From Forge To Fast Food

Some say the adventurous days of grueling and dangerous scientific exploration are long gone, but Reiter (sociology, Brock U.) undertook a 10-month trek--without pay!--into the uncharted wilds of a Burger King kitchen to bring us first-hand accounts of the strange and marvellous customs of the natives. The illustrations are hilarious. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Eating junk food and fast food is a great all-American passion. American kids and grownups love their candy bars, Big Macs and supersized fries, Doritos, Twinkies, and Good Humor ice cream bars. The disastrous health effects from the enormous appetite for these processed fat- and sugar-loaded foods are well publicized now. This was particularly dramatically evidenced by Super Size Me (2004), filmmaker Morgan Spurlock's 30-day all-McDonald's diet in which his liver suffered the same poisoning as if he had been on an extended alcohol binge. Through increased globalization, American popular food culture is being increasingly emulated elsewhere in the world, such as China, with the potential for similar disastrous consequences. This A-to-Z reference is the first to focus on the junk food and fast food phenomena from a multitude of angles in addition to health and diet concerns. More than 250 essay entries objectively explore the scope of the topics to illuminate the American way through products, corporations and entrepreneurs, social history, popular culture, organizations, issues, politics, commercialism and consumerism, and much more. Interest in these topics is high. This informative and fascinating work, with entries on current controversies such as mad cow disease and factory farming, the food pyramid, movie tie-ins, and marketing to children, will be highly useful for reports, research, and browsing. It takes readers behind the scenes, examining the significance of such things as uniforms, training, packaging, and franchising. Readers of every age will also enjoy the nostalgia factor, learning about the background of iconic drive-ins, the story behind the mascots, facts about their favorite candy bar, and collectables. Each entry ends with suggested reading. Besides an introduction, a timeline, glossary, bibliography, resource guide, and photos enhance the text. Sample entries: A&W Root Beer; Advertising; Automobiles; Ben & Jerry's; Burger King; Carhops; Center for Science in the Public Interest; Christmas; Cola Wars; Employment; Fair Food; Fast Food Nation; Hershey, Milton; Hollywood; Injury; Krispy Kreme; Lobbying; Nabisco; Obesity; PepsiCo; Salt; Soda Fountain; Teen Hangouts; Vegetarianism; White Castle; Yum! Brands, Inc.

This fascinating and revealing work examines the incredible power of junk food and fast food—how nostalgic we are about them, the influence of the companies that manufacture or sell them, and their alarming effect on our country's state of health. In the last half century, junk food and fast food have come to play an extremely important role in American economic, historical, cultural, and social life. Today, they have a major influence on what Americans eat—and how healthy we are (or aren't). Fast Food and Junk Food: An Encyclopedia of What We Love to Eat tells the intriguing, fun, and incredible stories behind the successes of these commercial food products and documents the numerous health-related, environmental, cultural, and politico-economic issues associated with them. With more than 700 alphabetically arranged entries, this two-volume encyclopedia contains enough listings to allow readers to research a wide range of fascinating topics. The author treats the massive amount of subject material within this reference title in a fair and balanced manner. A secondary focus of this encyclopedia is to chart the spread of some American fast food chains and commercially produced junk foods internationally.

Praise for Fast Food, Fast Track "A fine ethnography with both theoretical and advocative significance, representing the best qualitative sociology." — Choice "Explores the intimate realities and behind-the-scenes exchanges of a multiethnic work force serving the typical American meal. Through a lively narrative and insightful stories, Jennifer Parker Talwar gives a full sense of what it's like to live in both a global economy and a local culture." —Sharon Zukin, author of The Cultures of Cities No longer just pocket money for American teens, wages paid by multinational fast-food chains are going to a new generation of order-takers, burger-flippers, and basket-fryers—newly arrived immigrants hailing from China, the Caribbean, Latin America, and India, a colorful sea of faces has taken its place behind one of the most ubiquitous American business institutions—the fast-food counter. They have become a vital link between the growing service sector in our cities' ethnic enclaves and the multi-billion dollar global fast-food industry. For four years, sociologist Jennifer Parker Talwar went behind the counter herself and listened to immigrant fast-food workers in New York City's ethnic communities. They talked about balancing their low-paying jobs and monotonous daily reality with keeping the faith that these very jobs could be the first step on the path to the American Dream. In this original and compelling work of ethnography, Talwar shows that contrary to those arguing that the fast-food industry only represents an increasing homogenization of the American workforce, fast-food chains in immigrant communities must and do adapt to their surroundings.

2018 Morris Rosenberg Award, DC Sociological Society In recent years, questions such as “what are kids eating?” and “who’s feeding our kids?” have sparked a torrent of public and policy debates as we increasingly focus our attention on the issue of childhood obesity. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that while 1 in 3 American children are either overweight or obese, that number is higher for children living in concentrated poverty. Enduring inequalities in communities, schools, and homes affect young people’s access to different types of food, with real consequences in life choices and health outcomes. Fast-Food Kids sheds light on the social contexts in which kids eat, and the broader backdrop of social change in American life, demonstrating why attention to food’s social meaning is important to effective public health policy, particularly actions that focus on behavioral change and school food reforms. Through in-depth interviews and observation with high school and college students, Amy L. Best provides rich narratives of the everyday life of youth, highlighting young people’s voices and perspectives and the places where they eat. The book provides a thorough account of the role that food plays in the lives of today’s youth, teasing out the many contradictions of food as a cultural object—fast food portrayed as a necessity for the poor and yet, reviled by upper-middle class parents; fast food restaurants as one of the few spaces that kids can claim and effectively ‘take over’ for several hours each day; food corporations spending millions each year to market their food to kids and to lobby Congress against regulations; schools struggling to deliver healthy food young people will actually eat, and the difficulty of arranging family dinners, which are known to promote family cohesion and stability. A conceptually-driven, ethnographic account of youth and the places where they eat, Fast-Food Kids examines the complex relationship between youth identity and food consumption, offering answers to those straightforward questions that require crucial and comprehensive solutions.

Wilk and his colleagues draw upon their own international field experience to examine how food systems are changing around the globe. The authors offer a cultural perspective that is missing in other economic and developmental studies, and provide rich ethnographic data on markets, industrial production, and food economies. This new book will appeal to professionals in economic and environmental anthropology: economic development, agricultural economics, consumer behavior, nutritional sciences, environmental sustainability, and globalization studies.

This informative volume explores Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation through the lens of the food industry. Coverage includes: an examination of Schlosser's life as an investigative journalist; Schlosser's view of the food industry as demonstrated in his book; how investigative journalism can be viewed as literature; how Fast Food Nation has changed people's perspectives and actions; criticisms of Fast Food Nation and its message; and contemporary perspectives on the food industry with commentary on topics such as food regulations and movements.