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=**Plot:**= In this novel, the author, Eric Schlosser, goes through the beginning of fast food. He shows the real working conditions and payment of the people employed by the fast food restaurants. He also uncovers the chemical make up of the food and why it tastes so good to us. He talks about the life of a rancher in these days. It's explained how the meatpacking plants affect the cities that they're in. The danger of working in a slaughter house is talked about, and he uncovers what is truly in the meat.

=Chapter Analysis/Prediction:= Carl Karcher was born in ohio and moved to California. He started there with a job at his uncle's Feed and Seed store. Not long after he married Margaret. While working at a bakery, he decided to buy a hot dog stand. It brought him great success. After he owned four hot dog stands, he bought a restaurant. After some time he made it a drive in. But after seeing Mcdonalds Speedee Service System, he switched his business to that, and called it Carls Jr. It was a success and he soon opened others. Carl was now in control of one of the biggest privately owned fast food chains. The Mcdonalds brothers, Richard and Maurice, created the Speedee service system. It was a new method of preparing food, it was made to increase speed, lower prices and raise sales. It formed an assembly line, creating a division of labor, making it necessary for a worker to only learn how to do one specific thing.
 * 1 The Founding Fathers**:This chapter talks about Carl Karcher, the Mcdonalds brothers and other fast food pioneers at the time.
 * Prediction**: i predict that the author is now going to show the bad side of the fast food companies since he just made them look good.

Ray Kroc, the founder of the Mcdonalds Corporation, convinced the Mcdonalds brothers to let him franchise their company nationwide . The "Mcdonalds Bill" was passed, allowing the employers to pay sixteen and seventeen year old employees 20% less than minimum wage. Walt Disney's, Walt DisneyLand was very successful. He introduced assembly lines and division of labor to the Disney Studio. The main thing Ray and Disney had in common was targeting children as customers. Toys and playgrounds helped Mcdonalds attract the kids. Eventually the Walt Disney Company ended up signing a ten year global marketing agreement with the Mcdonalds Corporation. The ending of the chapter points out how fast food works in many of the public schools,the schools need money and they get funds from the soda and fast food companies for advertising their products in the schools.
 * 2 Your Trusted Friends**: This chapter looks at Ray Kroc And Walt Disney, and their similarities along with their individual success.
 * Prediction:** I predict that the author will show the working conditions of the people in the fast food companies and if it was good or not.

themselves over and over again as you go down the street. Teenagers run the fast food restaurants. Almost two-thirds of the fast food workers in the nation are under the age of twenty. This is because the fast food companies look for part-time, unskilled workers who are willing to take low payment. The labor practices of the fast food industry are based off of the assembly line systems. Fast food companies have a great amount of power over the employees. Teenagers are the ideal people for these jobs because they could afford the lower wages and the limited skills they have make it more difficult to get a job somewhere else. The fast food companies also mainly hire recent immigrants, the elderly and the handicapped. The fast food industry pays minimum wage to a higher proportion of workers then any other industry, few employees qualify for over time. They are paid an hourly wage, with no benefits and they are only called in to work when needed, the fast food chains keep their labor costs as little as they can. Many High School students often work long hours in fast food restaurants, some longer than they should be legally allowed to. The high school students asked said they preferred working in the kitchen as opposed to the counter, there was high school students working at the mall in clothing or sports stores too.\
 * 3 Behind The Counter:** This chapter talks about Colorado Springs, Colorado. On Academy Boulevard, fast food restaurants seem to repeat
 * Prediction:** i predict that many of the fast food companies will be looked at now for over working teenagers.

