McDonald's

McDonald
A few years journalist Schlosser studied as a fast food system plowed not just a diet, but even the landscape of America first, and then the other continents ...

He knows where the meat is taken (and therefore stopped eating ground beef), why it is so tasty fried potatoes and what is the real price of a hamburger, which does not hang over the counter. Having stated all of this in the book, Schlosser still fighting off sharks of angry American food industry. And in the newspapers received, such responses: "Sit for half an hour with this book, get the best diet" ( "Sunday Herald") and "This reading is enough to turn vegetarian Schwarzenegger in" ( "Seattle Weekly") ...
Instead of joining


... "McDonald's" is, in schools, on ships, in hospitals.
... In 1970, Americans spent on this meal $ 6 billion a year in 2001 - more than 110 billion, which is more than a college education, computers, cars.. More than books, movies, magazines, newspapers, videos and music together.
... On any given day, yesterday and today, a quarter of American adults dine in fast food. From fast food can not escape, regardless of whether you eat there twice a day, to avoid this or even never bite of hamburger, as many in Ukraine.
... "MD" today is responsible for 90% of new jobs each year. Each year, the company employs a million people. But the largest employer - the lowest salary. Worse only immigrants in the fields.
... The average American eats three hamburgers and four servings of potatoes each week.
... One in eight US workers had worked in the "McDonald's».
... "MD" consume pork, beef and potatoes more than anyone in the United States, chicken - a little less than fast food "frayed Kentucky Chicken"
. ... On advertising "MD" spends most brands in the world.
... Especially for the "McDonald's" chickens bred breed with huge breasts, "Mr. MD." From the white breast meat is a popular dish on the menu, "Chicken McNuggets". This has changed the entire industry chicken production. Chicken began to sell not entirely as 20 years ago, and cut into pieces.
... Golden Arches "McDonald's", according to psychologist Louis Cheskin - Freudian symbol. This "huge pair of breasts" Mother ... McDonald
... 96% of American preschool children will recognize the clown Ronald McDonald. Higher percentage of recognition only Santa Claus.
When the burgers were on the conveyor, the Americans settled the West on your car, changing the face of Southern California's road network. By 1940, Los Angeles had a million trucks: more than 41 states. It appeared in California the world's first motel and fast food father - drive-in, a roadside restaurant. Drivers lured bright neon signs and girls in short skirts, so-called "karhops" - road waitress who took orders and bring food into the car
. Drive-ins in the '50s were wildly popular. When they grew up, even calling the church "Pray in the family car».
Two brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald arrived in California at the beginning of the Great Depression, looking for a job in Hollywood. By setting the scenery in the studio, they have accumulated some money and opened a movie theater. But the restaurant is not profitable, and then the brothers decided to join the fashion business. Their "McDonald Brothers burger bar Drive-in" with hotdogs was surprisingly profitable.
By the end of the 40s the brothers tired of hiring new waitresses, all the time to change jobs, look for good cooks and buy plates that teenage customers constantly pounded. Sami teenagers buyers also they were bored.
McDonald's closed up shop, and 3 months later rediscovered. But everything was different. They found huge grills, threw two-thirds of the items from the menu, leaving what not to eat with a knife and fork. Replaced china paper.
For the first time applied the principle of the assembly line in the kitchen: one employee grilled burgers and another was putting them in a bun. All burgers are now made with a filling: ketchup, onions, mustard, two pickles. The advertising slogan places read: "Imagine - no waiters - no dishwashers - no drivers. Self! »
Due to all this, the burgers have become cheaper by half, and the customer was not hanging up.
For the brothers hired a young man, thinking that the girl hated attract teenagers, and it will turn away all other customers. The calculation was correct. Soon we turn noticeably matured, and the newspapers wrote: "Finally, working families can feed their children in the restaurant." Layman Richard himself came up with the design cafe. That it could be seen from a distance, he set up two golden arches, illuminated neon on the roof. Thus was born one of the signs of our times.
Competitors opened his mouths. Soon all over the country there were institutions with the words "Our restaurant is the same as the" McDonald's "!". The idea of ​​traveling from one to another shopkeeper. All fast food chains giants grew out of the cafe. A "McDonalds" of 250 in 1960 was 3,000 in 1973.
Cover its network all over America brothers helped talented businessman Ray Kroc. Once he was a jazz musician, he played in a brothel, then sold all the small stuff ...
Glancing at the restaurant "MD", Kroc understood that with such a can conquer the world.
McDonald brothers were not so ambitious. They sheared 100 thousand a year, had a large house and three Cadillacs and does not like to travel. Because both agreed to the proposal Kroc sold the franchise to all wishing to open new cafe.
