Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal QUOTES

1 " Lowe has broken from the Christianity of his parents, a faith that now seems hopelessly out of date. The meek shall no longer inherit the earth; the go-getters will get it and everything that goes with it. The Christ who went among the poor, the sick, the downtrodden, among lepers and prostitutes, really had no marketing savvy. He has been transfigured into a latter-day entrepreneur, the greatest superstar sales person of all time, who built a multinational outfit from scratch. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

2 " Some of the most painful and debilitating injuries are the hardest to prove. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

3 " Like Cheyenne Mountain, today's fast good conceals remarkable technological advances behind an ordinary-looking façade. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

4 " The history of the twentieth century was dominated by the struggle against totalitarian systems of state power. The twenty-first will no doubt be marked by a struggle to curtail excessive corporate power. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

5 " The medical literature on the causes of food poisoning is full of euphemisms and dry scientific terms: coliform levels, aerobic plate counts, sorbitol, MacConkey agar, and so on. Behind them lies a simple explanation for why eating a hamburger can now make you seriously ill: There is shit in the meat. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

6 " Did somebody say McUnion? [...] Not if they want to keep their McJob. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

7 " The spread of BSE [mad cow disease] in Europe has revealed how secret alliances between agribusiness and government can endanger the public health. It has shown how the desire for profit can overrule every other consideration. British agricultural officials were concerned as early as 1987 that eating meat from BSE-infected cattle might pose a risk to human beings. That information was suppressed for years, and the possibility of any health risk was strenuously denied, in order to protect exports of British beef. Scientists who disagreed with the official line were publicly attacked and kept off government committees investigating BSE. Official denials of the truth delayed important health measures. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

8 " Twenty years ago, teenage boys in the United States drank twice as much milk as soda; now they drink twice as much soda as milk. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

9 " Today the U.S. government can demand the nation-wide recall of defective softball bats, sneakers, stuffed animals, and foam-rubber toy cows. But it cannot order a meatpacking company to remove contaminated, potentially lethal ground beef from fast food kitchens and supermarket shelves. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

10 " The market is a tool, and a useful one. But the worship of this tool is a hollow faith. Far more important than any tool is what you make with it. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

11 " When a worker is injured at an IBP plant in Texas, he or she is immediately presented with a waiver. Signing the waiver means forever surrendering the right to sue IBP on any grounds. Workers who sign the waiver may receive medical care under IBP's Workplace Injury Settlement Program. Or they may not. Once workers sign, IBP and its company-approved doctors have control over the job-related medical treatment - for life. Under the program's terms, seeking treatment from an independent physician can be grounds for losing all medical benefits. Workers who refuse to sign the IBP waiver not only risk getting no medical care from the company, but also risk being fired on the spot...Injured workers almost always sign the waiver. The pressure to do so is immense. An IBP medical case manager will literally bring the waiver to a hospital emergency room in order to obtain an injured worker's signature. When Lonita Leal's right hand was mangled by a hamburger grinder at the IBP plant in Amarillo, a case manager talked her into signing the waiver with her left hand as she waited in the hospital for surgery. When Duane Mullin had both hands crushed in a hammer mill at the same plant, an IBP representative persuaded him to sign the waiver with a pen held in his mouth. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

12 " Congress should ban advertising that preys upon children, it should stop subsidizing dead-end jobs, it should pass tougher food safety laws, it should protect American workers from serious harm, it should fight against dangerous concentrations of economic power. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

13 " A generation ago, three-quarters of the money used to buy food in the United States was spent to prepare meals at home. Today about half of the money used to buy food is spent at restaurants--mainly at fast food restaurants. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

14 " Behind them lies a simple explanation for why eating a hamburger can now make you seriously ill: There is shit in the meat. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

15 " The life's work of Walt Disney and Ray Kroc had come full-circle, uniting in perfect synergy. McDonald's began to sell its hamburgers and french fries at Disney's theme parks. The ethos of McDonaldland and of Disneyland, never far apart, have finally become one. Now you can buy a Happy Meal at the Happiest Place on Earth. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

16 " Again and again workers told me that they are under tremendous pressure not to report injuries. The annual bonuses of plant foremen and supervisors are often based in part on the injury rate of their workers. Instead of crating a safer workplace, these bonus schemes encourage slaughterhouse managers to make sure that accidents and injuries go unreported. Missing fingers, broken bones, deep lacerations and amputated limbs are difficult to conceal from authorities. But the dramatic and catastrophic injuries in a slaughterhouse are greatly outnumbered by less visible, though no less debilitating, ailments: torn muscles, slipped disks, pinched nerves. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

17 " A nationwide study published by the USDA in 1996 found that [...] 78.6 percent of the ground beef contained microbes that are spread primarily by fecal matter. The medical literature on the causes of food poisoning is full of euphemisms and dry scientific terms: coliform levels, aerobic plate counts, sorbitol, MacConkey agar, and so on. Behind them lies a simple explanation for why eating hamburger meat makes you sick: There is shit in the meat. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

18 " About 75 percent of the cattle in the United States were routinely fed livestock wastes—the rendered remains of dead sheep and dead cattle—until August of 1997. They were also fed millions of dead cats and dead dogs every year, purchased from animal shelters. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

19 " The birth of the fast food industry coincided with Eisenhower-era glorifications of technology, with optimistic slogans like “Better Living through Chemistry” and “Our Friend the Atom.” The sort of technological wizardry that Walt Disney promoted on television and at Disneyland eventually reached its fulfillment in the kitchens of fast food restaurants. Indeed, the corporate culture of McDonald’s seems inextricably linked to that of the Disney empire, sharing a reverence for sleek machinery, electronics, and automation. The leading fast food chains still embrace a boundless faith in science—and as a result have changed not just what Americans eat, but also how their food is made. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

20 " Widespread introduction of the process [of irradiating foods] has thus far been impeded, however, by a reluctance among consumers to eat things that have been exposed to radiation. According to current USDA regulations, irradiated meat must be identified with a special label and with a radura (the internationally recognized symbol of radiation). The Beef Industry Food Safety Council - whose members include the meatpacking and fast food giants - has asked the USDA to change its rules and make the labeling of irradiated meat completely voluntary. The meatpacking industry is also working hard to get rid of the word 'irradiation,; much preferring the phrase 'cold pasteurization.'...From a purely scientific point of view, irradiation may be safe and effective. But he [a slaughterhouse engineer] is concerned about the introduction of highly complex electromagnetic and nuclear technology into slaughterhouses with a largely illiterate, non-English-speaking workforce. "

― Eric Schlosser , Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal