Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser, is a harsh and unrelenting look at the fast food industry that has become ingrained not only in American culture, but in many cultures around the world. There is almost no place on earth where golden bows have not entered. Aside from Antarctica, there is a McDonald's on every continent, and the number of countries with fast food restaurants is growing every day. Schlosser details what happens behind the scenes, before burgers and fries are wrapped in eco-friendly paper and consumed by millions of people every day. There are several stories that come to mind. The first is about a rancher from Colorado. He had resisted the idea of ​​squeezing as many cows as possible into an enclosed area. Instead, it rotates where cattle eat, what type of grass they eat and how often they eat it. His ranch was what cattle ranching should be. This is in contrast to how most livestock are raised today. They remain all their lives in pens where they hardly have the ability to move, and are fed things that cows are not designed to eat: corn, wheat, chicken parts and even the leftovers of already slaughtered livestock. Then they are led up a catwalk, into a building where they are first shocked, then hung by their hooves and their necks slit, one after the other. It is based on Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. After a hundred years, conditions in meatpacking plants haven't improved much. It's still the most dangerous job in America. Nearly everyone who works there has been injured at some point, whether by mechanical crushers or knives coming too close to their arm. Hundreds of thousands of cattle are slaughtered every day, to keep up with demand for places like McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's. I was saddened to read later that the Colorado rancher committed suicide because he could no longer compete with the large cattle ranchers and would lose his livelihood. Another thing that stood out was how these fast food restaurants treat their workers. Their automation policy has created a whole group of people who don't have to think about doing their jobs. These people – usually teenagers – are paid minimum wage to push buttons and do all the jobs that were previously done manually. The government makes money... middle of paper... McDonald's or Taco Bell or any other fast food restaurant. He then spent an hour trying to do just that. He said people spend more time considering buying a home than deciding what goes into our bodies. My first reaction was “Of course we do! A house costs tens of thousands of dollars and a hamburger costs 99 cents.” I know what he meant by this, saying that the hamburger will be with us for the rest of our lives and will affect our health both short and long term, but it's not seen that way. If we have high cholesterol, we can take a pill. Hypertension? There's a pill for that too. There are even pills to help people lose weight. The mentality is that we can eat whatever we want, and there will be a way to reverse the situation. The bottom line is that I enjoyed the book and learned from it. I will never eat at one of those places again, and not just because the food is terrible. I refuse to support their employment and food acquisition practices. I'm just sorry it took me 26 years to get to this point. I hope my kids don't support them either. Works Cited: Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York: perennial, 2002.