with steel mills that has a large amount of working class people and Latino people. Pueblo was "never hip like Boulder, busting like Denver, or aristocratic like Colorado springs". The delivery guy, Matthew Kabong, delivesr pizza for Little Caesars and earns minimum wage. He studies electrical engineering and hopes to own a radio shack someday. Dave Feamster is the owner of the Little Caesars that employs Kabong. After graduating from college, Feamster played in the National Hockey League. Due to an injury in March 1984, he had to give up playing hockey. He wandered around feeling lost for a year, even enrolling in a course to become a travel agent. An old friend suggested he become a Little Caesar franchise. He had to spend months learning every aspect of the business. Being a franchise is a little odd-starting your own business, but yet ultimately working for someone else. It's a team effort with the main goal desired for both parties to make money while avoiding risks. Franchising has been around since the nineteenth century. It "was an ingenious way to grow a new company in a new industry". Franchising made it possible for fast food chains to expand rapidly by using the money of small investors. Ray Kroc's patience contributed to Mcdonald's success of increasing the chain's size while maintaing control of its products. The International Franchise Association have said that franchising is the safest way of going into business for yourself. An IFA survey claims that 92% of all franchises are successful.
 * 4 Success**:the chapter starts with a pizza-delivery guy in pueblo, colorado. pueblo is located about forty miles from colorado springs. it is a town
 * Prediction**: i predict that a franchise would be a good business adventure on the side.

farmer by the age of sixteen. Simplot spent his time buying, selling, shipping and sorting potatoes. He eventually become the biggest shipper of potatoes in the West. During the War, Simplot made a huge amount of money selling potatoes and dried onions to the army. In the 1950s, he started to invest in frozen foods. He started selling frozen french fries to Mcdonalds. The taste of the fries at Mcdonalds have always been said to be good by everyone. The different taste from the other fast food companies does not come from the technology that processes the fries or the equipment in the restaurants that fries them. It mostly comes from the cooking oil used on them. Mcdonalds uses a oil that is about 7% cottonseed oil & 93% beef tallow. But the amount of hard criticism on the amount of saturated fat in 1990 caused them to switch to pure vegetable oil. The phrase 'natural flavor' explains why most fast food tastes so good. The flavor industry is extremely secretive. It's deemed to be so secretive to protect the reputation of the brands they represent. The aroma of a food can responsible for about 90% of a food's flavor.
 * 5 Why The Fries Taste Good:** At the beginning of this chapter, the author is at the J.R. Simplot Plant, in Aberdeen, Idaho. Simplot was a potato
 * Prediction:** i predict that many people will die from heart attack due to the grease on the fries.

showed him the difference between 'raping the land' and his own form of ranching. His ranching pattern was inspired by the grazing of elk and buffalo herds. He had his ranch divided into thirty-five separate pastures, the cattle were moved from each pasture about every ten to eleven days. Ranchers go through many economic problems like the rising land prices, stagnant beef prices, oversupplies of cattle, increased shipments of cattle, development pressures, inheritance taxes, health scares about beef and the growth of the fast food chains encouraging consolidation in the meatpacking industry. The four major meatpacking companies in the United States control about 20% of the live cattle through 'captive supplies'. Chicken Nuggets were introduced to Mcdonalds in 1983. Only after one month, Mcdonalds was already the second largest purchaser of chicken in the whole United States. But the 'fatty acid profile' in the Mcnuggets resembled beef more than chicken, so they switched to cooking them in vegetable oil. The Mcnugget changed the American diet and the system for raising and processing poultry. Prediction: i predict that personal ranchers will have no business whatsoever in about 10 years.
 * 6 On The Range**: This chapter starts out with the author meeting with a Colorado Rancher, named Hank. The author gets a tour of the ranch, and Hank

past twenty years has totally changed how beef is produced. The meatpacking companies have had to cut cost by cutting wages due to the demand of the fast food and supermarket chains. The ConAgra Beef Company owns the nation's biggest meatpacking complex, which is a few miles north of Greeley. To supply all of the slaughterhouses, ConAgra operates a pair of huge feedlots. Each one can hold up to one hundred thousand head of cattle at a time. During the three months before they're slaughtered, they eat grain through troughs. After breaking the union at the Greeley slaughterhouse, Monfort began to employ many recent immigrants, many of them were illegal. Meatpacking jobs used to provide a middle-class American life, now offered barley more than poverty wages. Today, about two-thirds of the workers at the Greeley Beef Plant don't speak english. Most of them are Mexican immigrants. The basic pay at a slaughterhouse now is about $9.25 per hour. The changes that occurred in Greeley, also occurred in the High Plains where other big meatpacking plants are. Like, Garden City, Kansas, Grand Island, Nebraska, and Storm Lake, Iowa. They now have rural ghettos, drugs, poverty, rootlessness and crime.
 * 7 Cogs In The Great Machine:** In this chapter, it starts out in Greeley, Colorado. Which is a small meatpacking city, the industrialization over the
 * Prediction:** i predict that the bad things in the cities will just get worse over time.

