Eric Schlosser begins the book with a description of Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. He then informs the reader that the mountain is an important military installation that houses the North American Aerospace Command, the Air Force Space Command, and the United States Space Command. Schlosser provides specific details of the structure located inside the mountain, which was built to withstand a nuclear strike. He describes the general operations of the facility, the number of people employed there, and its overall significance in the nation’s defense apparatus. As the Introduction concludes, Schlosser hypothesizes that distant archaeologists will discover at this site a slew of fast food relics.

Moving on from Cheyenne Mountain, Schlosser lays out the magnitude of the fast food industry’s reach into American culture. He cites many statistics that verify the scope of this reach and illustrate just how ingrained into American life fast food has become. He establishes two important foundations of the industry: marketing and assembly-line production of food. Walt Disney and his marketing team were an early influence on the fast food industry, notably in targeting children with advertising. He briefly discusses the way the fast food industry has altered the sociological and physical environment of the country, contributing to suburban sprawl and the alteration and even outright destruction of rural, agricultural areas.