Fwd: [Food-news] Eric Schlosser exposes fast food industry to young readers

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> [Food-news] Eric Schlosser exposes fast

> food industry to young

> readers

>

> *www.foodnews.ca

>

> *

> *Policy Gap and Confirmation:* As the heat continues

> to build on the

> junk food industry's marketing to children, along

> comes Eric Schlosser,

> author of the 2001 bestseller /Fast Food Nation/. A

> movie based on the

> book will premier at Cannes in May, while his new

> book, /Chew on This:

> Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food/

> exposes the inner

> workings of the fast-food industry to children, its

> most prized

> audience. The book tells younger readers the

> " sometimes frightening

> truth about what lurks behind those sesame-seed

> buns " , including " the

> grisly conditions in a chicken slaughterhouse " and

> " how those delicious

> fast-food smells are manufactured off a highway in

> New Jersey. "

> McDonald's has shifted into crisis management mode,

> with plans to

> discredit the message and the messenger including

> mobilizing a " truth

> squad " , according to company documents obtained by

> the Wall Street Journal.

>

> Schlosser's article in the Guardian below discusses

> how the relationship

> between big companies and small children has

> fundamentally changed in

> the last 30 years. Advertisers, especially those

> touting junk food and

> toys, now go to great lengths to figure out what

> kids like, interviewing

> them in shopping malls, organizing focus groups,

> studying children's

> drawings and fantasy lives, paying them to attend

> sleepover parties and

> then asking them questions late into the night. The

> fate of the fast

> food industry depends in great part on establishing

> a relationship with

> kids very early, creating " brand stickiness " .

>

> The book and film come as the US Department of

> Health and Human Services

> and the Federal Trade Commission are calling on the

> food, advertising

> and entertainment industries to limit their

> marketing of junk food to

> kids. The US beverage industry announced it is

> voluntarily removing

> high-calorie soft drinks from schools. In England

> the broadcast

> regulator Ofcom is proposing restrictions on

> advertising to children,

> although critics argue the proposals have been

> weakened by industry

> lobbying. And in Australia, pressure for change has

> led industry to

> propose a ban on ad wording that urges children to

> pester their parents

> into buying certain foods and beverages and the use

> of animated

> characters and celebrities in advertising to

> children. While the

> increased attention paid to child health is

> encouraging, the goal of

> these changes seems to be to avert legislative

> intervention and lawsuits

> rather than fundamentally respecting the

> vulnerabilities of childhood. *BC

>

> *Stuff the kids*

>

> It bombards them with adverts, seduces them with

> merchandise - and then

> fills them with additives. In an exclusive extract

> from his explosive

> new book, Eric Schlosser reveals how the fast-food

> industry exploits its

> key audience - the very young

>

> *Monday **April 24, 2006**

> The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>*

>

http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,,1760061,00.html

>

> In late August 2004, on the island of Singapore,

> John Pain asked a large

> gathering of business people from Malaysia, China,

> Indonesia and the

> Philippines to stand up. Then he asked them to raise

> their arms and form

> the shape of three letters, one after another. " Give

> me a Y! " Pain

> yelled out. " Y! " they yelled back. The auditorium

> was suddenly full of

> people looking like Ys. " Give me a U! " " U! " " Give me

> an M! " " M! " " What's

> that spell? " " YUM! " " What's that spell? " " YUM! YUM!

> YUM! "

>

> It was strange to see adults behaving this way,

> especially at a business

> meeting in south-east Asia. Pain works for KFC and

> he was trying to get

> the crowd excited about Yum! Brands, Inc, the

> company that owns KFC,

> Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. He was giving a speech

> about the " Top 10 ways

> to market to Asian youths of today " at the Youth

> Marketing Forum 2004

> conference. Hundreds of business people had paid

> thousands of dollars to

> learn the secrets of how to sell things to children.

> Sitting in the

> audience were representatives from McDonald's,

> Disney, Coca-Cola,

> Toyota, Nestlé and MTV. A special workshop held the

> previous day had

> promised to help companies create " brand preference

> and loyalty " among

> children.

>

> " It is all about establishing a relationship early, "

> Paul Kurnit, the

> president of a marketing firm called KidShop, told

> the conference on

> opening day.

>

> The relationship between big companies and small

> children has changed

> enormously in the past 30 years. Until recently,

> just a handful of

> companies aimed their advertising at children and

> they mainly sold

> breakfast cereals and toys. By 2002, however, the

> top five food

> advertisers in the UK were McDonald's, Coca-Cola,

> KFC and Pizza Hut.

