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Chew On This: Everything You Don't Want To Know About Fast Food (Hardcover)
by Eric Schlosser , Charles Wilson
| Category:
Health of body, Fast food, Ages 9-12, Children's books |
| Market price: ¥ 178.00
MSL price:
¥ 158.00
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| Stock:
In Stock |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
An eye opening and interesting book making people especially the kids aware of what they are buying and eating. |
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Author: Eric Schlosser , Charles Wilson
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Pub. in: May, 2006
ISBN: 0618710310
Pages: 270
Measurements: 8.4 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BC00200
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- MSL Picks -
Eric Schlosser writes about how unhealthy an average fast food meal is. He gives some statistics about the habits of the average obese American and he reports the plain facts about what happens to both humans and nonhumans to create the fast food meal. Did you know an average burger could contain parts of hundreds of different cows? Did you know that an average nine out of ten U.S. children eat at a fast food restaurant each month? There are many more equally alarming statistics than that in this must-read book. If you are a parent of a child or a teenager, you should encourage them to read this book. They need to know this information about what happens in the massive fast food nation. And parents, you yourself, should read it, too.
Target readers:
Kids aged 9-12
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Award-winning journalist Eric Schlosser is a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly. His first book, Fast Food Nation, has been on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year (hardcover and paperback combined) and has appeared on the bestseller lists of the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly, among others. Schlosser has appeared on 60 Minutes, CNN, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, FOX News; Reilly Factor, and Extra!, and has been interviewed on NPR and for Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, and the New York Times. He is currently at work on a book about the American prison system.
Charles W. Wilson grew up in West Virginia and has written for several newspapers and magazines including the New York Times and the Washington Post. He has worked on the staffs of The New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine.
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Kids love fast food. And the fast food industry definitely loves kids. It couldn't survive without them. In fact, one out of every three toys given to a child in the United States each year is from a fast food restaurant. Not only has fast food reached into the toy industry, it's moving into our schools. One out of every five public schools in the United States now serves brand name fast food. But do kids know what they're eating? Where do fast food hamburgers come from? And what makes those fries taste so good? When Eric Schlosser's best-selling book, Fast Food Nation, was published for adults in 2001, many called for his groundbreaking insight to be shared with young people. Now Schlosser, along with co-writer Charles Wilson, has investigated the subject further, uncovering new facts children need to know. In Chew on This, they share with kids the fascinating and sometimes frightening truth about what lurks between those sesame seed buns, what a chicken "nugget" really is, and how the fast food industry has been feeding off children for generations.
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Pull open the glass door and feel the rush of cool air. Step inside. Look at the backlit color pictures of food above the counter, look at the cardboard ads for the latest Disney movie, get in line, and place your order. Hand over some money. Put the change back in your pocket. Watch teenagers in blue-and-gold uniforms busy working in the kitchen. Moments later, grab the plastic tray with your food, find an empty table, and sit down. Unwrap the burger, squirt ketchup on the fries, stick the plastic straw through the hole in the lid of your drink. Pick up the burger and dig in. The whole experience of eating at a fast-food restaurant has become so familiar, so routine, that we take it for granted. It has become just another habit, like brushing your teeth before bed. We do it without even thinking about it - and that's the problem. Every day about one out of fourteen Americans eats at a McDonald's. Every month about nine out of ten American children visit one. McDonald's has become the most popular fast-food chain in the world - and by far the most powerful. In 1968 there were about 1,000 McDonald’s restaurants, all of them in the United States. Now there are more than 31,000 McDonald's, selling Happy Meals in 120 countries, from Istanbul, Turkey, to Papeete, Tahiti. In the United States, McDonald's buys more processed beef, chicken, pork, apples, and potatoes than any other company. It spends more money on advertising and marketing than any other company that sells food. As a result, it is America's most famous food brand. The impact of McDonald's on the way we live today is truly mind-boggling. The Golden Arches are now more widely recognized than the Christian cross. Despite McDonald's fame and all the money it spends on advertising, every day the vast majority of its customers don't plan to eat there. Most fast-food visits are impulsive. The decision to buy fast food is usually made at the last minute, without much thought. People generally don't leave the house in the morning saying, "I'm going to make sure to eat some fast food today." Most of the time, they're just walking down the sidewalk or driving down the road, not thinking about anything in particular. Maybe they're hungry; maybe they're not. Maybe they're in a hurry and don't have time to cook. And then they see a great big fast-food sign - the Golden Arches, the red-and-blue of a Domino's pizza box, the picture of Colonel Sanders - and they suddenly think, "Hey, I want some of that." So they stop to eat fast food. They do it because they feel like it. They just can't resist the impulse. The point of this book is to take that strong impulse we all feel - our hunger for sweet, salty, fatty fast foods - and make you think about it. Chew On This will tell you where fast food comes from, who makes it, what's in it, and what happens when you eat it. This is a book about fast food and the world it has made. Food is one of the most important things you’ll ever buy. And yet most people never bother to think about their food and where it comes from. People spend a lot more time worrying about what kind of blue jeans to wear, what kind of video games to play, what kind of computers to buy. They compare the different models and styles, they talk to friends about the various options, they read as much as they can before making a choice. But those purchases don’t really matter. When you get tired of old blue