I assumed it was angiefag propaganda, so I didn't read it.

It was disgusting when I read it, but afterwords...I wanted fast food.

angiefag propaganda, do not want

>>1278611
>>1278619
Nope. The book points out that fast food is delicious, engineered by food scientists to be so, and the book doesn't even mention that fast food is unhealthy, because it's not about that. It's about the system.

>>1278616
Same here. I still eat fast food, had MacDonalds earlier today. Shit was cash.

>>1278611
>>1278619
It's not propoganda, it's muckraking.

>>1278622
>It's about the system.

what system, exactly?

Fast food is stupid, you can cook your own stuff that tastes better for less money.

>>1278626
Good, fast, and cheap, pick two.

Fast food is good and fast, not so cheap. Or easy.

>>1278625
the meat industry, which has a lobby, which pressures government to be lax on food safety standards. there's another lobby oroganiztion called the NRA, national restaurant association, that lobbies congress to do the same thing. the corporations own the lobbyists and the lobbyists own the politicians.

>>1278626
You're absolutely right, but fast food is cheaper and more convenient.

>>1278631
fast food IS cheap and it tastes pretty good.

We had to read it going into Freshmen year in college... not really sure why we had like a 5 minute discussion about it and then that was it. Actually I might even be making the discussion part up because I think I skipped it.

In any case I read the book. Didn't change a thing, if anything I like McDonalds more.

>>1278638
OP here, and I was sort of the same way. I still eat fast food, but I don't know why. The information was shocking. I was never one of these anti corporation guys, still aren't.

But if that book didn't shock me, what would?

>>1278641
Where the food inc thread? way more people saw that movie and in less time than the book, which is VERY hard to read.

Propaganda and muckraking are not mutually exclusive.

Fast food's problem is low quality, high quantity. They want to move you throw as fast as possible, and the product reflects that. Garbage in, garbage out.

As for the angie-hate...even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Me, I still get a hankering for a quick burger and fries every now and again...but I'll take artery hardening diner fare from a greasy spoon over fast food any day that ends in a y.

>>1278641
Honestly I felt like if i've been eating it all along and I'm not an unhealthy individual and the super processed meat hasn't killed me, then I don't care. Honestly I read it so long ago I barely recall much of anything from that book. But I can tell you that fast food tastes good and its cheap. I think at the time I just wrote it off as propaganda.

Honestly though, how many people could ever say a book changed their lives? Most people who read even self help books don't change their lifestyles.

>>1278643
low quality, high quantity, why is that a problem?

The point of the book is that fast food has changed the world for the worse, and in many, many way. my favourite section of the book is about how every suburb is basically 1950s LA.

I read "Chew on This", which is a "young reader's adaptation", in 2006 (cousin gave it to me).

Read FFN after, essentially, it's the same book. They don't omit anything, dye comes from beetles, chickens get heads cut off, etc.

>>1278652
Oh. I cut back on my fast food consumption significantly.

>>1278648
Actually I changed my mind. My favourite part of the book, in that it made me the most angry, was the part where they mentioned how the meat companies screw farmers out of pricing for their meat. It's absolutely appalling.

>>1278647
I can honestly say that the 7chan /fit/ faq changed many lives. Why not a book like this, which is about us, and our choices?

>>1278643
>Implying that fast food isn't delicious.

There's a section in the book that describes how they've invented machines that mimmick the human mouth and how it chews, with saliva imitation, and they engineer food and flavouring in factories off the new jersey turnpike in this machine to taste good.

they can actually measure how chewy, crunchy, brittle, crispy, melty, doughy, etc... the food is, and as it gets chewed.

Those motherfuckers are actually trying to make their food taste good!?! ON PURPOSE!?! Son of a bitch we should bomb their shit and kill their children and rape their dogs. Good lord, what is the world coming to!?!

Fuck this. I watched Supersize Me and the only change it made me want to make to my diet is that I wanted to tear out Morgan Spurlock's eyeballs and eat them. With some honey mustard.

