ファストフードが世界を食いつくす [単行本]

   アメリカにファーストフード産業が誕生した社会的背景から、この業界の成長にともなって大きく変化した社会や食品業界を、現役記者が入念な取材をもとに描き出した衝撃の書。

   なかでも驚かされるのは、アメリカの精肉加工現場の衛生観念と、ずさんな労働管理の実態だ。生産されるひき肉の47パーセントがサルモネラ菌を含んでいることが判明した工場、就業中の事故による椎間板損傷を「軽いケガ」ですまそうとする会社側。「サルモネラ菌は自然の生物であって、混和物ではない」という会社の主張が連邦裁判所で認められ、工場の閉鎖が1日で解除されるという事実からは、先進国とはほど遠い業界像とアメリカ政府の認識の甘さが浮かび上がる。

   ファーストフードはおろか、牛肉を口にすることさえためらわれるような生々しい事実の数々。対岸の火事とは思いながらも、お昼に食べるハンバーガーの中身を勘繰りたくなる。（望月真弓）

ファストフードが世界を食いつくす
使われている肉の中身からずさんな労働管理の実態まで、著者の徹底的な取材によってファストフード業界の闇の部分が鋭く描き出される。

　この本は読み進めるほど過激な内容になっていく。圧巻は、自ら食肉処理工場を訪ねて見た牛の解体現場のシーンだ。作業員が牛の腹に腕を突っ込んで素手で腎臓をもぎ取るなど、過酷な作業の実態が描かれている。また、ここで処理された肉の安全性に問題があると厳しく非難している。すべて事実かうかがい知ることはできないが、普段食べているファストフードへの認識を改めさせられるのは確かだ。

(日経ビジネス 2001/09/10 Copyright©2001 日経BP企画..All rights reserved.)

Read by Rick Adamson

FAST FOOD NATION - the groundbreaking work of investigation and cultural history that has changed the way America thinks about the way it eats - and spent nearly four months on the New York Times bestseller list - now available on cassette!

Are we what we eat? To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar America. Though created by a handful of mavericks, the fast food industry has triggered the homogenization of our society. Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelling the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism abroad. That's a lengthy list of charges, but Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning.

Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from the California subdivisions where the business was born to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike where many of fast food's flavors are concocted. Along the way, he unearths a trove of fascinating, unsettling truths - from the unholy alliance between fast food and Hollywood to the seismic changes the industry has wrought in food production, popular culture, even real estate. He also uncovers the fast food chains' efforts to reel in the youngest, most susceptible consumers even while they hone their institutionalized exploitation of teenagers and minorities. Schlosser then turns a critical eye toward the hot topic of globalization - a phenomenon launched by fast food. --このテキストは、 CD 版に関連付けられています。

拡大と成長をつづけるファストフード産業。だが、その成功をもたらしたマクドナルド方式によって、アメリカではさまざまな分野に荒廃が広がりつつある。労働力を使い捨て、食の安全を切り捨てる。あるいは香料の魔術でわれわれの健康を脅かし、農業を崩壊させていく。自由市場経済、グローバリズムを喧伝し肥え太る一方のファストフード業界。その戦略の全貌を、緻密な取材と圧倒的筆力で描き出す、全米ベストセラー・ノンフィクション。

世界を席巻したファストフード産業は、いかにして町や文化を支配し、破壊してきたか。ハンバーガーに隠された巧妙にして恐るべき戦略を明らかにし、自由市場経済を悪用し肥え太るファストフード界の実態を暴き出す。

Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser's disturbing and timely exploration of one of the world's most controversial industries, has become a massive bestseller in America and rightly deserves to be so this side of the pond. On any given day, one out of four Americans opts for a quick and cheap meal at a fast-food restaurant, without giving either its speed or its cheapness a second thought. Fast food is so ubiquitous that it now seems harmless. But the industry's drive for consolidation, homogenisation and speediness has radically transformed the West's diet, landscape, economy and workforce, often in insidiously destructive ways.

Eric Schlosser, an award-winning journalist, opens his ambitious and ultimately devastating exposé with an introduction to the iconoclasts and high school dropouts, such as Harlan Sanders and the McDonald brothers, who first applied the principles of a factory assembly line to a commercial kitchen. However, he rapidly moves behind the counter to the overworked and underpaid teenage workers, onto the factory farms where the potatoes and beef are grown, and into the slaughterhouses run by giant meatpacking corporations. Schlosser wants you to know why those French fries taste so good (with a visit to the world's largest flavour company) and "what really lurks between those sesame-seed buns". Eater beware: forget your concerns about cholesterol, there is--literally--faeces in your meat.

