Eric Schlosser’s bestselling diatribe against the fast food industry, Fast Food Nation, is a monumental self-contradiction built on inconsistencies and misleading statements reported as facts.

• Most fundamentally, Schlosser bemoans the homogenization of American culture and alleges a decline of American individualism, and then advocates a fundamental rejection of the individual freedom which allowed those traits to flourish in favor of government mandated diversity.

• Make no mistake: Schlosser’s solution to the problems he alleges is an unprecedented expansion of government bureaucracy and a monumental growth of government regulation of what we choose to eat and drink.

• Schlosser even urges an outright government ban on advertising of certain kinds of food. No freedom is more fundamental than the freedom of speech, but Schlosser would gladly cast this right aside to achieve his vision of America.

• Schlosser conjures or claims a corporate conspiracy around every corner to explain every wrong that he perceives. He implies or alleges conspiracies between Disney and McDonald’s, between poultry processors and meatpackers, between government and big corporations.

• Schlosser praises the spirit which led entrepreneurs to build successful companies and then spends most of his book attacking their successes.

• He also seeks to undermine their accomplishments by suggesting — in every single case — that the government significantly aided their success.

• In just one example of a number of factual errors and misleading statements, Schlosser faults fast food companies for supposedly trying to prevent hourly employees from working more than 40 hours per week in order to avoid paying overtime. Later, he praises labor unions. But he ignores the fact that unions — aiming to have companies hire more workers instead of working existing employees longer — have been the leading advocate for the 40 hour work week and current overtime regulations designed to punish employers who work employees more than 40 hours per week.

Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation raises provocative and important questions, but we should all recognize that the best exercise for humanity is the exercise of freedom of choice.

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