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Example research essay topic: Fast Food Industry Fast Food Nation - 1,845 words

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... effects have been profound throughout the American agricultural economy. Well, again if you go back to 1970, before the meteoric growth in the American fast food industry, the top five meat packing firms in the United States controlled about 20 % of the beef that was being sold in America. Today the top five control more than 85 % and there's really three meat packing companies that control the overwhelming majority of beef that Americans eat. There are 13 slaughterhouses in the United States that produce most of the beef that Americans eat and that's a phenomenal concentration and industrialization of this system over the course of 20, 25 years. What are the marketing tools Fast Foods use?

May I super-size your order, please? How about biggie fries or better yet, king-size fries? Would you like a combo, its cheaper? If these cliches sound as familiar to you as paper or plastic, then the advertisers of the major fast-food companies have done their job well. Many groups have criticized the tobacco companies for targeting Americas youth to become consumers of their products. Fast-food companies follow a similar strategy, albeit much more bold and direct.

From Ronald McDonald to Jack, advertisers bombard childrens television programs with tempting lures. If the food doesnt appeal to the kids, perhaps a Beanie Baby, Hip Barbie, Hot Wheels, or some other toy will elicit the anticipated response from the child. Teaming up with popular toys and movies is now the norm in the fast-food advertising arena. Again, Americans children are the primary targets. What impact does this marketing strategy have on obesity in children and adolescents? More importantly, what is the overweight and obesity status of Americas youth?

The answer is staggering! By some estimates, approximately one-third of all American children and adolescents are overweight this may even be a low figure. This trend will most likely continue as fast-food restaurants such as Pizza Hut and Taco Bell are now beginning to appear inside the schools. If youre not alarmed by this yet, you should be. In the past 20 years the UK has seen a staggering growth in obesity, over half of all women and about two thirds of men are either overweight or obese. This epidemic increase costs society? 2. 5 billion per year, while the human consequence is estimated at thirty thousand premature deaths a year.

More worryingly, these figures are rising and show no signs of abating. Parallels can be drawn with the United States and it's thought that by 2010 we " ll have caught up with the most obese nation on earth. Being overweight can cause a wide range of medical problems: type 2 diabetes; heart disease; gallstones; high blood pressure; stroke; indigestion; arthritis; blood clots; respiratory illness Fortunately, most of these problems can be helped by losing weight. Why are we becoming more overweight? Obesity is caused when energy intake (or calories eaten) - exceeds energy expended; this spare energy is stored as fat and increases weight. Our lifestyles and lack of physical activity play a vital role in obesity but what we eat and how we eat it can make all the difference. "This is a book about fast food, the values it embodies, and the world it has made", Schlosser writes.

It is an often contradictory picture: the industry (at all levels) constantly complains and fights against government intrusion and meddling (from taxes to labor laws to food-safety regulations) while over its history it has benefited inordinately from government action and subsidies (one of Schlosser's favorite points, repeatedly made throughout the book). The industry seems to provide cheap, convenient and fast food, and provide employment to a large number of people - but the food is arguably not particularly healthy (or downright unhealthy - and, occasionally, lethal), and much of the work is low-skill labor performed by teenagers and immigrants, teaching them few skills. The fast food phenomenon seems to represent the best and the worst of America. It is also a "culture" that has spread to many other aspects of life. It also exerts a direct influence on large parts of the population: Schlosser cites an estimate that "one out of every eight workers in the United States has at some point been employed by McDonald's" alone, and, of course, there are large numbers of people who actually consume what is served at these establishments. Schlosser strays far and wide in the book, devoting chapters to various aspects of the industry.

They do not all fit neatly together, but even the jumbled picture is a frightening one. Most gruesome are the details regarding the state of agribusiness and, especially, the meatpacking industry. The conditions described are worrisome, to say the least, and particularly disturbing is the explanation of federal and state power (or rather lack thereof) regarding meat inspection and consumer and worker safety protection over the past few decades. Regarding dangers to consumers Schlosser focuses on E. coli and salmonella infection (and, curiously, barely mentions the use of hormones and antibiotics and the consequences thereof). Schlosser goes so far as to say: Anyone who brings raw ground beef into his or her kitchen today must regard it as a potential biohazard, one that may carry an extremely dangerous microbe, infectious at an extremely low dose.