> British food companies now spend £300m every year

> advertising to kids.

> Business people now realise that kids have a lot of

> money to spend and a

> lot of influence on what their parents buy. Every

> year in the United

> States children are responsible for more than $500bn

> worth of spending.

> Big companies want that money. And too often they

> are willing to

> manipulate kids in order to get it.

>

> Before trying to control children's behaviour,

> advertisers have to learn

> what kids like. Today's market researchers not only

> interview children

> in shopping malls, they also organise focus groups

> for children as young

> as two or three.

>

> At a focus group, kids are paid to sit around and

> discuss what they like

> to buy. The idea of creating a squeezable ketchup

> bottle came from kids

> in a focus group. Heinz earned millions of dollars

> from the idea; the

> kids who thought of it were paid a small amount.

> Advertisers study

> children's drawings, hire children to take part in

> focus groups, pay

> children to attend sleepover parties and then ask

> them questions late

> into the night. Advertisers send researchers into

> homes, stores, fast

> food restaurants and other places where kids like to

> gather. They study

> the fantasy lives of young children, then apply the

> findings in

> advertisements and product designs.

>

> " Children are important because they not only

> represent a significant

> percentage of our customers, " a Burger King

> spokesman said, " but they

> also have an incredible influence on what fast food

> restaurant their

> parents will choose. "

>

> The latest scientific research is also being used to

> make kids buy

> things. At the Singapore conference, Karen Tan,

> representing Coca-Cola,

> discussed how to make children remember a company's

> ads and create

> " brand stickiness " . According to Tan, research has

> found that one way to

> make a lasting imprint on a child's mind is to run

> the same

> advertisement over and over again. Repeating the

> same ad for a product

> is more effective than running a variety of

> different ads. The more

> times a child sees exactly the same ad, the more

> likely he or she will

> remember the product.

>

> The average American child now spends about 25 hours

> a week watching

> television. That adds up to more than 1.5 months,

> non-stop, of TV every

> year. And that does not include the time spent in

> front of a screen

> watching videos, playing video games or using a

> computer.

>

> Aside from going to school, American children now

> spend more time

> watching television than doing anything else except

> sleeping. The

> average British child spends two hours and 20

> minutes every day watching

> television and 25 minutes playing video games. In

> the UK, more than half

> of children under the age of 16 have a television in

> their bedroom.

>

> During the course of a year, the typical American

> child watches more

> than 40,000 TV commercials. About 20,000 of those

> ads are for junk food:

> soft drinks, sweets, breakfast cereals and fast

> food. That means

> American children now see a junk food ad every five

> minutes while

> watching TV - and see about three hours of junk food

> ads every week.

> American kids aren't learning about food in the

> classroom. They're being

> taught what to eat by the same junk food ads,

> repeating again and again.

>

> Although the fast food chains in the US now spend

> more than $3bn every

> year on television advertising, another form of

> product promotion has

> proven even more effective. " The key to attracting

> kids, " one marketing

> publication says, " is toys, toys, toys. "

>

> The fast food chains now work closely with leading

> toy makers, giving

> away small toys with children's meals and selling

> larger ones at their

> restaurants. As part of its Happy Meals programme,

> McDonald's has worked

> with Fisher Price to give away Toddler Toys aimed at

> kids aged one to

> three. One of the Fisher Price toys was a tiny doll

> of a McDonald's

> worker holding a milkshake. Both McDonald's and

> Burger King have given

> away Teletubbies dolls. Teletubbies is aimed at

> children too young to speak.

>

> Children's meals often come with different versions

> of the same toy so

> that kids will nag their parents to keep going back

> to the restaurant to

> get a complete set. For many hard-working parents,

> buying a children's

> meal that includes a free Hot Wheels car, a Simpsons

> talking watch or a

> Butt-Ugly Martians doll seems like an easy way to

> make their kids happy.

> For the fast food chains, the toys are an easy way

> of making money.

> Giving away the right toy can easily double or

> triple the weekly sales

> of children's meals. And for every additional child,

> one or two

> additional adults are usually being dragged into the

> restaurant to eat.

>

> " McDonald's is in some ways a toy company, not a

> food company, " says one

> retired fast food executive. Indeed, McDonald's is

> perhaps the largest

> toy company in the world. It sells or gives away

> more than 1.5 billion

> toys every year. Almost one out of every three new

> toys given to

> American kids each year comes from McDonald's or

> another fast food chain.

