Customer Reviews

Chew on This : Everything You Don't Want to Know about Fast Food

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

Personally I think the authors book Fast Food Nation is better, even for kids ages ten and up, since kids can handle the contents which hold your attention.

The chapter on soda pop interesting since it spoke of Glennallen Alaska and other areas in Alaska where most kids have lost teeth or have rotting teeth because of beverage companies pushing Pepsi, Coke etc.

Also interesting was page 121 and the chapter titled The Bugs In Your Candy which is about color additives in processed foods like cochineal extract also known as carmine or carminic acid which is made from dead bodies of small bugs harvested mainly in Peru and the Canary Islands. The author notes these 'little bugs are collected, dried and ground into coloring additive which makes processed foods look pink, red or purple. Dannon yogurt gets its color from camine, as do many candies, frozen fruit bars, fruit fillings, and Ocean Spray pink grapefruit juice drink'.

This is especially troubling to those of us who strive to not eat animals of any kind. Being vegetarian or vegan to me means NO animal meat, bodies etc, and I detest companies who sneak animal bodies into food one should assume are safe.

So just remember this book is geared to young people, while I think his other book Fast Food Nation is geared to all ages.

I just saw Eric Schlosser speak tonight to a crowded room full of interested kids, so you can put away any notions you might get that kids aren't interested in learning more about what they eat or will be put off by "gross" pictures (there are one, maybe two of these in the whole book).

Let me say a little though about what Schlosser does NOT do in this book: he does not tell kids what to eat or not eat. He does not tell them they must stay away from fast-food restaurants at all times (he's not a vegetarian, actually, and he even mentions some responsible ones that he likes, like In-n-Out Burger). Instead, he tried to inform kids about what's in fast food and how fast-food restaurants are run, and encourages kids to make their OWN well-informed decisions.

Schlosser is an investigative journalist, and the book is intended as an expose of the fast-food industry, there's no question about it. A lot of what he says will make parents and kids feel pretty bad about their eating behavior - the terrible pollution problems caused by factory farms, the health problems caused by obesity, terrible dental problems caused by soda pop, etc. So, his opinion on the subject is clear but well-supported.

But before you decide whether you're interested in this book, I would like to suggest to readers of this book's reviews to do some of their own fact-checking. For example, by clicking on a reviewer's name on this page you can see how many other reviews he/she has written. If that person has never written about anything else, ask yourself WHY. Ask yourself who they work for. And then, as Mr. Schlosser would himself suggest, *draw your own conclusions.*

This is an extremely well written and important book. It's not intended as a "sequel" to Fast Food Nation (another reviewer complained that the book didn't add much as a sequel). This is a REWRITE of Fast Food Nation for a YOUNG AUDIENCE -- something this country has needed desperately for a long, long time. Young people are now more obese than ever -- as a result, they're struggling with more health problems than any previous generation and setting themselves up for a lifetime battling diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer ... This book should be required reading for every child, teen and parent.

"Engine Joe Eagleson" notes that Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, the President of the American Council on Science and Health, has panned this book in an op-ed piece.

Google her name and look up "American Council on Science and Health" on Wikipedia. She is nothing more than a hired gun for corporate interests. Of course she's going to pan the book! Wikipedia notes that the ACSH receives "75 percent of [its] funding from the chemical and pharmaceutical industry."

Engine Joe: the fast-food industry is aiming its marketing arm directly at impressionable children. You and I know that moderation is key, but what about the five year old who watches 3 hours of fast-food advertising each week?

Secondly, does McDonald's really have commericals that encourage children to order a salad? What six-year old goes to Wendy's and orders the chili?.

To me, Mr Schlosser's book fills a missing gap of information for children. They receive advertising constantly and it's refreshing to give them a new viewpoint. As Mr Schlosser noted in a recent interview, the most troubling aspect of fast food for kids is "the eating habits it creates. Research shows that if children are obese by the age of 13, the odds are overwhelming that they will be as adults."

I possibly think that the reviewer who did the 2 star on this book totally missed that boat, he says that the prose seems to be "written for children to read". Bingo ... it IS INTENDED for the 9-13 year old audience. Fast Food Nation had a major impact on my life and changed the way my family ate, but it certainly was not somethig that my children would have understood or been interested in reading. Now with this important book, my daughter will also be able to understand why we should choose not to eat junk and fast food. Thank you Mr. Schlosser for caring enough about our younger generation to take on the fast food industry. I am sure they don't make it easy for you.

