Chew on This

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

Plot summary

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 McDonald's, but covers all fast-food in general. It goes on to mention the negative health effects of some fast food, production, and its 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 is basically, as the title says, "everything you don't want to know about fast food," such as the way chickens die at a slaughterhouse, how meatpacking has become more dangerous than 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 ltd. It has 318 pages

See also

Novels portal

• Fast Food Nation
• Food, Inc. (film)
• Super Size Me