Entry#6: Brand Identification

What's on My Feet

         When I saw that there is an assignment on brand identification, I start to pay attention to my personal items. After I finished all my classes of the day, I looked around my house and I was a little bit surprised by the items I have own for now specially my shoes. As I walked through the entrance, I opened the large shoe cabinet which is made by my dad and started to look for my shoes. I took them out and reorganized them. However, it was the first time I realized that I may have to stop buying more shoes since there are already too many shoes for my two feet to wear.

          Time makes me to see a lot of interesting facts. I still remember how I was when I first came to the United States. It was five year ago, I was wearing a pair of white Nike shoes when I first steeped on this land and they were the only shoes I had at that time. I wore them, and walked through the hardest period of time I had in New York. It was about someone who has been challenged by the unknown world. The hard time had gone gradually. Meanwhile, more and more shoes were added to my dad’s handmade shoe cabinet. At the first, I bought Nike sneakers only, and then I started to have boots and high-heels etc.

          The change of the shoes I own demonstrates the changes I have made as a person. I never had a shopping plan when I go to a mall and the interesting thing I found is that I always add two to three pairs of new Nike sneakers to the shoe cabinet every year. Obviously, Nike is my favorite shoe brand and the most comfortable among all. I think I’m addicted to it. Furthermore, this makes me believe that no matter how I change, I am still who I am five years ago. 

Entry#5: Chaper1-3 Summary and Response(Revision)

JingJing Lin

Professor Jason Smith

ENG101

22 March 2014

Fast Food Chains and the Young Generation

            Children are the future of the world, but the victims of the fast food nation. As a matter of fact, the fast food companies target their business on the youth since most of their employees are teenagers, and kids are their major customers. The companies attract the eyes of kids through advertising and provide work chances to teenagers by lowering their requirement. The fast food companies gain huge profits by taking advantage of marketing on the young generation.

            In the eyes of the fast food marketers, kids are the most profitable customers of all. According to Ray Kroc and Walt Disney, a person starts to build his/her “brand loyalty”(Schlosser43) at the age of two, which is even before this person learns how to read his/her own name. In order to help kids develop their brand loyalty toward the fast food companies, big companies such as McDonald’s and Burger King have generated innumerable advertisements through “playgrounds, toys, cartoons, movies, videos, charities, and amusement parks, through contests, sweepstakes, games, and clubs, via television, radio, magazines, and the internet.”(Schlosser51) However, it is impossible for young kids to ignore the existence of the advertisements and the information that the advertisements give to them; therefore, the innocent kids are “brainwashed” by the companies and are going to start buying products from these companies. Since the kids are still kids, they will now nag their parents to buy these products for them and in the future the kids might buy the products over and over again to feed themselves and moreover, to feed their own kids and so on.

            Today’s fast food companies would not run properly without the participation of teenager workers. In other words, the teenage worker is a very important component of the fast food companies. The teenage workers are hired since the companies updated their service system in which “the management no longer depends upon the talents or skills of its workers—those things are built into the operating system and machines.”(Schlosser70) The change helped the fast food companies to save lots of money for maintaining their stores, because it avoids the need of skilled workers who were paid with higher wages and gives many work opportunities to the teenagers. The teenagers are unskilled and inexperienced, thus they would like to accept lower wages. However, many teens are unsatisfied with their wages and then leave for better paying jobs. For this reason, the staff resignation rates among the companies are always high, but it seems not to be a problem to the managers since the works are “de-skilled”(Schlosser70) and the workers can be replaced by others easily.

            Most American kids somehow have experiences with the fast food companies. They may be the customers or the employees. Tons of advertisements are used by the fast food companies to grab the attention of minor kids and bring up their brand loyalty. De-skilled and low-paid work opportunities are provided to the inexperienced teenagers. The fast food companies have certainly made the best use of our inexperienced young generation. In short, all the benefits go to the fast food companies. On the other side, the kid customers being fed with junk food. Moreover, on the side of the teenage workers, they are being paid with wages that are even lower than the required minimum wage. To protect our young generation from the fast food companies, people must do their best to feed our kids with healthy food, and fight for the rights of teenagers so the teens can receive the wages that they deserve to have.

