Fast Food Nation

Schlosser continues his journey around the country, this time taking the reader to Idaho. He introduces J. R. Simplot, a former potato farmer turned business tycoon who was the pioneering force behind the frozen french fries McDonald’s and almost all other fast food chains use. Like Ray Kroc and Carl Karcher, Simplot was man from humble origins who relied upon his ingenuity and risk-taking to great effect. At the time Schlosser met Simplot, the man was a billionaire. The development of the frozen french fry heralded a monumental change to the American diet and to American agriculture. Schlosser lays out a history of how potato processing companies became tremendously powerful and the corresponding impact these companies had on individual family farming. Schlosser mentions the “fallacy of composition”—the “mistaken belief that what seems good for an individual will still be good when others do the same thing” (142)—and the way independent farmers used it to justify growing their businesses by introducing expensive new technologies and methods that would ultimately not be profitable when other farmers all did the same thing.

For the second half of the chapter, Schlosser transitions to a discussion of how french fries acquire their unique flavor, particularly McDonald’s fries.