Food Nation : The Dark Side Of The All American Meal

Fast food has a harmful effect on society because it can cause obesity. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry believes obesity “Overweight children are much more likely to become overweight adults unless they adopt and maintain healthier patterns of eating and exercise.” (parag. 1).The causing and treating of obesity is complex but it is the most recognizable disease. Consistently eating fast food and a poor can lead to obesity in anyone. The risks of obesity include an increased risk of high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease. According to the American Heart Association, fast food “Studies have shown that over the past four decades, consumption of food eaten away from home has also risen alarmingly” (parag. 8). This means that fast food is high in fat, sugar, salt, carbs, calories, saturated and trans fats. This type of eating leads to a higher body mass index or gained weight. Children and adolescents are at a

Most Americans love the low cost, prepackaged, great tasting food that is convenient to buy and prepare. These prepackaged or processed foods are normally made to be faster, cheaper and usually taste great but they are loaded with bizarre, unpronounceable chemicals that, if you saw them in their pre-processed state, you would never consider putting in your mouth. Emulsifiers, preservatives, colorants, stabilizers, artificial sweeteners, texturizers and even bleach can be found in most processed foods. On average, Americans spend 90% of their food budget on these types of foods which is found to contribute to the leading causes of obesity, auto immune disease, diabetes and even cancer.

In the book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser talks about the working conditions of fast food meat slaughterhouses. In the chapter “The Most Dangerous Job,” one of the workers, who despised his job, gave Schlosser an opportunity to walk through a slaughterhouse. As the author was progressed backwards through the slaughterhouse, he noticed how all the workers were sitting very close to each other with steel protective vests and knives. The workers were mainly young Latina women, who worked swiftly, accurately, while trying not to fall behind. Eric Schlosser explains how working in the slaughterhouses is the most dangerous profession – these poor working conditions and horrible treatment of employees in the plants are beyond

Having a bad diet is one of the main reasons why so many people suffer from heart disease. The foods that are high in fat can cause high levels of cholesterol in the blood stream, which can lead to the formation of plaques that can block the arteries. Around the worlds there are large varieties of foods, but in that variety there is also what is known as fast foods. These “fast foods” are prepared in large quantities by a standardized method and can be dispensed quickly at inexpensive restaurants for eating there or elsewhere. They may be cheap, but are not always healthy. They can contain

The state of the American Health in the U.S has become an increasing concern of many Americans. An article entitled “11 Facts about American Eating Habits,” addresses the state of food in the U.S by stating, “Healthiness of the food we eat decreases by 1.7 percent for every hour that passes in the day.” Experts and scientists in the U.S has raised questions about regarding the different ways food is now being produced. While individuals are usually not aware of the ingredients that food contains, many people continue to have unhealthy eating habits. In the past few decades, food production has included numerous artificial ingredients that are said to be the cause of various health problems. Various artificial ingredients that are commonly

Eating healthy is very important for people, and modern supermarkets can make this difficult with thousands of new products flooding the market every year. Countless numbers of the products that hit the market are considered food, nevertheless is it the food needed for proper nutrition? Most of the food that fills up the supermarket shelves each year isn’t the healthy real food our bodies need to get proper nutrition. Several edibles obtainable appear healthy or normal enough to call wholesome. Think about processed deli meats, for example, particularly the ones that say “no preservatives” on them. Several of the processed meats you find contain nitrates, a preservative. Nitrates are viewed as harmful, so people don’t want them in their sandwich meats. Hence some deli meat companies made their product more appealing to the public, by labeling “no preservatives.” This

In American culture, we typically center our food choices around american options such as burgers, fries, chicken fried steaks, and chicken tenders. However, I decided to seek out a food from a culture that differs than my American background. I sought out a restaurant that served and Indian cuisine and one that I wouldn’t usually try. I decided Indian for the reason that I love spice in food and the spice that the Indian culture uses in their food should really compliment the food. The restaurant that I found was called Taco Naan, which combines cultures and serves food that cater to Mexican and Indian cultures.

