Industrialization and the Rise of Fast Food

Through the nineteenth century, food production shifted from artisanal, small-scale methods toward industrial processes powered by steam and, later, electricity. Mechanized flour mills, centralized slaughterhouses, and railroad networks allowed food to be produced, processed, and shipped at a scale unimaginable a century earlier. Gustavus Swift, a Chicago meatpacker, pioneered the use of refrigerated railcars in the 1870s, allowing beef to be slaughtered centrally in Chicago and shipped fresh across the United States rather than transported live and butchered locally. This transformation concentrated food production in fewer, larger facilities, but it also raised new concerns about hygiene and adulteration. Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel "The Jungle," an exposé of unsanitary conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking plants, shocked public opinion and contributed directly to the passage of the U.S. Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act that same year, establishing federal oversight of the food industry that endures, in expanded form, today.