jeans, video games, and computers, you can just give them away or throw them out. The food you eat enters your body and literally becomes part of you. It helps determine whether you'll be short or tall, weak or strong, thin or fat. It helps determine whether you will enjoy a long, healthy life or die young. Food is of fundamental importance. So why is it that most people don't think about fast food and don't know much about it? The simple answer is this: the companies that sell fast food don't want you to think about it. They don't want you to know where it comes from and how it's made. They just want you to buy it. Have you ever seen a fast-food ad that shows the factories where French fries are made? Ever seen a fast-food ad that shows the slaughterhouses where cattle are turned into ground beef? Ever seen an ad that tells you what’s really in your fast-food milk shake and why some strange-sounding chemicals make it taste so good? Ever seen an ad that shows overweight, unhealthy kids stuffing their faces with greasy fries at a fast-food restaurant? You probably haven't. But you've probably seen a lot of fast-food commercials that show thin, happy children having a lot of fun. People have been eating since the beginning of time. But they've only been eating Chicken McNuggets since 1983. Fast food is a recent invention. During the past thirty years, fast food has spread from the United States to every corner of the globe. A business that began with a handful of little hot dog and hamburger stands in southern California now sells the all-American meal - a hamburger, French fries, and soda - just about everywhere. Fast food is now sold at restaurants and drive-throughs, at baseball stadiums, high schools, elementary schools, and universities, on cruise ships, trains, and airplanes, at Kmarts, Wal-Marts, and even the cafeterias of children's hospitals. In 1970, Americans spent about $6 billion on fast food. In 2005, they spent about $134 billion on fast food. Americans now spend more money on fast food than on college education, personal computers, computer software, or new cars. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, and recorded music - combined. Fast food may look like the sort of food people have always eaten, but it's different. It's not the kind of food you can make in your kitchen from scratch. Fast food is something radically new. Indeed, the food we eat has changed more during the past thirty years than during the previous thirty thousand years. In the pages that follow, you’ll learn how the fast-food business got started. You'll learn how the fast-food chains try to get kids into their restaurants, how they treat kids working in their kitchens, how they make their food. And you'll learn what can happen when you eat too much of it. These are things you really need to know. Why? Because fast food is heavily advertised to kids and often prepared by workers who are kids themselves. This is an industry that both feeds and feeds off the young.
For the most part, fast food tastes pretty good. That's one of the main reasons people like to eat it. Fast food has been carefully designed to taste good. It's also inexpensive and convenient. But the Happy Meals, two-for-one deals, and free refills of soda give a false sense of how much fast food actually costs. The real price never appears on the menu. Hundreds of millions of people eat fast food every day without giving it much thought. They just unwrap their hamburgers and dig in. An hour or so later, when the burger's all gone and the wrapper's been tossed into the garbage, the whole meal has already been forgotten. Chew on this: people should know what lies beneath the shiny, happy surface of every fast-food restaurant. They should know what really lurks between those sesame seed buns. As the old saying goes: you are what you eat.
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| View all 7 comments |
Chloe Fox (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-26 00:00>
I read Chew on This once, and now I'm reading it a second time. It's that good! It tells you about obesity, fat kids who get gastric bypass surgery, how you get that seemingly innocent Value Meal or chicken nuggets, advertising schemes (literally), Disney World (score!), the real story of McDonald's coke (just add syrup to water and mm-mm, a tasty drink the whole family will love), what makes fast food taste as good as it does, toys at chains, the workers, and the horrible, scheming Web sites that try to brainwash innocent kids into eating McDonald's crap. And then some. I love this book! It's so nice to see someone writing about the history of fast food, whilst other writers write about Louise and her lost love that bound the tree with passion, and about the "serious" issue of our children not doing enough at school, home, or after-school. I seriously recommend buying or borrowing this book. I'm trying to get my mom to read it. My cousin needs to read it too... he's a big McDonald's fan. I'm never going to eat fast food again! |
A reader (MSL quote), Australia
<2006-12-26 00:00>
I really like this book. I bought it (even though it's geared more to kids) because I am a fan of Fast Food Nation (can't wait till the movie comes out) and wanted to hear what he had to say this time around. He's targeted 9-15 year olds mainly because American kids are so unhealthy and out of shape - he wanted to not tell them what not to eat, but in fact enlighten them about what they are actually eating. Because the stats are so high for being obese at age 35 if you were obese at 13, he wants to try to stop kids getting obese by age 13 in the first place. He takes shots at the soda industry as well as fast food restaurants. There is a chapter dedicated to the sodas making kids fat/unhealthy. 1 out of 3 toys in America come from fast food restaurants he states, showing the 'marketing skills' of these chains to lure kids to want to eat there. Chew on This is really designed to make people (especially the kids) aware of what they are buying and eating and awareness is key to the choices you make. I loved this book. It's eye opening and interesting and does in fact make you chew on his thoughts. I think he's done a great job here. I hope this message sinks in to kids’ heads and make them reconsider what they would rather eat. |
Zorya (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-26 00:00>
Very well researched and written. I had read Fast Food Nation and was not disappointed with this offering for younger readers. I would recommend it for older elementary and middle school readers. |
A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-26 00:00>
If you ever eat fast food after reading this book, you obviously didn't read it. It covers how the fast food industry has changed America for the worst. How they manipulate kids into eating fast food. The conditions of the animals that are raised to be eaten. The diet of the animals. What goes on in the slaughter houses. How they have made the farmers go out of business. How the restaurants are run. Fast food in schools and much more. |
View all 7 comments |
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