>>1278683
Too bad Supersize Me and Fast Food Nation have almost nothing in common in terms of criticisms

>>1278683
>implying real chefs can't make food taste good and you NEED scientists and fancy machines and saliva acidity measurements and articificial flavouring processes for that

I thought /ck/ hated processed cheese. I guess this guy prefers kraft singles to sharp cheddar.

>>1278690

>any one kind of cheese is universally better than any other.

Get the fuck out.

A mcburger with thin patties and sharp cheddar cheese would taste like a block of cheese on a bun. The cheese would bulldoze everything else.

Sharp cheddar is for thick burgers, preferably with other stronger tastes like bacon, sauteed onions, and vinegar-based barbecue sauce. You know, flavors that would overpower american cheese? I don't think its reasonable to expect such a burger on a value menu.

Different cheeses are for different applications. Why do you think there are hundreds of different cheeses in the world!?!

>>1278703
That's not the fucking point. You're speaking as if we're mad at fast food inc. for trying to make their food taste good. we're not. but the things the book points out about just HOW processed our food is, with artificial flavouring, and weird chemicals to keep it spongy and at a certain thickness, and preservatives, is DISTURBING.

Omnivores Dilemma here, Fast Food Nation is a loser

Also, there IS a small section on the link between obesity and Fast Food so. But it's mostly a book about business and politics more than health. The section on the slaughter house industry is amazing, pretty much The Jungle for the modern age.

I enjoyed the section on the flavor industry too, which brings up a good point that most anti-fast food zealots seem to gloss over is that fast food is engineered to taste good, or least palatable. I don't think it's hard to understand that fat, salty and sweet are the reasons why people enjoy fast food- and honestly on some level Angie does too.

>>1278718

Disturbing to you maybe.

>artificial flavouring,

All flavoring is artificial. That cow didn't grow with cheese and pickles on it. Discovering what chemical compounds make us feel happy when they hit our taste buds is a very old science called "cooking". So what if they're distilling the chemicals more purely now?

> and weird chemicals to keep it spongy and at a certain thickness, and preservatives

Oh fucking no. My food doesn't rot or fall apart. Whatever shall I do!?!

>>1278735

bread shouldn't feel fresh after a week in the cupboard.

>>1278735

whether you enjoy the taste of fast/processed food or not is a subjective and aesthetic argument, so who cares. that's not really what the book is about. (though there is a moral argument how they use the addictive qualities of sweet, fat, and salty, but that's something else)

What the book demonstrates is that the fast food industry- how it functions, how it produces it's goods etc- have harmful by products. From how these corporation treats it's partner farms, their employees, their franchisers, how they transformed the slaughterhouse sector, their disturbing influence in US politics ON AND ON AND ON BLAH BLAH BLAH.

>>1278734
Sounds a lot like Fast Food Nation

>>1278735
that's the point the book makes about flavouring. when you extract a chemical from something, its called natural flavouring. when they combine it from different elements, it's articifical. but the book points out that its the same damn thing.

and im sorry, but there's a BIG difference between adding spice to meat when cooking and adding colourless odourless chemical compounds to hamburgers so they taste like grilled hamburgers.

also, food is SUPPOSED to rot after a while, it's called biodegradation.

>>1278648
it prey's on the laziness of some people, can't be helped if they can't help themselves

>>1278743

Sounds to me like the same kind of hate wal mart and microsoft get. Baw! someone is successful! They must be the devil!!!

>>1278745

>im sorry, but there's a BIG difference between adding spice to meat when cooking and adding colourless odourless chemical compounds to hamburgers so they taste like grilled hamburgers.

Yes there is. That difference is that we weren't able to do the latter fifty years ago. It's different so its wrong?

>food is SUPPOSED to rot after a while, it's called biodegradation.

Yeah, and we're all SUPPOSED to die when we have heart attacks, but now we don't if you get to help in time. We're not SUPPOSED to go 55 miles an hour, fly through the air, or survive diseases worse than influenza.

Stupid evil science fucking everything up.

>>1278632
>>1278626
You're absolutely right, but fast food is cheaper and more convenient.

