On this day in vegan history · August 17, 1959
The Man Who Followed the Burger Home
Eric Schlosser was born in New York City, and grew up to trace the American burger back through the feedlot and the kill floor until a lot of readers put the tray down.
The facts
- Born
- August 17, 1959, New York City
- Book published
- Fast Food Nation, Houghton Mifflin, January 17, 2001
- Origin
- Grew out of Schlosser's reporting for Rolling Stone
- Film adaptation
- Directed by Richard Linklater, released 2006
Eric Schlosser was born on August 17, 1959, in New York City. After years of reporting for Rolling Stone, he spent nearly three years digging into the fast-food industry, following the hamburger backward from the counter to the slaughterhouse floor. The result, Fast Food Nation, came out from Houghton Mifflin on January 17, 2001. It read like an investigation, not a sermon, and that was the point: Schlosser laid out what he found and let the facts argue for themselves. The book became one of the defining pieces of food journalism of its decade and was later adapted into a 2006 film directed by Richard Linklater.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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Schlosser wrote Fast Food Nation (2001), an exposé on the unsanitary and discriminatory practices of the fast food industry.
Wikipedia, describing Schlosser's best-known work
Source: Wikipedia -
an avalanche of facts and observations as he examines the fast-food process from meat to marketing
Rob Walker, reviewing the book for The New York Times, as quoted in its Wikipedia entry
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
Fast Food Nation put the industrial food chain in front of millions of readers who had never had reason to look past the drive-through window, and the questions it raised about how meat gets to a tray are the same ones the vegan movement has spent the years since trying to answer.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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