Fast Food Nation and the Slow Food Movement

Of all the topics we talked about in class I found the unit on slow food the most interesting. The slow food movement is a movement meant to encourage resistance against the increasingly popular fast food industry and processedfoods in general. Shortly after this movement I read a novel by Eric Schlosser called Fast Food Nation. In this book, Schlosser researches the truth in the American food industry.

Schlosser walks the reader through the journey of some of America's food from where its made and how it's prepared and distributed to customers. Most of the food distributed through the fast food restaurants is created by scientists not farmers. Ninety percent of what humans taste comes from smell. Knowing this, scientists are able to manipulate different chemicals in order to make something taste a certain way. For example, when we eat McDonald's chicken nuggets we are really eating a chicken flavored substance. Most of this kind of food arrives frozen and packaged. Even the sodas and shakes arrive as syrup. Steps to prepare this "food" include either deep frying or simply heating up.

The food served through fast food restaurants consist of chemically created flavor and artificial perservatives. This book really opened my eyes to what I am really eating when I go to a fast food restaurant. I would suggest this book to anyone interested in the slow food movement or anyone who is interested or cares about what exactly they are eating.