While continuing to read Fast Food Nation written by Eric Schlosser it is just so interesting to learn about how the fast food production has started many years ago. It talks about companies such as McDonalds, Burger King, other old burger places that were around then, and pizza locations.
This chapter starts out talking about the J.R Simplot Plant in Aberdeen, Idaho. He grew up working on his family's farm in Idaho. At the age of 15 he dropped out of school and was able to find work in a potato house. After working there for one year he then was a potato farmer. Thinking about that, if something like that happened in today's society it would be looked at in such a different way! This type of situation just shows how times have changed. In today's society it is usually that you go to school to get an education and then continue on to pursue a higher degree. It just shows how over the years situations like this can change so much.
After many years he was very involved with potato farming with buying, selling and even sorting potatoes. I found this next part of the book to be very interesting because they can began to talk about how he was the largest shipper of potatoes. In the end he ended up selling frozen french fries to McDonalds. In the book there is a quote from Ray Kroc talking about frozen french fries, which states, "almost sacrosanct" (68).
This book was a book I was not sure about when first began reading it, but in the end I really ended up enjoying the book. It talked about the production of fast food with all the different food industries and how different foods got started in within the fast food business. Personally in my earlier blog I talked about how they wanted to put a McDonald's into Disney when it is such a high end vacation spot for families to this day still! I just find that to be so interesting and never would have assumed anything like that was talked about before.
It was so interesting to read about the potato industry. The potato industry is tied with many different food industries. When I read this chapter it seemed to me that the potato industry is almost larger than the food industry itself.
ReplyDeleteI also wrote about the fries in my blog! I actually found this section interesting because the way french fries were made, i never would've imagined. It is also sad to know that farmers lose their jobs to big corporate companies that take over.
ReplyDelete