Biology

Fast Food Nation is a movie tie-in of the book with the same title by Eric Schlosser, and a film which tackles the topic of fast food and its steadily-growing industry, mostly about its ill-effects and how it has emerged to become a force to contend with among business enterprises on a global scale.

Some facts that can be ascertained from this film immediately follow.  Primarily, the movie attempts to tell the viewer that fast food is now inextricably linked to the American way of life.  Next, despite the lack of training, the immigrants, most of whom are Mexicans, are made to work in hazardous conditions where they are expected to keep the pace, make the required quota, stay away from drugs and take utmost care not to be injured.  The presence of cattle manure is traced back to the meat packing plants where the untrained workers sometimes make mistakes in gutting the cattle, hence the accidental spillage of manure on the meat, which, by the way, occurs on a regular basis.  Fast food chains in general capitalize on low production costs such as cheap labor and the low price of raw materials to maintain the low prices of the items on their menu.  Oftentimes, students from the poor communities are the ones hired in fast food chains, and it is quite notable that sanitation standards are left unchecked, where these underpaid workers rebel against the corrupt system by delivering products which are of the most unhygienic and inferior quality.

The film is a poor adaptation of the book by Schlosser mainly because the film failed to capture everything that the author wanted to share to the viewer.  The movie tried to present some sub-plots out of the different ideas imparted by Schlosser but it somehow fails to cohere or conjure a unified portrait of all of these ideas pertaining to fast food.  Still, it is an enlightening piece of art on its own since it gives a glimpse of the accurate situation or what really goes on behind the fast food counter and even farther behind that, into the other links to the business as well as the factual routes in food handling and preparation.  There is not much reference made to the problem of obesity and its continuing upsurge as related to consumption of fast food in the US although there is an essential link to these two issues.  Likewise, possible solutions should have been included to address the issues, or the film should have just adhered to the documentary format like Super Size Me so that all the authors ideas could have been included.