Entry# 4 "Your Trusted Friends" Summary

         This chapter mainly talks about the backgrounds and selling methods of Ray A. Kroc and Walt Disney. They have many commons in their early years of life. Kroc and Disney were both from Illinois; both dropped out from high school and have participated WWI together. These two business men thought that kids are the best long-term customers. These kids will now nag their parents or grandparent to McDonald's or Disneyland and in the future the kids are going to take their own kids to these places and so on. Disney’s business has gone well earlier than Kroc’s. However, they were both remarkable business men in the American history.

Entry#3: Summarizing Arguments

            In the first chapter of the book “Fast Food Nation”, its author Eric Schlosser mentions the founding fathers for the fast food chain. A man named Carl N. Karcher was one of the founding fathers. He dropped out from school in his early years of life and later followed his uncle to Anaheim, California for a new life. Eric Schlosser describes how Carl felt when he first came to the new land, “This is heaven,” he said after he saw the orange plantation and smelled the fresh air. Carl became rich by selling hot dogs in hot dogs carts and later owned hundreds of restaurants. The first Disneyland and McDonald’s were set near Carl’s first restaurant. When McDonald’s came out with a new self-service system, Carl did a copy of it and it was successful. As the town was developing, the environment changed and the same air never came back again. The plantation and the air symbolized how Anaheim was before the fast food era started. When more and more people migrate here, the “heaven” that Carl was in, disappeared.

Entry #2: Dinner— The major interaction between me and my family

            Followed by the fast pace life in New York, many families only cook once or twice a day and some families don’t even cook. In my family, my mom prepare dinner every night and sometimes breakfast. Since my mom cook dinner every night, eating it together had become the most important daily event for my family members. However, that’s the only chance for my entire family members to sit together and chat for a while, even though there are only four of us.

  My mom goes to the Chinese supermarket twice a week. Every time she will buy things that can almost fill up the shopping cart and these things will finally become our family dinner. She didn't work outside so she got lots of time to prepare the dinner. However, for our dinner, we mostly have four dishes and they are changing each day. As a common Chinese family we always eat rice among the dishes. The four dishes will always include one seafood, one vegetable, one meat and a soup. The meals are very healthy, plus she only add a little bit of salt and no MSG at all. Not like the people in the restaurants, she's not a outsider so she knows what to add to the food!

Since my mom always cook tasty and healthy food at home, I don’t really like to eat outside only if I need to. Anyway, nothing will be greater than the homemade food. Compare to the family who always eat outside in the restaurants and who always eat unhealthy fast food, I think I’m in the heaven now.

Entry#1: Is America's Food Supply Safe?

         Eating fast food instead of eating healthy meal is now very normal to the Americans. Fast food is fast, easy and mostly safe to eat. People who work for the Food and Drug Administration help our community to ensure the safety of fast food. As the article " Is American's Food Supply Safe?" mentions, the F.D.A.set many offices around the country. And, trying their best to solve incoming problems and prevent potential risks. They are also working at the country border to keep unsafe food outside of the America, teaching our people how to store food in a safe way.
         It is very important to have the F.D.A. working for us and protect most of our people from eating unsafe food. However, the book "Fast Food Nation" illustrates a mistake of the fast food system. The mistake caused a young mom to loose her little son. The son was died in few days after he ate a burger. Which the hospital find out that there were harmful E. coli in the burger he ate. E. Coli is a type of bacteria that could risk the life of people who have a weak immune system. It's a very sad fact the really happened and it shows that the F.D.A. doesn't work well all the time. But still, after they find out the problem, they make the meat company to call back the problem products as much as they could from the entire country. And finally end the disaster.
         Even though the F.D.A. is not as perfect as it should be, but we have to have it and we definitely need it. Since there could be many more cases happening in the country if there is F.D.A. in the community.