Chew On This Essay

We Are What We Eat

Chew on This by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson analyzes and criticizes the fast food industry as a whole and goes into gruesome detail about what lies behind the fast food signs all across the United States of America. Ranging from an analysis of the slaughterhouses that provide for fast food restaurants to an inside look and discussion with diabetic fast food consumers yearning for gastric bypass surgery, Chew on This un-wraps the truth behind the golden McDonald’s sign and the cheery mascots within fast food doors all around the country. Residing in his hometown of Seymour, Wisconsin in 1855, Charlie Nagreen, famously known as “Hamburger Charlie”, sold meatballs from a stand drawn by an ox at the Outagamie County

This signaled the creation of the illustrious hamburger, thus earning Nagreen his nickname. Many years later, Ray Kroc emerged and would successfully change the restaurant industry forever. Kroc, born soon after World War I, began his career as a thriving businessman by serving as a milkshake machine salesman. By selling these milkshake machines, he met the McDonald brothers, who owned the McDonalds restaurant in San Bernardino, California. Kroc recognized potential in the small restaurant, offering to partake in business with the brothers in exchange for some of the profits made. Kroc soon became the president of the McDonalds Corporation in 1955 and later bought McDonalds from the original owners. Kroc, wanting to introduce McDonalds to new, popular frontiers, wrote a letter to his old friend Walt Disney, the founder of Disneyland. In this letter, he asked Disney to consider introducing McDonalds into Disney’s theme park. Although McDonalds was not introduced to Disneyland at first, it eventually found a place within the theme park walls decades later. With the popularity of McDonalds and the fast food industry as a whole rising, Kroc wanted to ensure that the McDonalds

With his standards effectively in place, it was time for McDonald’s to adhere to the children; this resulted in the creation of famous mascot Ronald McDonald by Willard Scott and the placement of toys within kids meals. Other chains of fast food formulated their design after McDonalds, signaling the birth of fast food culture in America. With the rise in want for quick meals, it became hard for fast food chains to stick to old-school principles of food production; restaurants turned to factories for provisions. Artificial colorings and flavorings were introduced into products to enable restaurants to make more profit. Among the most horrid of changes within the fast food business were the rise of the infamous slaughterhouses, large buildings in which cows, pigs, and chickens are brutally murdered for the meat that provides American consumers with the chicken nuggets and burgers they crave. The sad truth behind these walls is generally unknown to the public because the reality behind slaughtering could potentially lead to a decrease in fast food sales. Within the walls of the slaughterhouses, “humane” methods are said to be practiced, but this is not always the case. Chickens are sedated and put into a sleep that causes them not to feel what happens next; they are first slit open and