First, the right to open the "McDonald's" was worth $ 950. Today - 500 000. And Kroc was the founding father of the "McDonald's Corporation»
. Feed the children and feeds
children McDonald Brothers relied on family. Kroc went on and learned to sell goods to children. At the beginning of the business, he flew around the city on his "chessno" to search out where the schools are located.
In the mid-70s in the United States was in the midst of a baby boom, but not too much there clean and comfortable place for a family holiday. But every child can bring not only two parents but also grandparents ... Kroc liked to say that he does not work in the "food industry", and in show business.
Colored areas with slides, ball pools, clown Ronald (appeared in the 60s thanks to the TV program) and food wrapped in bright packaging, charmed children.
Now in the "McDonald's" $ 8,000 playgrounds in the "Burger King" - 2000 "Platforms bring children, children - parents, parents - money." Every month, here come 90% of all American offspring. Besides playgrounds and clown draw their toys, which together with a hamburger and coke are included in the set of "Happy Mills" - "happy meal". Toys released after the release of the next series of the cartoon or movie, they want to collect in the collection ... Soft animals "Beanie Baby", stuffed balls, for 10 days in 1997, sold 100 million!
As a result, the modern child eats hamburgers and drinking three times more cola than 30 years ago. In America, the cola drink even 2-year-old kids. (Today Kroc tactics adopted many companies realized that the children - a win-win category of buyers, which tormented by guilt busy parents spend more money.)
By and large, all the fast food industry is designed for children. This is what feeds the children and feeding them at the same time: the main labor force of these cafes are seniors
. Two-thirds of all employees of the network is not fast food 20. They work for a very small fee, by performing simple operations. In 1958 in the "MD" appeared the first instruction on page 75, describes in detail the procedure for all actions for the preparation of food and ways to communicate with customers. Today, in a book of 750 pages, and it is called "the bible of McDonald's».
Staff turnover in fast food - up to 400%. A typical worker leaves the cafe after only 4 months. Among the employees a lot of teenagers from poor families and immigrants, especially from Latin America, who know in English only the name of the dishes on the menu.
Small wages and lack of labor protection is replaced by the creation of "team spirit" among the young workers. It has long been the managers of "McDonalds" taught how to properly praise subordinates and create the illusion of their indispensability. After all, it is cheaper than raise wages.
Injuries in young personnel twice higher than in adults. Each year, crippled in their cafe 200,000 people. In addition, fast-food outlets are often subjected to armed assaults - mostly by the same teenagers who worked there or work. 4-5 people are killed at work each month. In 1998, more than were killed in a US restaurant workers than police officers.
Young Manpower likes to joke. Videos of fast food restaurants in Los Angeles showed that teenagers sneeze into the food, lick your fingers pick their nose, extinguish cigarettes on products, drop them on the floor. In May 2000, three teenagers from the "Burger King" in New York City have been arrested for being about 8 months spat and urinated in the food. In mixers live cockroaches, and mice to climb at night to left defrosting hamburgers ... It is known that many employees do not eat fast food in your own cafe, until we prepare ourselves portion.
Mr. Kartofan
Idaho informal motto: "We have a good potato and ... well, nothing else
. But potatoes are good! "Back in the 20s in this region with warm days, cool nights and light volcanic soils formed potato superindustriya.
The harvest had to throw out. The Americans while eating potatoes boiled, baked or mashed potatoes, but gradually the love of French fries, a recipe which is still in 1802-m brought back from France, President Jefferson, spread everywhere. Successful potato farmer JR Simplot always kept his nose to the wind. And soon his chemists perfected the technology of fast freezing.
Simplot began ice-cream slices in 1953. To my surprise, at first he could not find enough buyers. At the same time it has been a headache for the Ray Kroc potatoes. Using popular not less than hamburgers, it takes a lot of time. And then Kroc decided to buy frozen potatoes from Simplot.
The visitors enjoyed the cafe. Or rather, they did not notice anything. But the sharp decline in prices has added "french fry" popularity: it began to consume almost 8 times more. (A Simplot with a light hand of fast food has become one of the richest men in America and the largest landowners This goes an old multi-billionaire in a cowboy hat, dine in the "MD" and drives a Lincoln with number «Mr. Spud» -. «Mr. Kartofan".) < br> Modern potato plant - "the triumph of progress." Potatoes are sorted automatically, washed, dried fallow so that the skin falls off. Then automatically cut and cameras from different sides look out tuber defects and knock out these potatoes steam in a special compartment to carefully cut away the affected area. Sliced ​​potatoes falls into huge vats of boiling oil, it is fried to a light crunch, frozen, sorted by computer, a special centrifuge is placed in the same direction, packed and taken to the restaurant. In the fall of potatoes to add sugar, spring clean - and the taste is always the same
. You shave the same as chew on
dinner The taste of the potatoes from the "McDonalds" everybody likes. Previously, he depended solely on the fat, in which it is roasted. For decades it was a mixture of 7% cottonseed oil and 93% beef fat. In 1990, people turned against cholesterol, fast food and switched to 100% vegetable oil. But the taste is something needed to leave the same! Today, if you ask in the "McDonald's" information about the composition of food, at the end of a long list of modest look "natural flavoring." It is a universal explanation of why everything is so fast food Yummy ...