>>1278626
Fast food is stupid, you can cook your own stuff that tastes better for less money.
>you can cook your own stuff that tastes better for less money.
>for less money.

>You're absolutely right, but fast food is cheaper

>>1278773

point 1:
maybe because there are Faustian ramifications to the way they achieved that success. it's not crying, it's looking at the truth rather than having blind republican/libertarian worship to big business.

point 2:

because in order to reach the point where bread does not rot, it is so chemically processed and transformed that it taste bad and it's unhealthy. herp derp, you're really have to resort to a red herring here?

of course you could always claim that it taste good (it doesn't) or that you personally like it (you have bad taste) but like i said, who cares? no one is vilifying science (another red herring) but rather industries use of food science: to create addicting, cheap to produce, unhealthy food at the expense of the welfare of it's workers and consumers.

>>1278778

whether fast food is cheaper or not for the lower and middle class america is up for debate. It probably boils down to opportunity cost and the convenience factor.

I mean, you can easily go to the grocery store and create a meal plan/diet that's healthier and cheaper than what the fast food industry can supply. But the time and effort saved by just eating out is viewed as more valuable. And can the american palate actually be satisfied by a diet focused on produce and grains and less meat, sodium and sugar?

Then there's the theorized cost associated to healthcare and a diet consisting of fast food. You may save some time going to Mcdonalds now but you'll pay for it with prostrate cancer later.

The trouble with the anti-fast-food hysteria is that some people believe they are eating healthier simply by not eating fast food. They believe if they have a big burger and fries at a sit down restaurant or at home they're somehow eating more healthy, simply because it isn't fast food.

Yes and yes.

I'm not American, but I've stopped eating processes meat entirely.
Also "My Year of Meat", good book with nice view on social issues.

I might still enjoy a burger or a steak one is a while, but I stick to fish and sometimes chicken, eat lentils etc. for protein.
It did very good to my budget and health too, tbh. Meat is a bit expensive in my country.

>>1278842
>I've stopped eating processes meat entirely

I would stop eating processed meat if there were a reason to do so.

>>1278825
>prostrate cancer

>>1278853


Enjoy your plastic, soy and other crap

I stopped drinking soda for a year and was obsessive about my eating habits.. but i slowly changed back.

>>1278859

Yeah, processed meat contains plastic. You're obviously very bright.

I buy grass fed beef whenever I can now - tastes so much better

>>1278890
Cows eat grass?

mindblown.jpg

>>1278892

Most beef doesn't, it's fed in feedlots and so has less flavor and nutrients

>>1278807

Taste is subjective. I enjoy processed white bread and I enjoy the healthy bran bread I make for myself. You saying fast food tastes bad is insane when a big part of your case against them is that they use science to make their food taste good and that's somehow wrong...?

As for whether its unhealthy, a big mac is not was not will never be presented as health food and you'd have to be some kind of moron to think it was. We know its not healthy.

>>1278842

I think I'd rather die of prostate cancer RIGHT NOW than eat lentils.

>>1278900

Lentils are great, you're just not making them right. Lentil and chicken curry, red lentil soup - great tasting cheap protein

Well, this book like countless other just ensure what we already did know about Fastfood.

>>1278734
Let's not pretend that Michael Pollan is any kind of authorship in these issues. He is a PETA yank.

>>1278926

What have you written lately bitch?

>>1278900

1.
like i said before, it doesn't matter whether you or I think that chemically altered hamburger bun taste good or bad. it's a aesthetic argument and no one cares about those cause you can't prove a damn thing. But if you really want to go there, consider this analogy- I consider Brittany Spears equal to Mozart. Fast Food appeals to the lowest common denominator of taste- fat, sugary and salty which are arguably physiologically addicting. Do you have any conception of cooking as an art form? Sure, at some baseline, eating is about pleasure. So is sex, but i'd rather sleep with someone I love than a one night stand with a prostitute.