Schlosser's investigation reaches its frightening peak in the meatpacking plants as he reveals the almost complete lack of regulation. His searing portrayal of the industry is disturbingly similar to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, written in 1906: nightmare working conditions, union busting and unsanitary practices that introduced E.coli and other pathogens into restaurants, schools and homes. Almost as disturbing is his description of how the industry "both feeds and feeds off the young", insinuating itself into all aspects of children's lives, even the pages of their school books, while leaving them prone to obesity and disease. Fortunately, Schlosser offers some eminently practical remedies. "Eating in the United States should no longer be a form of high-risk behaviour", he writes. Where to begin? Ask yourself, is the true cost of having it "your way" really worth it? --Lesley Reed --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

HSchlosser's incisive history of the development of American fast food indicts the industry for some shocking crimes against humanity, including systematically destroying the American diet and landscape, and undermining our values and our economy. The first part of the book details the postwar ascendance of fast food from Southern California, assessing the impact on people in the West in general. The second half looks at the product itself: where it is manufactured (in a handful of enormous factories), what goes into it (chemicals, feces) and who is responsible (monopolistic corporate executives). In harrowing detail, the book explains the process of beef slaughter and confirms almost every urban myth about what in fact "lurks between those sesame seed buns." Given the estimate that the typical American eats three hamburgers and four orders of french fries each week, and one in eight will work for McDonald's in the course of their lives, few are exempt from the insidious impact of fast food. Throughout, Schlosser fires these and a dozen other hair-raising statistical bullets into the heart of the matter. While cataloguing assorted evils with the tenacity and sharp eye of the best investigative journalist, he uncovers a cynical, dismissive attitude to food safety in the fast food industry and widespread circumvention of the government's efforts at regulation enacted after Upton Sinclair's similarly scathing novel exposed the meat-packing industry 100 years ago. By systematically dismantling the industry's various aspects, Schlosser establishes a seminal argument for the true wrongs at the core of modern America.(Jan.) Forecast: This book will find a healthy, young audience; it's notable that the Rolling Stone article on which this book was based generated more reader mail than any other piece the magazine ran in the 1990s.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar America. Though created by a handful of mavericks, the fast food industry has triggered the homogenization of our society. Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism abroad. That's a lengthy list of charges, but Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning.

Each day, one-quarter of the adults in the United States visit fast food restaurants, spending more than $110 billion dollars in the year 2000. Schlosser examines the franchise arrangement, with its curious blend of protection, paternalism and profit as adeptly as he delves into the specifics of what's in the beef. Also on Schlosser's hit list: the susceptibility of meat to dangerous pathogens such as e. coli; the slaughter of nearly 600 cows per hour (this American packinghouse standard, he reveals, is nearly 6 times the rate of European slaughterhouses); an in-depth look into serious nutritional, environmental, and cultural questions. Fast Food Nation is a groundbreaking work of investigation and cultural history that has changed the way America thinks about the way it eats.

"Fast Food Nation" the movie is slated to be released by Fox Searchlight on November 17, 2006. Starring Ethan Hawke, Avril Lavigne, Patricia Arquette, and Greg Kinnear.

--このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

“Superb and wonderfully horrifying....” (San Francisco Gate ) --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

Praise for FAST FOOD NATION:

"...a fine piece of muckracking, alarming without being alarmist. . .Schlosser is a serious and deligent reporter." - The New York Times Book Review

"FAST FOOD NATION should be another wake-up call, a super-size serving of common sense..." - Atlanta Journal Constitution

"Schlosser is part essayist, part investigative journalist. His eye is sharp, his profiles perceptive, his prose thoughtful but spare; this is John McPhee behind the counter..." - The Washington Post
--このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

Eric Schlosser is a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly. He has received a number of journalistic honors, including a National Magazine Award for an Atlantic article he wrote about marijuana. THis is his first audiobook. --このテキストは、 CD 版に関連付けられています。

シュローサー,エリック
アトランティック・マンスリー誌記者。麻薬の追跡記事などで数々の賞を受ける注目の新鋭ジャーナリスト(本データはこの書籍が刊行された当時に掲載されていたものです)