sinister in the image of wealthy, sophisticated business people learning how they can extract loyalty from children.

“He understood that how you sold your food was just as important as how the food tasted. He liked to tell people that he was really in show business, not the restaurant business.”

In likening his approach to show business, Ray Kroc, who was strongly influenced by Walt Disney, was on the road to making food a commodity and entertainment. This desire to make McDonald’s a place of entertainment also drove up profit margins, as people, when distracted, are less likely to think critically. In this case, it means people won’t consider what went into their food, nor how advertising is affecting their children. 

“As American cities and towns spend less money on parks and playgrounds, fast food restaurants have become a gathering place for families.”

As a result of cuts in spending on civic spaces in cities, children have been encouraged to play in fast food restaurant play lands. This means that they will almost certainly spend more time and money there and that something as natural as childhood play becomes associated with a brand.

“The factory made Snoopy, Winnie the Pooh and Hello Kitty toys for McDonald’s Happy Meals. Some of the workers in the factory said they were fourteen years old and worked sixteen hours a day. Their wages were less than twenty cents an hour—an amount almost thirty times less than the lowest amount you can pay an American worker.”

An exposé on a Hong Kong factory that makes Happy Meal toys showed how these items aimed at attracting American children to McDonald's are actually robbing kids abroad of both their childhoods and a living wage. This is a deeply shaming fact, one which exposes the true cost of the McDonald’s Happy Meal.

“Unlike Olympic gymnastics—a sport in which teenagers tend to be better than adults—there’s nothing about the work in a fast-food restaurant that requires young workers. Instead of relying upon a small, stable, well-paid and well-trained workforce, the fast food industry seeks out part-time, unskilled workers who are willing to accept low pay.”

Schlosser and Wilson here use the analogy of Olympic gymnastics to show that there is nothing about very young people that makes them especially equipped to work in fast food kitchens. However, their inexperience and ability to be led are assets when it comes to working in the fast food industry.  

“The heart of the flavor industry lies between Exit 4 and Exit 19 of the New Jersey Turnpike, a part of the state dotted with oil refineries and chemical plants […] A tour of the IFF plant is the closest thing in real life to visiting Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Wonderful smells drift through the hallways, men and women in neat white lab coats cheerfully go about their work, and hundreds of little glass bottles sit on laboratory tables and shelves.”

Schlosser and Wilson set up the comical and slightly disturbing scenario of the flavors of fast food coming from an area laden with oil refineries and chemical plants, again showing how artificial food production has become. The comparison to Willy Wonka’s factory is apt; what seems full of wondrous science-based magic contains a darker side.

“Titanium dioxide, for example, is a mineral with many different uses. It can give candies, frosting and icing their bright white colors […] And it is also commonly used in white house paints. So you can use titanium dioxide to ice your cake—or paint your house.”

The authors illustrate that eating has become an aesthetic experience, dictated by images and ideas rather than eating for health. It’s a safe bet to wager that if the majority of people knew their cake icing contained the same chemicals in paint, they wouldn’t eat the cake. To this end, the less knowledge the consumer has, the better off the corporate food industry is.

“Native Food Day was recently discontinued, and so at school the kids now eat nothing but food produced thousands of miles away.”

The Akula Elitnaurvik School in the remote arctic town of Kasigluk, Alaska used to have a day designated to eating the foods that were produced locally, prior to the advent of fast food. However, eating fastfood, which arrives frozen via cargo plane three or four times a year, has become so normal that it is the native food that seems odd and unappetizing to the children of Kasigluk. One can view this as almost a new sort of colonialism, with the fast food industry plating its figurative flag on the farthest reaches of the planet, and in doing so eroding indigenous culture. 

“Why have school officials, who are supposed to be concerned about the health of their students, invited fast food companies into their cafeterias? The answer has to do with money. As local governments have reduced spending on education, schools have scrambled to find enough money […] Selling food that kids like to eat seemed like an easier way to get money than convincing parents to pay higher taxes.”

Cash-strapped schools have resorted to accepting money from fast food chains, regardless of the cost to students’ health. Given that parents do not want to take responsibility and pay higher taxes to properly fund schools, the only solution seems to be accepting money from the private sector, which is happy to invest in education if it translates, for corporations, to profit.

