"eric schlosser" news and stories

Unless you've been off the grid for the past few years, you know that fast food has been taken to task for it's being, gasp, horrible for one's health. Those laying the blame have included most notably writer Eric Schlosser in his scathing book that indicts Mickey D's et. al. and filmmaker Morgan Spurlock.

Now a lawsuit in California against Burger King Holdings and CKE Restaurants, which operates more than 1,000 Carl's Junior Restaurants, may spell trouble for operators that flame-broil their burgers.

The suit alleges that the companies violated the state's Proposition 65 by not alerting their customers that charbroiled hamburgers could contain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which have been implicated as potential carcinogens. The plaintiff says that if the court rules in its favor it may sue other restaurants. If the case succeeds, the restaurants will either post warnings or install cooking devices designed to remove PAHs from food.

PAHs are created by incompletely burning organic substances. Long-term exposure to PAHs has been linked to cancer in humans. Not to make light of cancer but I'm not terribly worried about this carcinogen. Here's why: PAHs are created whenever any meat is grilled. How could something as good as a strip steak possibly be bad for you?

Source

The Guardian recently featured several excerpts from Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser's new book Chew On This, a kid-oriented exploration of the fast food industry. Schlosser uses plain English and, of course, plenty of alarming statistics to show young readers the basics of fast food marketing and food processing. The Guardian samples focus on television marketing (American kids watch an average of 25 hours of TV each week, Schlosser says) and how McDonald's has changed the soft drink industry. According to Schlosser, 20 percent of one- and two-year-olds in America drink soft drinks daily and the average American adult drinks 500 cans of soda each year.

According to the Guardian's News Blog, next Saturday's edition of the paper will come with a DVD copy of Morgan Spurlock's fast-food-bashing documentary Super Size Me. The DVD giveaway was also mentioned in a recent Guardian article about Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser and the alleged "crisis management" responses from McDonald's concerning Schlosser's upcoming children's book Chew On This and a film adaptation of Fast Food Nation. The Guardian blog post asks readers to send in their recommendations healthy fast food options in Britain.

Fast Food Nation, the movie based on Eric Schlosser's book about America's food industry in relation to fast food, is currently in production. I thoroughly enjoyed Schlosser's book, and was captured by the level of detailed research he put into the text. The movie has just been picked up by Fox Searchlight, and it will not be a documentary. Rather, it will be a character study based on facts. I think this will be an interesting movie, and a little more riveting than Super Size Me, which I thought had some biases in its execution. Hopefully they don't mangle a lot of the factual information presented in the book.