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  • Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
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Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal Audible Audiobook – Abridged

Eric Schlosser (Author), Rick Adamson (Narrator), Random House Audio (Publisher)
4.4 out of 5 stars 3,058 ratings

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To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar America. Though created by a handful of mavericks, the fast food industry has triggered the homogenization of our society. Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism abroad. That's a lengthy list of charges, but Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning.

Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from the California subdivisions where the business was born to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike where many of fast food's flavors are concocted. He hangs out with the teenagers who make the restaurants run and communes with those unlucky enough to hold America's most dangerous job - meatpacker. He travels to Las Vegas for a giddily surreal franchisers' convention where Mikhail Gorbachev delivers the keynote address. He even ventures to England and Germany to clock the rate at which those countries are becoming fast food nations.

Fast Food Nation is a groundbreaking work of investigation and cultural history that may change the way America thinks about the way it eats.

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  1. Listening Length
    8 hours and 56 minutes
  2. Author
    Eric Schlosser
  3. Narrator
    Rick Adamson
  4. Audible release date
    Feb. 6 2001
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Random House Audio
  7. ASIN
    B071W92DZ8
  8. Version
    Abridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
Next slide of product details

Product details

Listening Length 8 hours and 56 minutes
Author Eric Schlosser
Narrator Rick Adamson
Audible.ca Release Date February 06 2001
Publisher Random House Audio
Program Type Audiobook
Version Abridged
Language English
ASIN B071W92DZ8
麻豆区 Rank

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4.4 out of 5 stars
3,058 global ratings

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Customers find the content impressive, eye-opening, and interesting. They describe the chapters as well-written and powerful. Readers also say the book is informative and instructive.

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11 customers mention "Content"11 positive0 negative

Customers find the content impressive, eye-opening, and interesting. They also mention the most powerful chapter is the authors tour of a kill line. Readers also say the primary plot is very interesting.

"Good book" Read more

"...It's been selected as one of TIME's 100 Best Nonfiction books...." Read more

"...8 'The Most Dangerous Job' and chapter 9 'What's in the Meat' were well written and informative, and these 3 chapters made the book worth buying/..." Read more

"...And thats what the fast food places sell. This book is an eye opener, and really is a must read for anyone who has ever eaten a fast food burger......" Read more

5 customers mention "Informative"5 positive0 negative

Customers find the book very informative, eye-opening, and insightful.

"Very good and informative book" Read more

"...Job' and chapter 9 'What's in the Meat' were well written and informative, and these 3 chapters made the book worth buying/reading." Read more

"Full of so much knowledge that we all should be aware of, It's a must read." Read more

"Every young mother should read this! Very informative and eye opening," Read more

Top reviews from Canada

  • Barry Francis
    5.0 out of 5 stars Dark Side of the American Meal: There's S*** in the Meat!
    Reviewed in Canada on November 21, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    Fast Food Nation
    By Eric Schlosser

    It's been selected as one of TIME's 100 Best Nonfiction books. Fast Food Nation is a landmark book right up there in importance with Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Originally published in 2002 (and reissued in 2012 with a new Afterward), it's equally relevant today. But, if you're a fast food fanatic you might want to pass on reading it for fear of being driven to vegetarianism.

    Slosser traces the history of fast food, from its beginnings with the car culture in California, to its worldwide spread to the point where 65 million people eat at 28,000 McDonald's restaurants every day.

    Slosser explores the seamy underside of the fast food business including its impact on the environment, obesity (more than half of all Americans and 25% of American children are obese or overweight) and public health (including the risk of dangerous pathogens being entering the American food chain). He laments the fact that the business is defined by the industrialization of most of its parts.

    He describes how fast food chains like McDonald's are supplied with "meat" for their quarter pounders and Big Macs. Agri-business conglomerates maintain giant feedlots with thousands of cattle pressed cheek to jowl being force fed hormones and 3,000 pounds of grain to gain 400 pounds in weight and depositing 50 pounds of waste per day - waste which lies unprocessed in giant pits. He traces the food production process through the disgusting, dangerous (to workers) and often unsanitary practices of slaughterhouses and meat packing plants to the delivery of chemically enhanced pink hamburger patties, each of which can contain meat from dozens and even hundreds of different cattle. Because of all this Slosser argues that there is a greater risk than the public realizes of being made sick by a strain of E. coli in a fast-food burger. As he points out, "There's s*** in the meat!"

    Of greater concern, the food production process suffers from a lack of sensible government regulation.

    The bottom line according to Slosser is that the low price of a hamburger does not reflect its true cost. Those costs in terms of the environment, worker safety, and public health are simply passed along to the American public.

    Slosser suggests that, as they enter a fast food restaurant, readers should ignore the colorful backlit images and think about: "where the food came from, how it was made, what is set in motion by every fast food purchase and the ripple effect far and near." Rather than placing your order, he says, you can "turn and walk out the door." Even in fast food, he concludes," you can still have it your way."

