"fast food nation" news and stories

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 author Eric Schlosser has co-authored a version of his fast food industry tell-all aimed at the preteen age group. Chew On This: Everything You Don't Want To Know About Fast Food is due for release on May 10. Some ideas intended to grab young readers' attentions include the fact that McDonald's is the largest toy company in the world and that one of every five schools in the U.S. serves brand name food. Then, of course, there's the matter of where McNuggets come from. The press release from publisher Houghton Mifflin has more and Amazon has pre-order.

[Via Fast Food News]

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.