Capter 2: Your Trusted Friends

In chapter 2 of Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser goes into detail into various aspects of the fast food company and the role it plays in modern society. This chapter touches the subjects of consumerism,child advertising, and ,marketing. He introduces the chapter in an interesting manner in which he puts us in the setting of McDonald’s Plaza and Hamburger University in illinois. This place is the perfect example of how synonymous american culture has become with the fast food industry.

At one time these companies weren’t as big as they are today. One of the main reasons of their success is due to the fact that they learned how to sell food and happiness to children. They’ve learned how to market to children with bright colors, playful characters, toys and other commodities that children find appealing. They chose to target children specifically for three main reasons. one of them being that child customers naturally bring more customers because they need their parents money to pay for food which will likely cause the parents to buy their own food. the second reason simply being that children are the easiest demographic to fool and manipulate because they’re immature children and they don’t know that they are being fooled. The last reason is that McDonald’s (and now most major companies) want to make sure that from a very early age children become accustomed and familiar with the brands logo. They believe that this early relationship with a child ensures future sales from a nostalgic adult.

To further integrate fast food into america’s culture, fast food companies saw it as a good idea to work with other companies to further promote their product. These other companies that they usually signed deals with are directly with entertainment companies that work in television and movies. These deals were extremely profitable, they associated usually a popular childrens TV show and characters and the fast food. This was to make them associate something they like with something else and increase more sales. This has forever integrated America’s pop culture with fast food and now it’s considered a normal thing to have fast food a few times during the week. But, is that the way americans should be eating?