Even though he admits he has no idea where it came from, Eric Schlosser is eating the chicken.
His willingness to surrender to the whims of the food chain comes as a surprise to those who lunch with Schlosser, author of the 2001 bestseller “Fast Food Nation” and the journalist who almost singlehandedly launched American hand-wringing about processed food.
“I’m not afraid of food,” said Schlosser, tucking into a glazed chicken breast recently at a Cherry Creek North bistro. For the record, Schlosser also ordered the spinach, just after an e. coli outbreak had virtually wiped that vegetable off the grocery shelf.
“If I come to your house and you serve me steak, I’m not going to ask where it came from,” Schlosser said. “I pretty much eat what I used to eat. I just try to buy a little more carefully.”
Schlosser helped director Richard Linklater turn his nonfiction classic into the new fictional feature movie “Fast Food Nation,” opening across the country on Friday. Much of the movie’s story takes place in and around a Colorado meatpacking plant, focusing on the chapters of Schlosser’s investigatory book that reveal the brutal working conditions and potentially dangerous contaminations in the American red-meat industry.
While Schlosser is trying to finish a longterm nonfiction project on the U.S. prison system, he remains in touch with food activists, workers and government officials. What he learned in the course of researching “Fast Food Nation” does linger in his eating habits, even while he swears he is not a “food Nazi.”
“I don’t eat veal on moral grounds,” Schlosser said, sounding more sorrowful than ideological. Veal calves are still raised in reprehensible conditions, Schlosser argues. “It’s hard to eat ham and other pork,” he added, because of the conditions inside massive corporate hog farms, and the enormous amounts of animal waste those farms generate. “I just can’t abide it.”
In his book and on tour with the movie, Schlosser mentions the West Coast chains In-N-
Out Burger and Burgerville as franchises that both serve higher-quality meat and treat their employees well. In Colorado, the Good Times burger franchise boasts of serving Coleman all-natural beef products.
But Schlosser is less interested in directing people where to eat than he is in telling them to open their eyes once they get there. Much of “Fast Food Nation” railed against the low wages paid to workers in the chain, from the killing floor to the McDonald’s front counter.
“The low cost of fast food is an illusion,” Schlosser said. He notes Wal-Mart’s resistance to providing full health-care benefits to its workers, and the multinational meatpackers’ poor records in workplace safety and post-injury benefits.
Whether the global chain is McDonald’s, or Wal-Mart, or Little Ceasar’s pizza, “Their version of free enterprise involves the rest of us paying for their workers,” Schlosser said. He believes the food industry often relies on illegal Mexican immigrants to get the work done cheaply, then discards them as soon as they are injured, ask for higher wages or demand better working conditions.
At a special screening of “Fast Food Nation” the night before, Schlosser told the audience that American consumers spend more on beef than people in any other country. “Yet the people who bring you that beef are invisible,” he said.
Though both Schlosser’s book and the subsequent movie are about as dark as American popular culture ever gets, at the movie screening he called himself an “optimist.”
“I have a great love for this country – I write about things because I think they can change,” Schlosser said.
Back at lunch, he said he has seen some improvements for consumers – if not for workers – as a result of a widespread re-thinking of fast food.
“Absolutely. You can get a healthy meal at McDonald’s now,” he said, noting the addition of salads and options for kids’ meals. “You can read a label at McDonald’s and know what you’re getting.”
Still, Schlosser worries the fast-food industry is taking the same route as the tobacco companies, when confronted by increasing regulation and public outcry. “Big tobacco focused on lower-income smokers,” those without as much education or free time to study the health effects of their actions, Schlosser said.
Salads are nice, he added, but the food chains have redoubled their marketing efforts to “heavy users” from lower income groups.
“McDonald’s is making more profit from its dollar menu than it is from salads,” he said.
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