Fast food was born in the era of Eisenhower, enchanted technology, during the slogans "improve the lives of chemistry" and "Atom - our friend." Recipes potatoes and hamburgers can not be found in cookbooks, and in the writings of "Technology of Food Industry" and "Food Engineering". Almost all the products arrive at the cafe is already frozen, canned or dried, and cuisine of these cafes have become the latest in a series of instances of a complex industrial process. This simple-looking food perelopachena a hundred times. What we eat there for the last 40 years has changed more than in the previous 40 000. And the taste and smell of hamburgers and K is made in huge chemical plants in New Jersey.
About 90% of all the products that we buy, have been pretreated. But conservation and frost killed the natural taste of food. For the past 50 years, neither we nor the fast food could not survive without chemical plants.
flavor industry secret. Leading US companies would not divulge any precise formula of the product, nor the names of major customers. Visitors to fast food restaurant thought he had good food and talented chefs ...
Before you visit one of the factories of the company "International Flavors Fragransez End" ( "International flavors"), Schlosser signed an undertaking not to disclose the names of products containing the company's products. He visited the laboratories of "snacks" that are responsible for the taste of bread, potato chips, crackers, cereal; confectionery - it "makes" ice cream, candy, cakes and toothpaste; beverage laboratory, where expires "proper" beer and "a 100%" juice. Odour Strawberry - is at least 350 chemicals. Most flavors or colors in soda. You can give food the smell of freshly cut grass or unwashed bodies ...
By the way, the difference between "natural" and "artificial" flavors absurd. Those and other consist of the same, obtained thanks to highly developed technology and made on the same plant. Just first obtained by subjecting the chemical reactions of organic foods, and the second "collect" artificially. In addition to the taste of products, the company produces the smell of 6 of the top 10 spirits of the world, including "BEAUTIFUL" "Estee Lauder" and "Tresor" "Lankoma". And the smells of soap, dishwashing detergents, shampoos and others.
All this is the result of a single process. You shave practically the same as you have for dinner.
It is proved that taste preferences, as well as personality, are formed in the first years of life. Young children eat fast food, and it becomes for them "happy meal" for life ...
People eat cows
Cowboys and ranchers have always been an icon of the American West. But more than half a million of them in the last 20 years have sold cattle and changed occupation. All the meat industry to get their hands on large corporations working in fast food. Everything has changed: the contents of the cow trough to pay the butcher. Work at the factory has become the most dangerous in America: only the official figure is 40,000 injuries a year. US meat processing plants process up to 400 carcasses per hour, while in Europe more than 100. Because of low wages among immigrants working here.
But change is not only the process of slaughter. It is only the last straw in a string of fatal for the meat industry changes.
Cows fed the farmers, as they should, grass. Cows are designed for large fastfudovskoy grinder, three months before the killing of huge herds are driven on special areas, where they are fed grain and anabolics.
One cow can eat more than 3,000 pounds of grain, and to dial 400 pounds. The meat thus becomes very greasy, just right for stuffing.
The increase in grain prices has worsened the already dire situation. Until 1997 - the first call of the mad cow disease - 75% of the US cattle ate the remains of sheep, cows and even dogs and cats from animal shelters. In one 1994 US cows ate 3 million pounds of chicken manure. After 1997, in the diet were additive from pigs, horses and chickens, along with sawdust from the chicken coops.
Caution: minced
! In the early twentieth century have burgers had a bad reputation. They were considered dangerous food of the poor, which is sold only with carts at the factory or at fairs.
"There are burgers - all the same what to eat from the trash" - then wrote the newspaper. Correct reputation loaf with cutlet succeeded in 20 years of "The White Castle", which established their grills in the public eye. Then arrived drayviny and family policy "McDonalds". Hamburger seemed all perfect infant food: easy to chew, hold in your hand, hearty and inexpensive
. And the most terrible victims hamburgers, too, were children. More than 700 children were ill in Seattle in 1993, and six died after dining at fast food "John Jack se Boxing." Within 8 years after this incident similar infection picked up half a million people.
Of these, hundreds were killed hamburgers, namely contained in minced colibacteria.