jankp's Full Review: Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson - Chew On This: ...
I was surprised to read that Eric Schlosser’s favorite meal is, not was, French fries, a cheeseburger and a chocolate shake, especially since he wrote Fast Food Nation and Chew On This about his long investigation into the fast food industry. He knows what nasty things have gone into the majority of fast food, the hundreds of chemicals for taste and color and preservation and addicting us. He knows that a single McDonald’s hamburger could contain meat from hundreds, perhaps thousands, of different cattle with a range of quality meat. He knows that buying such food reheated and served to you by minimum-wage workers only keeps these businesses around, contributing to the obesity epidemic, heart disease at any age, and the growing need for gastric bypass surgery that is, if not a killer a few months later, a definite cramp in your lifestyle.
Lots of young people will read 2006’s Chew On This: Everything You Don’t Want To Know About Fast Food and still go on eating it while dismissing or quickly forgetting what they read. It may be that they’re addicted to it and their taste buds have been ruined for anything else, especially real food. It also could be that it’s all they can afford or have access to, but the authors have discovered that even a baby’s taste buds can be trained to crave disgusting food or drink if that’s what they’ve been raised on and before we’re even born we develop a taste for what our mothers drink and eat.
The way this book is designed reminds one of stopping in to eat at a fast food restaurant. There’s an Enter sign above the Contents, which are:
Introduction
The Pioneers (the McDonald brothers, Ray Kroc, etc)
The Youngster Business (styled after Disney’s formula)
McJobs
The Secret of the Fries
Stop The Pop (a teenager gets pop machine out of her school)
Meat
Big (not referencing the Tom Hank’s movie)
Your Way
Photo Credits
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
I’ve watched Morgan Spurlock’s disturbing, but lively documentary, Super Size Me, and also the cinematic version of Fast Food Nation. This book has added to my knowledge of fast food. For half of my life I’ve gone meatless and rarely did I eat fast food in the past because I grew up loving fresh fruits and vegetables from the garden on the ranch. It’s sad that the least favorite menu item in McDonald’s is their fresh salad, although it’s never lured me, either. Those kid-friendly, noisy places where sameness is their business, along with the Speedee Service System that turns restaurants into factories, are not where I wish to dine, thank you.
Despite having read many books criticizing the fast food industry for changing the way slaughterhouses operate, and where, and who they employ and how much unskilled workers are paid in spite of the great and very real dangers, I learned a lot from Chew On This. Much of it disgusted me and some saddened me, like learning how the fast food industry has been building its empire all over the world, especially where they want/need cheap food, and it’s destroying their health and waistlines as well.
I’m not surprised that these American chains are the major targets now for terrorists or plain America or fast food haters. Possibly Baghdad's Burger King that Schlosser reports immediately showed an amazing profit.
Schlosser and Wilson include lots of black-n-white photos throughout the book. One that I’ll not forget is side-by-side photos of a healthy aorta and one damaged from lots of fast food. A doctor provides it and disturbing information about our brains and livers ‘nourished’ on fast food. There’s a before picture of a very obese eighteen-year-old who has decided on gastric bypass surgery since his mother and brother also had it with good results. Unfortunately there were unforeseen complications in his case and we don’t get an after picture, but the teen barely survived and for the rest of his life he’ll only be able to eat no more than a small bite or two every couple of hours or he‘ll throw up. Eating is no longer enjoyable for him, that is for certain. He’s lost over a hundred pounds, though! And gotten nutritional deficiencies because he’s forgotten to take his supplements.
We exit Chew On This on page 259 for the credits and notes. The authors write, “Although we did a great deal of firsthand reporting and research for this book, we also benefited from the hard work of others…” They also point out half a dozen books by other authors, even a memoir by Ray Kroc, that give more information on the origins and early years of the fast food industry. This book fascinates me with what seems like enough information on that, but I appreciate the option to read more.
The book is geared to young people, but I think anyone can read and enjoy it. Not many of us have long attention spans or read much, whatever age these days, and so this book which covers a lot very well in not too many pages will appeal to people curious about the fast food they’re eating and its industry.
General Juvenile / Children's Nonfiction - Charles Wilson, Eric Schlosser,Paperback - None, English-language edition,Pages:320,Pub by Houghton Mifflin...More at Barnes and Noble
In this New York Times bestseller, Schlosser ( Fast Food Nation ) and Wilson unwrap the fast-food industry, offering a behind-the-scenes look at a bus...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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