This is a very informative book that my husband ended up reading first even though we bought it for our 12 year old son. As a result my husband wants to throw out half the food in our pantry!

It is pretty serious stuff and our 12 year old is slogging through it even though he does not want to hear why all of his favorite foods are so bad for him. Given that it is meant to be geared towards pre-teens I am a bit surprised that it is so long, but I am sure it would be hard to cut out any of the truth for fear of not getting the point across.

This book will hold the attention of strong pre-teen readers or kids who are intrinsically interested in the subject. I would love to see a comic type book with the same basic info for 8-12 year olds and then a picture book for 3-8.

"We are more popular than Jesus now."
--John Lennon, 1964

"The Golden Arches are now more widely recognized than the Christian cross."
--CHEW ON THIS!, 2006

"According to one survey, more than nine out of ten American kids know who Ronald McDonald is. There's only one make-believe character better-known than Ronald. His name is Santa Claus."
--CHEW ON THIS!, 2006

Such recognition and popularity might not be of concern if consuming the food that the clown is pushing were as healthy for kids as crunching on carrot sticks, jogging in the park, or dancing all night to Beatles' albums. But, as detailed in CHEW ON THIS!, a book for middle school audiences that is co-written by the author of FAST FOOD NATION, the fabrication, sale, and ingestion of the high-fat, high-calorie fare from McDonald's and their competitors have certainly proved to be detrimental to growing children, teen employees, factory-farmed animals, and to the resources and biosphere that are supposed to support our children's children's children.

There is little difference between the food and business practices of McDonald's and those of the vast majority of other fast food corporations examined in CHEW ON THIS! But it is evident here that McDonald's is the ten-ton gorilla of the industry, and in consuming this book it becomes quite clear that when it has been necessary for them to make changes in order to protect their trillion-dollar company image, McDonald's has more power than the US government in being able to force both suppliers and competitors to instantly do a one-eighty on the way in which things are done.

Speaking of images, CHEW ON THIS! reveals how so many kids and parents have gotten sucked into regularly eating and drinking such unhealthy stuff:

"During the course of a year, the typical American child watches more than 40,000 TV commercials. About 20,000 of those ads are for junk food: soda, candy, breakfast cereals, and fast food. That means children now see a junk-food ad every five minutes while watching TV--and see about three hours of junk-food ads every week. American kids aren't learning about food in the classroom. They're being told what to eat by the same junk-food ads repeating again and again."

"Most of the ads aimed at kids have one simple goal: getting kids to nag their parents. 'It's not just getting kids to whine,' a marketer once explained to Selling to Kids, 'it's giving them a specific reason to ask for the product.' Ads often try to turn children into little salespeople, since kids know their parents better than anyone else does. Advertisers want children to bug their parents and keep bugging them and bug them really well."

"Almost one out of every three new toys given to American kids each year comes from McDonald's or another fast food chain."

"Companies now plan cradle-to-grave advertising strategies, hoping that childhood fondness for a brand will lead to a lifetime of purchases. They have come to believe what Ray Kroc and Walt Disney realized long ago--that a person's 'brand loyalty' may begin as early as the age of two. Indeed, researchers have found that children can often recognize a company logo, like the Golden Arches, before they can recognize their own name."

But CHEW ON THIS! is far more than a rant. It is also an entertaining look at the evolution of the fast food industry over the past half century and how America's love affair with these corporations has long tied in with the trends that have shaped the housing, transportation, and economy of America. Not to mention how it has shaped the waistline of America:

"A study conducted by the federal government predicts that if American kids continue to become obese at the current rate, one out of every three children born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes. Among African-American and Latino children, perhaps one out of every two will develop diabetes. The life of a ten-year-old child who has Type II diabetes is, on average, between seventeen and twenty-six years shorter than that of a healthy child."

Here in California, where the state government is now phasing in a ban on selling soda in public high schools (but stupidly ignores highly-sugared "sports drinks"), CHEW ON THIS! will be a great resource in support of the state's department of education's health and physical education frameworks. It is imperative that it be added to all middle school and high school library collections. Our children's lives depend on it.

I just finished this book, and it has really put the fast food empire in perspective for me. I never knew what actually goes on behind the counter, or how many chemicals can be in a strawberry milkshake. I would reccomend this book for everyone. One bad thing about it, though, is that some parts tend to get a bit boring. But most of the book is very informative and interesting. Overall, this book was definatley worth my money.

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.