2.
Of course Big Macs were never marketed as healthy. (On a side note, Mcdonalds did market grossly unhealthy 1,000+ calorie salads as healthy and nutritious) You may be able to regulate your fast food intake but the obesity numbers clearly show that the average american cannot. There is a clear correlation between the advent of the fast food industry and the rising rate of obesity of the US from the 1960s and onwards. Basically, McDonalds is selling a substance that is cheap, addictive and overall dangerous.

And this doesn't even get into what the book really focuses on- which is the business side of things and McDonalds as corporation. I suggest you get over your biases and actually read the book- it's a good case study to why the profit motive does not always result in good.

>>1278926

shut the fuck up angie

>>1278953
I agree with you. But we can't argue that point 2 illustrates a cause. We can only postulate a correlation. We also need to look at a shift away from blue-collar labor. As well as a shift in technology in the blue-collar sector. A job where I used to be required to fling 80 lbs. glass panels around, is now facilitated by an automated lifting device. Where most people used to work in factories or agriculture, people are now working desk jobs while we send the production overseas.

>>1278949
She's actually quite prolific.

http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Talk:Angie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYyDXH1amic

>>1278953
Well, I only read the synopsis of this book, obviously.

But to me it seems that this McD´s thing is the cold hard core of yank business attitudes. Total draconian mentality without any concern for anything than profits. That's what it is, that is what american fastfood is.

But this whole phenomenon takes itself back to Bush the first which applied this libertarian mentality to american businesses and american society as a whole. Perhaps most things were privatised before but the libertarian ideals give the businesses the right to behave as immorally as possible in terms of profit. This development accompanied with the virtual destruction of workers benefits and workers right in USA has created permanent class of people in USA that do not have access into necessities of life and have to slave away in jobs with poor salary and no benefits.
But to be honestly, I do not care of yanks, they can keep their moral bankruptcy and corruption. What I am personally concerned of is this yank stuff taking an effect in Europe where we have actually something worth preserving in terms of culture and society.

Did you know that they opened a McD´s in Louvre??? If I was a french man I would not write an upset post in the internet about it. I would pick up a molotov cocktail and drive this yank trash OUT.

>>1278978
delicious

>>1278978
That's the goal of ANY PUBLICLY HELD CORPORATION.

>>1278987
lol logic

>>1278978
I don't know why I keep feeding you.

You point to the worst of American businesses as the norm.

The french have historically been very protective of their culture. They even have a government department of language that works very hard to keep foreign words out of the language. They create new french words whenever foreign words become popular.

If they wanted to keep McD's out, they could have. They didn't. Apparently, they like money too.

McD's corporate attitude dates back much further than Bush. Where I agree, he is a villain to be despised, anyone who has taken a high school economics course is going to call you out on your made up bullshit. Do some fact checking.

>>1278991
So, having typed all that, do you feel better now?

>>1278987
Goal? What goal? The goal is any businesses is to make money, surely.
But this does not mean that it is moral to do anything for money, obviously.
Yank businesses such as McD´s have no sense of ethics or morals. And this is not okay.

>>1278607
I thought it was obvious, but apparently it's not. I'll try it in parlance that might make it through. This is /ck/. Max Efficiency is Shit Tier. Quality and Taste is God Tier. Comprende?

>>1278658
>Implying things that weren't implied

I just told you I like a good dive burger. But yes, I will say that on a relativist spectrum, I do not like the taste of fast food compared to a greasy heart attack on a white diner plate, which itself is compared to my own cooking (when it goes right), which is itself compared to the home cooking viewed through the lens of my childhood.

It goes something like this.
Cardboard Rubbed With Olive Oil --> Bad Bar Food --> Fast Food --> Greasy Dive Food --> Really Good Bar Food --> My Own Cooking When I Don't Fuck Up --> The Sweet Unattainable Memory of My Grandmother's Thanksgiving Dinner as a child.

If that makes me an effete snob, then baby, I wouldn't have it any other way.

>>1278978
I'd be pissed too (I'm American, though).

At least McD's takes the effort to make nicer McDonalds in nice areas (the one in Manhattan near Wall Street I visited was amazingly clean and well furnished)

Still, it doesn't belong there.

