Since the WWII, the culture of fast food has been widely embraced as a better, convenient and cheap form of food service activity. Schlosser opens the book with a vignette about a pizza delivery to Cheyenne Mountain, home of a US Air Force base. He describes various high-tech capabilities of the base and its extensive defensive system, speculating that if the worst happened, the future anthropologists would discover random fast food wrappers scattered amongst military hardware. As shocking as it may sound, discloser of the information would give a number of important clues about the nature of American society. In line with the US American invocation of Nazism and WWII horrors, Schlosser draws, a bad-guys line witnessed in McDonald's, Walt Disney and Nazism: Walt Disney employed two German scientists after the world war, the two are criticized of their association with the holocaust and concentration camp murders.
The men's irrelevant presence in the book serves as a cynical attempt as Schlosser rhetorically displays how fast food restaurants violates labor laws and make meals which in the long run put millions of American lives at high death risks.
In addition, Schlosser further explains that a steady decline in the hourly wage due to inflation had huge impact on the average US worker; this pressured the American mothers to work outside the home. Necessity being the mother of invention, the pioneers of the fast food industry slowly uplifted the fast food industry from its "modest origins to its current hamburger hegemony." This they achieved by bringing the all-American concept of assembly-line production into the food industry. He describes the growth of the fast food industry as being driven by fundamental changes in the American society.
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"The multinational food companies," writes Schlosser, "operate French fry plants in a number of different regions, constantly shifting production to take advantage of the lowest potato prices. The economic fortunes of individual farmers or local communities matter little in the grand scheme."
Another important driving force to the booming of the industry rested on the form of employment. As he cites "the industry solely required and had access to cheap, low skill labor. This requirement was filled by teenagers and immigrants." Therefore, the corporate remained in business. However, in the chapter, Schlosser's most compelling evidence lies in his careful dissection of those who invented and who currently support the fast food industry in occupations that range from slaughterhouse employee to advertising professionals. Fast Food Nation is documentation of the country that is increasingly becoming homogenous to the point of disaster. The evil lies in the industry's byproducts, which erases the individual concepts, and not in the idea of speedy service. While Schlosser admits that fast food is not the sole source of grief for postmodern America, the effects it causes to the average person determine the competence of the healthy meal as he rightly points out.
Lastly, on the success of the company, he sites and discusses on Franchise agreements and working for others. As is the case, the franchiser would want to expand his business whereas he could hardly spend anything on the investment. He states how Franchising helped the fast food industry by converting it into a huge business; almost everything is franchised across the United States, retail chains in the whole of the U.
S.A. later emulated this. This played a major role in the success of the MacDonald. According to him, this set another form of business restriction to other food sellers given that the franchisers acquired and leased most of the land and became property owners to the small ventures. This chapter examines how the fast food industry has expanded over the years through franchising and real estate. Almost every aspect of American life (men and women) as he cites, has been franchised or chained.