    Barry Francis
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Tanya N
    5.0 out of 5 stars Good book
    Reviewed in Canada on September 7, 2024
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    Very good and informative book
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  • Andre M
    4.0 out of 5 stars More of a personal journey than a scientific non-fiction book ...
    Reviewed in Canada on April 12, 2016
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    More of a personal journey than a scientific non-fiction book. From a Canadian perspective, some chapters I could not finish as they specifically relate to the United States' history and politics. Still, chapter 5 'Why the Fries Taste Good', chapter 8 'The Most Dangerous Job' and chapter 9 'What's in the Meat' were well written and informative, and these 3 chapters made the book worth buying/reading.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Bootsy (Shell)
    5.0 out of 5 stars This will scare you
    Reviewed in Canada on December 1, 2014
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    Wow.....I will never eat frozen hamburgers again. And thats what the fast food places sell. This book is an eye opener, and really is a must read for anyone who has ever eaten a fast food burger...or chicken...or fish. The most powerful chapter, though, is the authors tour of a kill line....but starting from the end with the packaged meat products going towards the entry point for the cows. POWERFUL......enough to make a vegetarian out of anyone.

    The book is very well written and engrossing. 5 of 5. impressive book
    One person found this helpful
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  • JeromeC
    5.0 out of 5 stars Read it.
    Reviewed in Canada on September 3, 2018
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    Just read it. It is a dark portrayal of the underbelly of American industry. Perhaps the fast food industry has improved but it is a blueprint for many businesses that mistreat employees that can't really fight back. These people are not educated enough to stand up to bosses and they are not paid enough to really demand more. If you are a blue collar worker or interested in why labor unions exist this is your book.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Sauron Moridor
    5.0 out of 5 stars Never Knew how Fast Food startted
    Reviewed in Canada on July 19, 2020
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    Well I certainly found thease tales of the fast food industry fascinating
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  • Orrin C. Judd
    4.0 out of 5 stars fascinating and fair, if overwrought
    Reviewed in Canada on January 22, 2001
    With a subtitle like that, I was fully prepared for this book to be little more than a hysterical diatribe against the evils of fast food. Nor was my fear allayed by this defensive sentence in the Introduction :
    I do not mean to suggest that fast food is solely responsible for every social problem now haunting the United States.
    Disclaimers like that one usually indicate the opposite of what they say. But just a few sentences later comes a surprising admission which sets the tone for the whole book :
    During the two years spent researching this book, I ate an enormous amount of fast food. Most of it tasted pretty good. This is one of the main reasons people buy fast food; it has been carefully designed to taste good. It's also inexpensive and convenient.
    This is merely the first of many times throughout the book where Schlosser's fairness and honesty compel him to reveal facts that tend to undercut the polemical thrust of his arguments. This willingness to present both sides of the issues, combined with his prodigious research on the industry, makes for a book that, though the author clearly has a viewpoint that he wants to get across, also allows readers to make up their own minds, and provides the information necessary to make informed decisions. Though I disagreed with many of Schlosser's arguments, it was really refreshing to find an author who acknowledges competing views.
    Here are some of the instances in which this contradictory dynamic crops up. One of the topics that he spends a good deal of time on is the pay levels in the industry, both for those who actually work in restaurants and for those who produce and process the food. He makes a big issue of the attempt by restaraunteurs to hold employees to minimum wage and not give them benefits, but at the same time he acknowledges that most of the workforce is made up of teenagers and :
    Although some students...work at fast food restaurants to help their families, most of the kids take jobs after school in order to have a car.
    Now, I'd acknowledge that a labor force of fathers trying to support their families on minimum wage would represent a social problem, but I won't shed a tear over teens who want their own cars. Not to mention that he goes on to note that :
    Most of the high school students I met liked working at fast food restaurants.
    To quote the immortal Clara Peller : Where's the beef ?
    Similarly, in a section on the unskilled, uneducated migrant workers who are being "exploited" by the meat packers, Schlosser notes that they get something like $10 an hour, whereas the average worker in Mexico and Central America, where many of these employees come from, makes $5 a day. Sure, it would be wonderful if these folks were getting rich working at the undeniably difficult and often dangerous jobs they perform, but, comparatively, they are getting a damn good deal right now.
    In the scariest portion of the book, he details all of the potentially lethal microbes that have invaded the food supply, e. coli and the like. He goes to great lengths to show how inadequate the system is for inspecting meat and testing for these contaminants, and I'll accept every word he says. But he also concedes that when meat is cooked properly these microbes are killed and then points out that food irradiation will also destroy them and is safe, but that misunderstanding of the process and fearmongering has kept it from being widely adopted. Sounds like there are safe and simple solutions to even this most worrisome of issues.
    Finally, in the least compelling portion of the book, he argues that fast food is bad because it's making us fat. No one can honestly take issue with his point that the fat content in fast food is ridiculously high, and that the enormity of portions is unnecessary. However, in arguing that fat consumption is a unique problem, he accidentally concedes one of the great achievements of the industry :
    During thousands of years marked by food scarcity, human beings developed efficient physiological mechanisms to store energy as fat. Until recently, societies rarely enjoyed an overabundance of cheap food.
    Okay, so there are some problems associated with an "overabundance of cheap food:" the whole world should face such problems. Moreover, assuming that you believe in evolution, shouldn't we expect this to be a temporary problem, one that will take care of itself as succeeding generations develop mechanisms which don't store fat ?
    Perhaps the best effect of Schlosser's honesty is that when it comes time to make proposals for solving some of the problems he's raised, he's pretty reasonable. The best point he makes is that :
    Nobody in the United States is forced to buy fast food. The first step toward meaningful change is by far the easiest: stop buying it.
    I don't believe that his book makes the case that such a step is necessary. It does, however, enable the reader to better understand what goes on behind the scenes to get that Big Mac or Whopper into your hands. As he presents it, this information is always fascinating and it is often at least troublesome. The book is well worth reading even if you don't ultimately end up feeling compelled to boycott the Colonel.
    GRADE : B+
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  • 麻豆区 Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Content
    Reviewed in Canada on September 21, 2020
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    All good.
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • JS
    5.0 out of 5 stars Muss man gelesen haben - sehr gutes Buch
    Reviewed in Germany on April 27, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    Von der Entstehung und Geschichte einzelner Fast Food Ketten über die Produktion der Kartoffeln bis hin zum Marketing, dem Thema Franchising, Fleischproduktion, Arbeits- und Lebensbedingungen der Arbeiter und vielen vielen weiteren Themen, wird in diesem Buch genauestens berichtet.

