Chew on This

Chew On This: Everything You Don't Want to Know about Fast Food, first published in 2005, is an adaptation of Fast Food Nation for younger readers by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson.

Synopsis

This book follows the general plot structure of Fast Food Nation but simplifies its predecessor's original content to make it more readable for younger children. The book is mainly a critique of the fast food industry. It tends to focus on McDonalds but covers all fast food in general. It goes on to mention production, labor conditions, and the negative health effects of some fast food, production, and labor conditions. This book also retells the history of fast food, from the man who invented the first hamburgers to the creation of fast food companies. It covers such content as the way chickens die at a slaughterhouse; how meatpacking has become more dangerous than it was back in the times of the Chicago Stock Yards, cutting approximately 400 cattle an hour; and how the average child sees approximately 40,000 advertisements a year, half of which are for fast food, candy, breakfast cereals, and soda.

Publication details

The book has been published twice: once in hardcover, and once in paperback; including a new foreword. The paperback version of the book was first published in 2006 by Penguin Books. It has 318 pages.