>

> McDonald's Happy Meal toys are manufactured in

> countries where the

> prices are low. On the bottom of these toys you

> often find the phrase

> " Made in China " . Too often the lives of the workers

> who make Happy Meal

> toys are anything but happy. In 2000, a reporter for

> the South China

> Morning Post visited a factory near Hong Kong. The

> factory made Snoopy,

> Winnie the Pooh and Hello Kitty toys for McDonald's

> Happy Meals. Some of

> the workers at the factory said they were 14 years

> old and often worked

> 16 hours a day. Their wages were less than 20 cents

> (11p) an hour -

> almost 30 times less than the lowest amount you can

> pay an American

> worker. They slept in small rooms crammed with eight

> bunk beds without

> mattresses.

>

> At first, McDonald's said it had seen no evidence

> that such poor

> conditions existed at the factory, but later it

> admitted that some

> things were wrong there. A few months later, a

> reporter found that

> another factory in China that made Happy Meal toys

> was mistreating its

> workers. They were working 17 hours a day - and

> being paid less than 10

> cents an hour. McDonald's now tries to ensure that

> children aren't

> employed to make its toys. But the company hasn't

> done much to increase

> the wages of the workers at Chinese toy factories.

> Low wages are one of

> the things that keep Happy Meal toys so cheap.

>

> In fact, low wages are at the heart of the whole

> enterprise. Danielle

> Brent is a 17-year-old schoolgirl at Martinsburg

> High School in West

> Virginia. On Saturday mornings the alarm in her

> mobile phone goes off at

> 5.30am. It's still dark outside as she stumbles into

> the bathroom, takes

> a shower, puts on her makeup and gets into her

> McDonald's uniform. Her

> father stays in bed, but her mother always comes

> downstairs to the

> kitchen and says goodbye before Danielle leaves for

> work. Sometimes,

> it's really cold in the morning and it takes a while

> for the engine of

> the family's old car to start cranking out heat.

> There are a lot of

> other things she would rather be doing early on a

> Saturday morning -

> such as sleeping. But like thousands of other

> American kids of her age,

> Danielle gets up and goes to work at a fast food

> restaurant.

>

> When Danielle was a little girl, she loved to eat at

> McDonald's.

> Sometimes she would even go there for breakfast,

> lunch and dinner. When

> she was 16, a friend suggested that she apply for a

> job at the

> McDonald's near Interstate 81. The friend already

> worked there,

> classmates of theirs always ate there and working

> behind the counter

> sounded like fun.

>

> Danielle soon realised that the job was different

> from what she had

> expected. Some of the customers were rude. Workers

> in the kitchen didn't

> always wash their hands and didn't care if the food

> got dirty as a

> result. Her friend soon quit the job, but Danielle

> can't afford to do

> that. She needs the money. A number of kids at

> school tease her for

> working so hard at a job that pays so little. Kids

> who break the law and

> sell drugs at her high school earn more money in a

> couple of hours than

> Danielle earns at McDonald's in a couple of weeks.

>

> Danielle worries about the amount of time she is

> spending at McDonald's.

> Sometimes she is there, on school nights, until two

> in the morning. " At

> school, I'm really tired, and I can't do my homework

> a lot, " she admits.

>

> Fast food chains often put attractive girls behind

> the counter to deal

> with customers, and that's where Danielle works. The

> first thing she

> does at the restaurant is log into the cash

> register, punching the last

> four digits of her social security number into the

> touch screen. Then

> she grabs a cup of coffee to clear her head before

> the doors open and

> customers start pouring in. She usually doesn't feel

> awake until 10 or

> 11 o'clock, about halfway through her shift. But

> that grogginess never

> gets in the way of her job. Danielle thinks she

> could operate the cash

> register - as well as most of the other fancy

> machines - in her sleep.

>

> Fast food kitchens often look like a scene from

> Bugsy Malone, a movie in

> which all the actors were children pretending to be

> adults. No other

> industry has a workforce so dominated by teens.