the author a tour of a slaughterhouse. He noticed it was extra crowded and the employees had steel protective vests and knives. Many of these workers were young, Latino women. The author talks about how meatpacking has become the most dangerous job in America. Compared with a typical American factory, the injury rate in slaughterhouses is about three times higher than anything else. Most of the work in slaughterhouses is done by hand. The employees work with various machines and many sharp objects like knives. The workers are always pushed to work faster, which also leads to injury and use of methamphetamine (meth). The poor working conditions they worked in also present many more hazards. Even those who are not the front-line production workers are subject to a dangerous occupation. The late night cleaning crews perform some of the most dangerous jobs in the slaughterhouses. The working conditions are beyond horrible and they with with extremely dangerous chemicals. These cleaning crews generally make only one-third the wages of the regular production workers. The larger meatpacking firms, alone with the government, have destroyed the labor unions and have minimized safety inspections inside of the slaughterhouses. They have turned what was once one of America's best-paying manufacturing jobs into one of the lowest-paying.
 * 8 The Most Dangerous Job:** in this chapter the working conditions of fast food meat slaughterhouses are discussed. one of the workers gave
 * Prediction:** i predict that the laws will look into the treatment of workers and safety of food in the meatpacking industry.

the strength of the meatpacking industry. He describes many food borne illnesses caused by bacteria such as E. Coli, Listeria, Clostridium and Samonella. He described the 'industry that arose to supply the nations fast food chains'. He "proved to be an extremely efficient system for spreading disease." Fast Food Nation describes how strong and powerful the meat industry is. Over 100 years ago President Roosevelt called for massive legislative changes including inspections. The industry fought this very hard and a water down version of his proposals passed in the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. One hundred years later President Clinton announced a new science based inspection system to be adopted by the USDA. The end result after working with congress was the introduction of self regulation and limited public disclosure. Schlosser does describe the strength as the fast food demand takes part in changing the industry. Their purchasing power has changed what the government could not. The fast food industry now requires more testing for E. Coli and other pathogens.
 * 9 What's In The Meat:** this chapter starts with an introduction of a food borne illness and the largest meat recall of its time. Schlosser describes
 * Prediction**: i predict that food regulations will be even stronger now.

the collapse after World War 1 and the rise of the Hitler Youth Movement. He then introduced globalization. "A decade ago, Mcdonalds had about 3000 restaurants outside the United States; today it has 17000 restaurants in more than 120 countries. He goes on to say that not only are they expanding overseas they are taking the same supply chain methodoligy with them. An Indian farmer described "A Mcdonalds restaurant is just the window of a much larger system comprising an extensive food-chain." Schlosser then describes the obesity epidemic in the United States and how it is spreading globally. He went on to say, "wherever America's fast food chains go, waistlines start expanding." It seems Schlosser was trying to use Plauen, Germany as the example of globalization.
 * 10 Global Realization/Have It Your Way**: Plauen, Germany. Schlosser describes the ___ of a german town. The rise of the textile industry,
 * Prediction:** i predict that the whole world is going to get fatter if people continue to eat fast food.

=**Author's Goal:**= The author's goal in writing this novel was to inform the people eating fast food of how it started, what it really is and that there are healthy alternatives.People need to weigh convenience over the health aspects. He wanted to expose the truth instead of just the outside look of things. He was one- sided when he looked at things. He was saying that fast food is creating more bad than good.

=Muckraking Theme:= the author was trying to uncover how extremely unhealthy fast food really is and the terrible conditions of slaughter houses. the techniques he used to get this information were talking to employees of fast food restaurants and slaughter houses. and he snuck into a slaughter house at night, he saw people inches from one another, ankle deep in blood working on a carcass. so he discovered that the slaughter houses are really hazardous and have horrible working treatment/pay. also that fast food is so bad for your health, a child that grows up with fast food is more likely to have lifetime obesity problems.