Many people have grown up around school lunches without knowing much about them. With these people trusting the schools to serve healthy lunches to students, not many people care to worry about what they are eating. Growing up ignorant about food is easy to do, but why settle for convenience if it harms the body? In Melanie Warner’s novel, Pandora’s Lunchbox: How Processed Food took over the American Meal, she goes over the history and science of many well-known food companies and the products these corporations sell to individuals. Warner explains how food science became popular to study and how progressive America’s food technology has come. Pandora’s Lunchbox is a remarkable read through its personal stories and demonstrations. Despite her fruitless comments about the science of food, Warner’s approach shows that her writing style and personal testimonies connect with the reader.

In Eric Schlosser’s 2001 piece, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, he examines the rise of the fast food industry in the 1950’s as it was associated with the rampant consumerism of the era and shows how this led to the fast food industry becoming one of the most unethical, manipulative, and greedy industries that ever existed. Schlosser shows how fast food corporations, through mass appealing advertising, were able to manipulate consumers, especially young generations, into buying their products. Children were made the targets of advertising campaigns because these corporations knew that they were the most gullible audience. The 1950’s were filled with consumer trends in which buyers went after products that they believed to be popular and wanted to have the same things as everyone else. Corporations knew that they would have a very easy job in luring consumers because many other products and services had become trend setters in the 1950’s, so consumers would line up to buy fast food if it was presented as being “modern” and “trendy” in a sense. This paper will detail how consumerism and advertising played a large role in constructing American cultural identity during the post-war era.

It is filled with things like fat and salt that is unhealthy. The author says, "Ingredients such as salt, sugar and fat are sometimes added to processed foods to make their flavour more appealing and to extend their shelf life, or in some cases to contribute to the food's structure, such as salt in bread or sugar in cakes."   The author also says, "These foods can also be higher in calories due to the high amounts of added sugar or fat in them." Processed food is full of sugar which is very bad for the body since some people cannot dispose the sugar

Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Print. While I was looking at the cover of the book, I noticed that it included the words “All American Meal”, and I wondered what that meant. For me when I hear those word I picture a McDonald’s, or any other fast food restaurant. Why is that? Is it because the United States comes in at 12th for the most obese country, with 35% of the population in overweight (Worldatlas). Or is it because we have made a name for ourselves, by being the country that consumes the most fast food (Economist)? In the first chapter of the book The American Way, Schlosser is disscussing various fast foods we eat such as McDonald 's, Domino 's, and describes how fast food has impacted American lives, such as obesity in all age groups due to the appeals to younger children. He talks about the McDonald brothers and Carl Karcher and how they established McDonald 's and Carl 's Jr.

The greatest disadvantage of the food industry is unhealthy eating. This is derived from high amounts of sodium which can be found in most fast food industries. The manner in which these foods are cooked also plays a pivotal role in the unhealthy aspects of certain menu items. Ingredients which are not understood by consumers who are becoming more health conscious has

People today believe that the government is supposed to eliminate any possible danger from the food they consume, but that is not the case. In the book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of The All-American Meal written by Eric Schlosser, he discusses numerous problems with food production. Some of these issues are discussed in the “Epilogue”, “What’s In Meat”, and “Most Dangerous Job” chapters where Schlosser elaborates on the government’s role and how workers are mistreated. In the article, “U.S. Meatpacking Under Fire: Human Rights Group Calls for Line Speed Reduction, ERGO Standards,” it explains how the working conditions in the meat packaging industry are hazardous and are violations of basic human rights. Although workers are affected by the government’s role in the food industry, consumers are affected as well. The consequences of the lack of governmental oversight, like food contamination and others, are discussed in the film Food Inc. “Escaping the Regulatory Net: Why Regulatory Reform Can Fail Consumers”, an academic journal written by Henry Rothstein, explains how “putting consumers first” is difficult for the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to accomplish because with consumer’s interests that means regulatory reforms are most likely going to fail.

The fast food industry provides quick, cheap, and easy access to foods that in the customers opinion, is very delicious, and affordable, however this food which millions of people around the world are constantly consuming, could actually cause major health problems, and weight gain in the long run. Major fast food companies throughout the world know what they are doing when it comes to marketing towards all types of people. Some people will find numerous different things to blame for the epidemic of fast food making individuals overweight. In recent research on, or discussions of the fast food industry having an effect on people's health, a controversial issue has been raised, and that is the fact that this problem affects not only

Traditionally, the fast food industry has been associated with the cause of this health-related issue (Boyle 2004). Major fast food companies have been called to Federal Government summits to improve the quality of junk food (Wright 2007). While most of these major companies have now taken