Fast Food Nation

Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation was one of the very first books to raise nationwide awareness of the American meat industry and the insalubrious nature of fast food joints. Published in 2002, it was an instant bestseller, provoking discussion and also occasioning reform across the country.

A lot has changed in the years since then, of course. Farmers’ markets are proliferating and the White House is advocating changes to legislation to improve school meals, with a consequent spate of internet publications and updates. There’s still a lack of clarity, alas. Our food production system is still deeply flawed and could do with radical change.

I struggled at first to imagine how I could transform such a drastic, feisty book into a fictional filmic portrait of the fast-food industry. But now I feel satisfied because I believe the film lives up to the book, with its portraits of different people in the catering world. In one story, we follow a group of illegal Mexican immigrants as they cross the border and fight danger and the disgrace of work in a meat packing plant. Another shows the deputy marketing manager of an imaginary fast-food chain called Mickey’s as he inadvertently coms across the awful quality of the meat they serve. Then there’s a group of students working in one of the restaurants who question industrial food production costs and their own need to make a few dollars.