> Teenagers open the fast

> food outlets in the morning, close them at night and

> keep them going at

> all hours in between. Even the managers and

> assistant managers are

> sometimes in their teens. Unlike Olympic gymnastics

> - a sport in which

> teenagers tend to be better than adults - there is

> nothing about the

> work in a fast food kitchen that requires young

> workers. Instead of

> relying upon a small, stable, well-paid and

> well-trained workforce, the

> fast food industry seeks out part-time, unskilled

> workers who are

> willing to accept low pay. Teenagers have long been

> the perfect

> candidates for fast food jobs. They usually don't

> have a family to

> support. And their youthful inexperience makes them

> easier to control

> than adults.

>

> The labour practices of the fast food industry have

> their origins in the

> assembly-line systems that were adopted by American

> factories in the

> early 20th century. As a result, the fastfood

> industry has changed the

> way millions of Americans work and turned restaurant

> kitchens into

> little food factories. At Burger King restaurants,

> frozen hamburger

> patties are placed on a conveyor belt and come out

> of a broiler 90

> seconds later, fully cooked. The ovens at Pizza Hut

> and at Domino's

> often use conveyor belts. The ovens at McDonald's

> look like commercial

> laundry presses, with big steel hoods that swing

> down and grill

> hamburgers on both sides at once. The burgers,

> chicken, French fries and

> buns are all frozen when they arrive at a

> McDonald's. The shakes and

> soft drinks begin as syrup. At Taco Bell

> restaurants, the food is

> " assembled " , not prepared. The avocado dip isn't

> freshly made by workers

> in the kitchen; it is made at a gigantic factory in

> Michoacan, Mexico,

> then frozen and shipped to the US. The meat at Taco

> Bell arrives frozen

> and pre-cooked in vacuum-sealed plastic bags. The

> beans are dehydrated

> and look like brownish cornflakes. The cooking

> process is fairly simple.

> " Everything's add water, " a Taco Bell employee says.

> " Just add hot water. "

>

> In 1958, a McDonald's executive named Fred Turner

> wrote a training

> manual for the company that was 75 pages long. It

> was a book of

> instructions that described how almost everything

> had to be done.

> Hamburgers were always to be placed on the grill in

> six neat rows;

> French fries had to be exactly 0.28in (about 8mm)

> thick. Today, the

> McDonald's manual has 10 times the number of pages

> and weighs about 2kg.

> Known within the company as " The Bible " , it tells

> workers exactly how

> various appliances should be used, how each item on

> the menu should look

> and how customers should be greeted. This is

> standard practice in the

> industry.

>

> " Smile with a greeting and make a positive first

> impression, " a Burger

> King training manual suggests. 'Show them you are

> GLAD TO SEE THEM.

> Include eye contact with the cheerful greeting. "

>

> The strict rules at fast food restaurants help to

> create food that

> always tastes the same. They help workers fill

> orders quickly. And they

> give fast food companies an enormous amount of power

> over workers. When

> all the knowledge is built into the operating system

> and the machines in

> the kitchen, a restaurant no longer needs skilled

> workers. It just needs

> people willing to do as they're told. It seeks

> workers who can easily be

> hired, fired and replaced.

>

> The rate at which fast food workers quit or are

> fired is among the

> highest in the American economy. The typical fast

> food worker quits or

> is fired after only three or four months. One of the

> reasons they leave

> their jobs so often is that the pay is so low. The

> fast food industry

> pays the minimum wage to more of its workers than

> any other industry in

> the US. And fast food workers are the largest group

> of low-income

> workers in the US today.

>

> Whenever members of Congress try to raise the

> minimum wage (which in

> 2006 is only $5.15 (£3) an hour), the fast food

> industry always fights

> hard against any increase. And the industry almost

> always wins. Between

> 1968 and 1990, the years in which the fast food

> chains grew at the

> quickest rate, the real value of the minimum wage

> fell by almost half.

> The fast food chains earn large profits as wages

> fall, because it costs

> them less money to hire workers.

>

> According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a McJob

> is a job that's

> low-paid and offers little opportunity to get ahead.

> McDonald's isn't

> happy about that dictionary definition and has

> publicly complained that

> it isn't fair to the company. But the dictionaries

> insist that that's

> what the word actually means: a McJob is a job that

> doesn't promise much

> of a future.

>

> *·* These are edited excerpts from Chew on This by

> Eric Schlosser,

> published on May 25 by Puffin. © Eric Schlosser

> 2006. To order a copy

>

<http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=0141318449>

>

> for £5.99 with free UK p & p go to

> guardian.co.uk/bookshop

>

<http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/home.do>

> or call 0870

> 836 0875.

