Fast Food Nation- Book Sumary

The book I read by Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, was very interesting. The most interesting thing to me was when Schlosser talked about the diseases you can get from certain types of meat at fast food restaurants. It amazed me at how many people were killed just for eating fast food’s meat. “Every day in the United States, roughly 200,000 people are sickened by food borne disease, 900 are hospitalized, and fourteen die”(Schlosser 195). Most cases of fast food are never reported to authorities or properly diagnosed, because the fast food places lose business and money. Schlosser wrote about a man who experienced e-coli. Lee Harding, who was twenty two years old, ordered soft chicken tacos at a Mexican restaurant in Pueblo, Colorado. He thought they tasted nasty, but didn’t think much about it. About an hour later Harding was experiencing bad diarrhea and abdomen pains. The pains were so bad he thought he was dying. This lasted through the weekend, and on Monday Harding decided to go to the doctor. He was sent home, and on Tuesday afternoon got a letter saying he had e-coli avirulent and potentially lethal food borne pathogen. He called the public health department where he talked to a nurse. The nurse knew it was rare for chicken to have e-coli, so she asked Harding to think back on what he had eaten. Harden remembered eating a frozen hamburger, but had thought nothing of it because his wife and sister had eaten one too. A Pueblo health official went to Harding’s house and sent the remaining hamburgers to a USDA laboratory. Come to find out the hamburgers were two years old. This is just one of the interesting stories Schlosser tells in his book, Fast Food Nation.

By reading this book I realized how unhealthy fast food really is. It showed me the risks you take when eating fast food, and the diseases accumulated if eating too much of it. I was surprised that most outbreaks with fast food are not reported, just because it’ll make the restaurant lose money. In my opinion every time fast food infects someone with a food borne disease, it should be reported. We have the right to know if what were eating is going to kill us or not.

Schlosser writing this novel did cause for a big scene because obviously it gave people a scare. Some probably will never eat fast food again, which means many restaurants lost a ton of business and money. I know I can’t say ill never eat fast food again in my life, but at least I know what I’m getting myself into. Overall, this book is a good source for everyone to see the deep dark secrets behind fast food.

Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton, 2001.