Author Serves Fast-food Facts
By Tom Vogt, The Columbian Staff Writer
Friday, May 20, 2005
These students will be taking on the toughest competition around, but they'll have two things going for them: real food, and a real ability to cook it.
But those two commodities are not always reflected in America's dining choices, author Eric Schlosser told Vancouver students Thursday.
Schlosser discussed the issues that helped make his "Fast Food Nation" a world-wide bestseller. He spoke first with students in the Fort Vancouver High School culinary arts program, and, a couple of hours later, to several hundred Columbia River High School students.
"You have bull's-eyes on your backs," Schlosser said at the Columbia River assembly. He explained that international fast-food chains "have made you targets, for your money and your labor. They've been marketing to you since you were 2 or 3 years old."
Fast food isn't the only industry targeting teens, but there is a big difference between food and fashion. If you decide you don't like a shirt, you can pass it along to your brother, Schlosser said.
"But food enters your body, and it plays a role in your quality of life."
That food is produced and distributed in ways that didn't exist 30 years ago, Schlosser continued.
"It looks the same, but there are fundamental differences," he said. A national chain wants its milkshake or cheeseburger to taste the same in Albany or Albuquerque, so "they buy from enormous factories.
"Three companies provide meat to fast-food chains. Thirty years ago, a hamburger patty came from one cow. Now, it can have beef from thousands of cows from four or five countries."
Intensive processing can be hard on food flavors, but science has the answer for that, Schlosser said: "Flavor can be added later."
Schlosser elaborated on that process in the Fort Vancouver kitchen, reading a paragraph from "Fast Food Nation" that listed ingredients in a national-chain strawberry milkshake. One part of the recitation included about 50 chemical compounds that leaned heavily toward words like ethyl, methyl and phenyl. One ingredient scored the hat trick: ethyl methylphenylglycidate.
And that 50-item list was just for the artificial strawberry flavoring.
Just about everything from an apple to a gallon of gasoline can be defined by its most basic chemical compositions, but that's not the point, Schlosser said. The fast-food flavor enhancers "are synthesized in a lab and mixed in a factory. I'm trying to show the industrial nature of foods."
Cooking skill has been programmed out of the process, he added. The chains want easily replaced production units, not skilled workers; so by following directions on charts and responding to prompts from the equipment, a worker doesn't have to read English or read at all to assemble a meal.
Fast food has lost a lot of its appeal for at least two students in the Fort Vancouver kitchen.
"I eat fast food every now and then, but I probably will hardly ever eat it now," said Sean Blair, a Columbia River senior who attends the magnet program.
"I don't eat out a lot. I don't like a lot of chemicals," said Amanda Elliott, a Fort Vancouver senior.
And Schlosser? He said he loves fast-food standbys.
"My favorite meal on this planet is a cheeseburger and fries," he said, but he eats them at restaurants that use fresh ingredients that are produced regionally.
And that includes the Vancouver-based Burgerville system, he said. Schlosser was in the Portland-Vancouver area for a speech sponsored by Kaiser Permanente and had dinner Wednesday night at a Burgerville restaurant.
"I'm not a spokesman. I'd never been there until last night," he added.
The issues Schlosser discussed have an even bigger impact on the students who gathered around him in the Fort Vancouver kitchen. They're looking for careers out of food, not just a snack. Elliott wants to own her own restaurant, while Blair wants to be a baker.
"If these kids work hard and learn skills, they will have a real career," Schlosser said, referring to the students in David Angell's program.
"The public's awareness of food is increasing. The fast-food model is from the '50s and '60s, and there is real pressure now for fresh food," Schlosser said. "Learning how to cook is a useful skill, and a marketable skill."
Did you know?
McDonald's is the nation's largest purchaser of beef, pork and potatoes.
One hamburger patty in a fast-food burger can contain beef from more than a 1,000 head of cattle that were raised in four or five different countries.