>

> *The 59 ingredients in a fast-food strawberry

> milkshake*

>

> To make one at home, you need four fresh

> ingredients. The processed

> version isn't so simple ...

>

> Britons now spend more than £52bn on food every year

> - and more than 90%

> of that money is spent on processed food. But the

> canning, freezing and

> dehydrating techniques used to process food destroy

> most of its flavour.

> Since the end of the second world war, a vast

> industry has arisen to

> make processed food taste good.

>

> During the past two decades the flavour industry's

> role in food

> production has become so influential that many

> children now like

> man-made flavours more than the real thing. As

> marketing to children has

> become more and more important to processed food

> companies and fast food

> chains, flavourists have increased their efforts to

> discover what

> children like. The flavour companies constantly run

> " taste tests " for

> kids - focus groups in which new products are

> piloted.

>

> Fresh fruit and vegetables often have complicated,

> unpredictable

> flavours that combine bitterness with sweetness.

> When flavourists create

> additives for adult foods, they try to imitate

> nature as closely as

> possible. When flavourists create additives for

> kids' foods, they

> usually get rid of the bitterness and increase the

> sweetness. Children's

> flavours are often twice as sweet as those made for

> adults.

>

> " Children's expectation of a strawberry is

> completely different, " says

> one flavourist. " They want something that is strong

> and that has

> something like bubblegum notes. "

>

> The phrase " artificial strawberry flavour " offers

> little hint of the

> scientific wizardry that can make a highly processed

> food taste like a

> strawberry. For example, if you wanted to make a

> strawberry milkshake at

> home, here's all you'd need: ice, cream,

> strawberries, sugar and a touch

> of vanilla.

>

> Now take a look at the ingredients you might find in

> a fast-food

> strawberry milkshake: milkfat and nonfat milk,

> sugar, sweet whey,

> high-fructose corn syrup, guar gum, monoglycerides

> and diglycerides,

> cellulose gum, sodium phosphate, carrageenan, citric

> acid, E129 and

> artificial strawberry flavour.

>

> And what does that " artificial strawberry flavour "

> contain?

>

> Just these few yummy chemicals: amyl acetate, amyl

> butyrate, amyl

> valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate,

> benzyl isobutyrate,

> butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl

> valerate, cognac essential

> oil, diacetyl, dipropyl ketone, ethyl butyrate,

> ethyl cinnamate, ethyl

> heptanoate, ethyl heptylate, ethyl lactate, ethyl

> methylphenylglycidate,

> ethyl nitrate, ethyl propionate, ethyl valerate,

> heliotropin,

> hydroxyphrenyl- 2-butanone (10% solution in

> alcohol), ionone, isobutyl

> anthranilate, isobutyl butyrate, lemon essential

> oil, maltol,

> 4-methylacetophenone, methyl anthranilate, methyl

> benzoate, methyl

> cinnamate, methyl heptine carbonate, methyl naphthyl

> ketone, methyl

> salicylate, mint essential oil, neroli essential

> oil, nerolin, neryl

> isobutyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol, rose,

> rum ether,

> undecalactone, vanillin and solvent.

>

> The chicken nuggets and hamburgers at fast food

> restaurants are usually

> the least profitable things on the menu. Selling

> French fries is

> profitable - and selling soft drinks is incredibly

> profitable. " We at

> McDonald's are thankful, " a top executive once said,

> " that people like

> drinks with their sandwiches. " Today, McDonald's

> sells more Coca-Cola

> than anyone else in the world.

>

> The fast food chains buy Coca-Cola syrup for about

> 53p a litre. They add

> the syrup to bubbly water and serve it in a paper

> cup. A medium Coke

> that sells for 75p contains about 5p worth of syrup.

> Buying a large Coke

> for 85p instead, as the worker behind the counter

> always suggests, will

> add another 2p worth of syrup - and another 8p in

> pure profit.

>

> Thanks in large part to the marketing efforts of the

> fast food chains,

> Americans now drink about twice the amount of soft

> drinks as they did 30

> years ago. In 1975, the typical American drank about

> 120 litres of soft

> drinks a year. Today, the typical American drinks

> about 240 litres of

> soft drinks a year. That's well over 500 340ml cans

> of soft drink, per

> person, every year.

>

> Even toddlers are now drinking soft drinks. About

> 20% of American

> children between the ages of one and two drink soft

> drinks every day.

>

> **Brian Cook is a Contributing Editor to Foodnews.*

>

>

> --

>

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