“You can smell Greeley long before you can see it. The smell is hard to forget, but not easy to describe, a combination of live animals, manure and dead animals being turned into dog food. Think of rotten eggs mixed with burning hair and stinky toilet, and you get the idea.”

By describing the Greeley Meat Factory’s smell before describing the horrors that occur there, Schlosser and Wilson provide a tone of ominous suspense for the reader. The fact that the exact smell is not easily identifiable, but a composite of many things, makes it even more sinister and is an intimation that the meat that comes from there is far from natural. 

“[…] the chickens raised for the fast food industry have been bred to develop large breasts and reach maturity in a short time. In 1965, chickens gained roughly 1.5 kg during about two months on the farm. Today, they gain about 2.5 kg in little more than half that amount of time. If a child gained weight that fast, he or she would weigh 127 kg by the age of six.”

The inhumane intensive farming of chickens and their unnatural weight gain is accentuated in this grotesque comparison with child weight gain. Once again, Schlosser and Wilson encourage the reader to see what they have taken for granted and notice how unnatural and cruel this method of food production really is.

“For years, the meatpacking industry has managed to avoid the sort of rules that apply to the manufacturers of most consumer products […] the US government cannot order a meatpacking company to remove contaminated, potentially lethal ground beef from fast food kitchens and supermarkets—even if that meat can kill children.”

The powerlessness of the government to control the activities of fast food corporations is truly disturbing. Schlosser and Wilson unveil the shocking fact that the cooperation and profit of fast food corporations has a greater premium than children’s lives. Further, these corporations have so much money and influence that they dictate to the government, not the other way around.

“Over the past few decades, as the fast food industry has grown, so have the waistlines of most Americans. Today almost two-thirds of the adults in the United States and about a sixth of children are overweight or obese (extremely overweight).”

The consumption of fast food and the spread of fast food restaurants has had very real consequences for the health of Americans. They are becoming fatter at a much higher rate than before as a result of the way food is prepared and consumed.

“About 80 per cent of the money that McDonald’s earns come from just 20 per cent of their customers. These fast food fanatics, who go to McDonald’s all the time, have an unfortunate nickname in the industry. They’re called ‘heavy users.''

By revealing that 80% of McDonald's’ revenue comes from 20% of consumers, who are called “heavy users,” Schlosser and Wilson show how loyalty to fast-food companies is punishing. There is even a sense of derision in the nickname “heavy users” as though these very likely overweight people are passive addicts of fast food.

“Many doctors viewed the [gastric bypass] surgery as an important tool to prevent many of the health problems associated with obesity. But some doctors also viewed the surgery as a good way to make money. The cost for one of these operations could be anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000.”

The gastric-bypass industry is a  surprising and arguably horrifying by-product of the fast-food industry, as this complex operation has been used as a means of dealing with the problems of a diet rich in fast food. Americans are now so obese, and so unable to control their eating habits, that some require invasive surgery that costs more than their vehicle. 

“These gardens would teach important lessons about food—and about life. They would teach that ‘actions have consequences, that private citizens should take care of public property, that labor has dignity, that nature is beautiful.’”

Schlosser and Wilson refer to a time, almost a century ago, when California, the state where fast food really got going, instructed that every school should have a garden to teach children values about food and life. These ideas about taking time to produce and prepare good food, seeing nature’s irregularities as beautiful, and having accountability for one’s actions have been all but forgotten, replaced by factory sameness and profit margin. By alerting their readers to the beneficial aspect of slow food values, Schlosser and Wilson hope to inspire them to think differently about food and its production. 

“The executives who run the giant fast food chains aren’t bad people. They are business people who need to broaden their views and accept responsibility for their actions. They will pay higher wages if you demand it. They will treat workers and animals and the land differently if you insist upon it. They want your money, your vote.”

Schlosser and Wilson liken the money that consumers spend—or do not spend—in fast food restaurants to a vote. Money spent mindlessly in fast-food restaurants counts as a vote for the status quo, whereas money withheld counts as a vote for change.