Very similar to Schlosser in Fast Food Nation, Roberts is very heavy on the facts. This book is over 300 pages of hard to digest facts which point out the obvious flaws in the food industry. By having so many facts in his book there is a blatant disregard for the reader. He doesn't take into account that there are over three hundred pages and through out them he berates the food industry for all of its flaws. An industry that is under the weight of a nation that is at three hundred million and growing. They are at a crossroads between needing to make the most profit possible and producing enough food to feed all the people who live here. Roberts does do an excellent job of pointing out the weak points where the major companies do take liberties with their products and because of that millions of lives are put at risk. He does what he sets out to do, which is point out the flaws in the corporate giants who run the food industry and explain how our current consumption will outweigh the supply of food in a matter of years. The biggest flaw i find in his book is that it is all about the facts and what is going to happen, no alternatives are suggested. He does what the movie Food Inc does, it shows you the bad and the good, and they leaves the end result up to you by saying and making you want to buy home grown organic products. They leave change to the readers, i think it is a noble cause and a very strongly written book, but i feel that he didn't do all he could, he told us about the end of food, but that's it. Still left me feeling hungry.
After watching Food Inc, it seemed inhumane to let someone eat McDonald's and only McDonald's for a month. The amount of mistreatment of animals and just overall processing of their meat is astounding. The chicken nuggets aren't actually nuggets of chicken, they are a paste that is made of all parts of the chicken ground up so it looks like pink play dough, it is then colored white, stamped into shapes, breaded, fried and then shipped to a McDonald's near you. The ground beef that comes from those plants isn't from one cow, but from up to 1000 different cows. The narrator and main character Morgan Spurlock ate nothing but McDonald's for 30 days for 3 meals a day. I thought some of the best points in this movie were how he would feel low if he didn't eat for a while and then feel better when he did eat. He noticeably gained weight, just by living an exaggerated version of the American Lifestyle. When he tried to reach anyone at McDonalds to talk, he could never get anyone on the phone. This movie points out how we as Americans live. We live in a society where we can buy a 72 ounce soda at 7/11 or a cheeseburger for a dollar. We never think of the ramifications of these actions, we just know that it tastes good and is cheap, which is all we really want. The biggest problem that i had with this movie is that he took it too far. He ate it for three meals a day for 30 days, it is clearly unhealthy, but for what we thought would happen, it wasn't that bad, his cholesterol went up and he gained a lot of weight, but he also didn't allow himself to work out which he used to do on a regular basis, so he lost muscle too. I just didn't feel that the results of his experiment weren't the same as what they were hyped to be. But he did get a great message across and did cause the food companies to change their ways, which in itself is an achievement. My favorite part from the movie was when he put the different burgers from McDonalds and the fries all in different jars, and then got a hamburger and fries from a restaurant and put them in jars too. Then watched as they decomposed. And in the end they all did in one way or another, except for the fries. As the Big Mac turned to mold, the fries still looked the exact same as they did the day they were bought. He then raised the question, is it healthy to put something that cant be broken down by nature in our bodies? I thought no, it isn't, if mold can't grow here, then what is going to happen when if i eat it? This is the world we live in. Where we eat what is available for a cheap price, and because of that, we eat things that are terrible for us. Its all because we live in a Fast Food Nation, we just all need to realize that.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521/usercomments-408
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