    Beim Lesen stellt man schnell fest, wie viel Arbeit in Form von Recherche der Autor in dieses Buch gesteckt hat. Jegliche ?u?erung ist im Anhang mit zahlreichen Quellen belegt und wird im Buch genauestens begründet.

    Auch nach vielen Jahren empfinde ich dieses Buch noch als sehr aktuell und wichtig. Im hinteren Teil des Buches befindet sich zu dem ein Nachtrag zu den Ver?nderungen seit dem Zeitpunkt der Ver?ffentlichung des Buches.

    Das Buch ist angenehm und verst?ndlich geschrieben, auch bei komplexeren Themen.
    Man darf allerdings nicht erwarten, dass es sich wie ein Roman liest, denn das ist es nicht.

    Die behandelten und erkl?rten Themen empfand ich als sehr lehrreich und interessant.

    Ich würde das Buch jederzeit wieder kaufen und habe es bereits einigen Leuten weiterempfohlen.
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  • John Moseley
    5.0 out of 5 stars It just ain't food...
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 18, 2010
    Verified Purchase
    This is a highly affecting book, not just emotionally, but behaviourally as well. Like many people I have had the ocassional burger or KFC, but not since reading Fast Food Nation about two years ago. Eric Schlosser's book is a piece of very thorough piece of investigative journalism on the working practices of the fast food business. Schlosser writes in quite a controlled, scientific manner and isn't dogged by some of the more excitable hyperbole of Michael Moore for instance, so you feel you are getting a balanced picture. But neither does he shy away from the more outrageous aspects of fast food production, such as cattle faeces entering the meat production, the employment of illegal immigrants and the regular loss of limbs on the production line.

    What I came to realise in reading this book is what McDonald's or KFC or Taco Bell might like to call food isn't actually food. The meat isn't meat, the bread isn't bread and the fries certainly aren't fries. As I said, this has had a profound affect on my eating habits, and I haven't touched fast food for over two years. Sometimes the convenience of picking up a Big Mac and fries when you are out is almost overwhelming, but several times I've gone hungry rather than break my promise to myself of staying away from this non-food.
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  • Rohan raut
    5.0 out of 5 stars Must read book
    Reviewed in India on April 30, 2023
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    It's a great book to read for new generations
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  • Luc
    5.0 out of 5 stars molto interessante
    Reviewed in Italy on December 30, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    una visione molto interessante del lifestyle americano (i fast food, e il loro impatto sulla catena di produzione, sul mercato del lavoro, sui settori agricoli e allevamento); cenni sulla nascita del fenomento, dai primi carrelli degli hot dog, fino all'estensione del dominio McDonald. in inglese.
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  • mikasa.r1
    5.0 out of 5 stars ファストフードの诞生とその歴史
    Reviewed in Japan on June 26, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    ファストフードが、どんな牛肉を使い、その肉を加工する屠杀业の労働环境がいかにひどいものかという负の面も学べる一方で、ファストフードは、野心のある、ハードワーカーの努力によって诞生した事実も学べる良书。
    ファストフードそのものだけでなく、ファストフードが诞生し広まる事によって、その街の食生活?働き方?街の景観までをも変えていく影响力が描かれており、新たな発见があります。
    かなり前のベストセラーですが、今読んでも勉强になります。
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