Op-ed on Eric Schlosser's "Chew on This" published in Nation's Restaurant News on May 8, 2006

The best defense against propaganda is good information
By Steven C. Anderson

Anti-restaurant activist Eric Schlosser has made a living promoting misinformation and misrepresentation-most notoriously with his New York Times bestseller book Fast Food Nation. Previously content peddling propaganda to adults, he has now written a children's book for those aged nine to 12.

Entitled Chew On This, his latest diatribe hits bookstores next month and looks to be as full of what The Wall Street Journal called Schlosser's "cavalier manipulation of data" as previous efforts.

Schlosser hopes teachers will use his book to persuade children to eliminate America's quick service restaurants from future career and dining choices, making it critical that our industry is armed with the facts.

Look, we all care about the issues Mr. Schlosser is raising. He might even have some credibility if nothing had ever been done to address these matters. But the reality of today's ever-growing, ever-better world of restaurant employment, ownership and customer service absolutely trumps his misguided views.

Take jobs. Schlosser wants to influence young people's thinking by branding restaurant jobs as "dead end." Yet the facts tell us that one in four Americans began their working lives in a restaurant and nearly half of all adults have worked in the industry at some point during their careers.

In Schlosser's scary-sounding world, the "typical" food service employee is fired after three or four months. In reality, the typical food service employee remains on the job for close to one-and-a half years and more than one-third stay for three years or more, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Hourly restaurant wages are unappealing, Schlosser claims, thanks to industry opposition to increases in the hourly mandated wage. He
ignores research out of Miami University of Ohio and Florida State University that found nearly two-thirds of minimum wage employees earn a raise within one to 12 months on the job-half of those received an annual raise of seven percent or more after inflation.

Eager to dissuade young people from embarking on a restaurant career, Mr. Schlosser consistently fails to mention how hourly wages frequently lead to better opportunities. Four out of every five salaried restaurant employees began their career working for hourly wages. He also likes to claim that restaurant managers earn about $25,000 a year. In fact, U.S. Department of Labor figures show that quick service restaurant managers earn an average of more than $44,000 annually.

Reading Schlosser, young people would never learn that the restaurant industry is the nation's largest private sector employer and growing faster than the nation's economy. He ignores the professional opportunities the restaurant industry creates as the largest employer of minority managers, and the fact that more hospitality businesses are owned by African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Americans than the national average.

Another misleading Schlosser theme is workplace safety. While no workplace is accident-free, he never mentions that the rate of occupational injuries in the restaurant industry is lower than the average for all workplaces and has been falling for years. In fact, restaurants are safer than many other popular teen employment choices, Occupational Safety and Health Administration reports show.

Young readers can also expect to read Schlosser's baseless but often repeated claim that in 2003 "almost the same numbers of fast-food workers were murdered on the job as police officers." In reality, government statistics show that quick service restaurant employees are safer in this regard not only police officers but also those working in the very bookstores selling Mr. Schlosser's book.

Of course, no Schlosser attack would be complete without blaming our industry for childhood weight gain and obesity. But again, the hard facts refute him. While childhood obesity has increased over the last 20 years, this has not been matched by increased caloric intake. As former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Mark McClellan said, "actual levels of caloric intake among the young haven't appreciably changed in 20 years."

Nutrition experts remind us that weight gain is caused by burning fewer calories than we consume, yet Schlosser ignores unfortunate-but critical trends in physical exercise. The number of children biking or walking to school has dropped 70 percent within a generation. Worse, almost one in four children aged nine to 13 engage in no physical activity at all, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mr. Schlosser claims to write in the tradition of legendary muckraker Upton Sinclair whose 1906 exposé of unsanitary food processing marks its centennial this year. Sadly, Schlosser's Chew On This lacks the objectivity of Sinclair's The Jungle.

Instead of distorting reality, Schlosser should have explained how the intervening 100 years transformed our society from one in which an estimated two million children went to bed hungry each night to one where America's food is safer, more affordable and more abundant than ever before. Our industry helped make that happen. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?