Schlosser also finds that conditions for workers are often incredibly dangerous (and unpleasant) - especially in meatpacking plants, but also in other areas of the fast food industry. Low wages, largely insurmountable barriers preventing unionization, and laxly enforced labor laws mean that society pays a high hidden cost for the benefit of apparently cheap food. The chapter on Why the Fries Taste Good offers an eerie look at the future of food, where any taste can be given to any product. The advances that have been made are already tremendous, and flavor additives - effective in the tiniest of doses - are already more common than most people seem to realize. Schlosser also offers a few bright spots, suggesting that "there is nothing inevitable about the fast food industry", and that the businessmen who are responsible could be moved to creating a more palatable situation if market forces dictated (i. e.

if that was what was profitable). A healthy dose of sensible legislation (and enforcement capability) would also help. Schlosser holds the U. S. Congress - and the (generally Republican) politicians who take loads of money from agribusiness, fast food chains, and similar interest groups - responsible for many of the current ills, and he is probably right. Voters, however, don't seem all that bothered - there is no clamor for the proper laws, nor are these politicians being voted out of office.

The big and largely overlooked issue in the book is the role of the consumer. Public outrage over cases of E. coli poisoning, labor violations, unhealthy fast food, advertising aimed at children, and all the rest remains curiously muted. No one seems to care much.

And, most astonishingly, huge numbers of people still frequent fast food establishments. Schlosser mentions teenage workers who won't eat the food at their workplace unless they themselves prepare it - but most every teen surely has a friend or family member who works or worked in some fast food outlet (or have worked their themselves) and they have certainly all heard the horror stories from behind the counter and yet they still flock to these establishments to consume these products. With an un apologetically leftist perspective, Schlosser presents a litany of charges against the fast-food companies and their practices: marketing to children, establishing the indentured servitude of franchising, manipulating a minimum-wage workforce (primarily young, unskilled, recent immigrants) by withholding medical benefits, perpetuating turnover to deter unionization, yet taking full advantage of government subsidies for nonexistent "training. " These are just a few of the greed-is-good tactics employed to keep profits high. What's most revealing is how the fast food industry has single-handedly altered American agriculture.

Companies such as McDonald's, the nation's largest purchaser of meat, have encouraged consolidation and centralized production. Today very few companies supply the vast majority of the nation's beef, poultry and potatoes, the staples of the fast food diet; small businesses, ranchers and farmers are disappearing. Most alarming, says Schlosser, is how changes in food production and cattle raising have increased the likelihood of widespread outbreaks of food-borne pathogens, such as E. coli. Yet despite high-profile scares such as the 1993 Jack in the Box case, Schlosser contends that the real health dangers remain hidden from the general public, while the meat packing industry continues to vehemently oppose further regulation of their food safety practices. Moreover, the meat packing industry enjoys a rare immunity from federal intervention.

Although the U. S. government can demand the nationwide recall of a stuffed animal or toy, according to Schlosser, "it cannot order a meatpacking company to remove contaminated, potentially lethal ground beef from fast food kitchens and supermarket shelves. " 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 business has triggered the homogenization of our society. Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fuelled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism abroad. That's a lengthy list of charges, but 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 Californian 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 - meat packer. He travels to Las Vegas for giddily surreal franchisers' convention where Mikhail Gorbachev delivers the keynote address. And he ventures to England and Germany to unlock the rate at which those countries are becoming fast food nations. Along the way, Schlosser unearths a trove of fascinating, unsettling truths - from the unholy alliance between fast food and Hollywood to the seismic changes the industry has wrought in food production, popular culture, and even real estate.

He also uncovers fast food chains' enormous efforts to reel in the youngest, most susceptible consumers and hone the institutionalized exploitation of teenagers and minorities. Schlosser then turns a critical eye toward globalization -- a phenomenon launched by fast food. Fast Food Nation is a groundbreaking work of investigation and cultural history, likely to transform the way America thinks about the way it eats. Schlosser closes the book by saying that "you can still have it your way", and that consumers have the choice to just say no to fast food. His hope is apparently that, armed with the information he provides, consumers will make the obvious choice and run as fast as they can from any and every fast food joint. Sources: Schlosser, Eric.

Fast Food Nation. Published by the Penguin Group, 2002


Free research essays on topics related to: children and adolescents, americas youth, fast food nation, meat packing, fast food industry

Research essay sample on Fast Food Industry Fast Food Nation

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