What We Eat

                In his very powerful essay, What We Eat, Eric Schlosser explains how the fast food industry is impacting our nation both health-wise and financially speaking.  He argues that fast food is unhealthy for us and that the fast food industries are ending small businesses.  He uses numerous writing methods in this essay in an attempt to show and explain to people exactly what is happening in our nation without us even noticing.  

                At the start of his essay, Schlosser uses description to describe what someone experiences as they walk into a fast food place, “Pull open the glass door, feel the rush of cool air, walk in, get on line, study the backlit color photographs above the counter, place your order, hand over a few dollars...”(667).  He uses compare and contrast to show the eating habit-changes the world has gone through in the past centuries/years, “The early Roman Republic was fed by its citizen-farmers; the Roman Empire, by its slaves. On any given day in the United States about one-quarter of the adult population visits a fast food restaurant” (668). After this he explains the cause (and later on the effect) of the rise of the food industry, “the extraordinary growth of the fast food industry has been driven by fundamental changes in American society” (668).

                Eric Schlosser uses numerous examples throughout his essay to make his point and the one food industry he focuses mostly on is McDonald’s.  He introduces his McDonald’s argument with the sentence, “The McDonald’s Corporation has become a powerful symbol of America’s service economy, which is now responsible for 90 percent of the country’s new jobs” (668). He uses definition to explain what is meant by the phrase “McDonaldization,” which is referred to as the dominance of giant food industries over independent small businesses.  Plus, Eric Schlosser uses narrative when he explains his experience with fast food, “During the two years spent researching this book, I ate an enormous amount of fast food” (673). 

                I think using all these writing methods helped make Eric Schlosser’s essay very powerful. He made a good argument and backed it up with a lot of information. I like his writing style because it was well organized and clear so I was able to understand what his argument was.  I had heard the argument that fast food is unhealthy for us many times so that was no surprise. However, I found his argument of the impact of big food industries on our economy very interesting.  I never realized the damage big food industries were causing small businesses much less the impact of me always buying food there, instead of at independent businesses, was having on our economy.  I do not want all the money of our nation to belong to just a few men in the food industry; I want the wealth to be distributed among everyone, especially those small businesses that are usually full of hardworking people trying their best to survive in this nation. I really do hope a lot more people read What We Eat because I am sure many people out there are not aware of half the things mentioned in this essay.