"schlosser" news and stories

A story in yesterday's Washington Post takes a spin through the supermarket and rehashes some of the current moral quandaries faced by the average shopper. Organic? Big organic? Local? Free range? All of these factors are mentioned. The author cites works by Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan, and if you've read either of these authors, the WaPo piece will seem like old news. If, however, you're just starting to take an interest in how and where your food is produced, this might be a helpful, albeit brief, overview. In the end, the author consults a bioethics scholar who says that rather than worrying about every single factor involved in every item we eat, we'd be better of picking certain facets-animal cruelty, environmental impact, taste-placing them on a scale of importance, and shopping accordingly.

With the premier of Fast Food Nation at the Cannes Film Festival, a lot of protests both prosecuting and defending the fast food industry have sprung up. Despite the fact that official release of the film will not be until the fall, sides have been taken and opinions have been formed, and everyone is so polarized that it is almost beside the point that the movie is getting less-than-glowing reviews. Supporters of the movie still hope that its wide release will further raise awareness of the problems in the industry, from food standards to encouraging healthy eating habits. And on the other side, Best Food Nation is a website started by a coalition of food industry trade associations and lobby groups as a reaction to Eric Schlosser's books, Fast Food Nation and Chew on This, trying to give the public access to information from the supply side of the industry.

Cinematical asked the question yesterday, but I'm asking it here: should we just leave the fast food industry alone? Forget the "issues" and just let people eat it if they want to?

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.