>>1278971

yeah, the move to a sedentary life style is part of the cause. but if you look at purchasing habits of US consumers, you can see a shift in the American diet.

"A generation ago, three-quarters of the money used to buy food in the US was spent to prepare meals at home. Today, about half of that same money is spent in restaurants – mainly fast food restaurants. " (FFN)

Now, diet/nutrition have a direct relationship to health. As a counterfactual, if fast food/processed food didn't take off and Americans ate home cooked meals made with real ingredients instead, would there have been an obesity epidemic and health care problem? Shrug, Alice Waters would probably say yes.

>>1279000
STFU, bitch

>>1278994
Actually, yes, I do. It seems that the greatest hunger of the human soul is to be understood.

>>1279004
Your food is probably better in reality. Food nostalgia is HUGE, because when we eat something at a young age and don't die, it's safe. So, our mind makes us like it more.

>>1279000
Yank businesses? Are you fucking trolling? There are a ton of international corporations that care about money first and nothing else.

>>1279006
>Still, it doesn't belong there.

Who are you to make that decision?

>>1279016
You're right. My OPINION is that McDonalds is not a classy establishment that belongs in a place like the Louvre.

>>1279007
And I'd likely agree. But, if we are going to argue for a change to the less convenient home preparation of fresh foods, we need to counter the arguments that are likely to be presented.

When debating, we can not point to such stats as anything but similar trending.

I think the place we need to go with this argument is cost/value of time arguments, and nutritional analysis of both types of food. There could also be some work done with comparing Basal metabolic rates, but I'm not sure where we could get anything but an estimate for historic data.

>>1279023
Then don't go there. If your opinion is so valid, other people will not go there too and it will go out of business.

>>1279030
I hope so, but I think it's bound to become popular among American tourists.

>>1279024
>we

Who do you think you represent?

>>1279000
You know...not shopping at these places is an option you might consider. If you're pissed about the success of big business and the collapse of the little guy, blame your own countrymen who support them. A smart corporation doesn't invest in a market that won't support it.

Basically, you got a problem about it, do something more constructive than troll a forum frequented by people who don't give two shits. Start a food co-op. Do large dinners for friends, sharing the burden. Invest in local businesses. But wait...you won't, because you're just a troll.

>>1279032
>Implying that only Americans visit the Louvre.

>>1279037
I never said that, but I'm sure that they make up a large percentage of visitors.

>>1278991 McD's corporate attitude dates back much further than Bush.
I mean, the first Bush, not his son. Anyhow, attitudes if you can really think that corporation have any surely did exist earlier. I have no illusion that such businesses as McD´s always do everything that they can get away with. And this is what this is all about the establishment of libertarianism sort of like gave these companies to justification to do just about anything and that they really could not be criticised for it. This development in terms of businesses accompanied with the gross cutback and reforms of workers rights in USA at the period of time has elementally lead to what USA is today. You have huge underclass of people without basic benefits. Everything is privatised and hugely inefficient, the salaries for normal jobs are at all time low, the workers rights are pretty nonexistent, economically speaking normal people are tied to slave away their poor paid non-benefit jobs while having no virtual possibility of improving their situation. Individual companies literally hold the sway over all work force and dictate the social environment.

>>1279035
Wow. No one's ever thrown that argument at her.

Looks like you've won!

>>1279038
You've never been there, have you?

>>1279043
I have NOT. I underestimated how much the French like McD's though:
>“The McDonald’s on the famed Champs-Elysees Avenue is the most profitable in the world“.

>>1279040
If you hate McDonald's so much, why do you talk about it all the time?

>McD´s
Also, why do your apostrophes look so strange? Let's see you type a real apostrophe, slav.

>>1279013
Considering Grandma's still alive and we share the workload for Turkey Day, which has actually improved due to my advice, you betcha. But that's why it's at the top of the food continuum and described as an unobtainable memory.

There's an ephemeral quality when you know food is made for the love of food.

>>1279045
Yup. That's what I thought.

So Americans are to blame, right?

>>1279035
Look, you personalise this argument, now. I am talking of the morality of economy and businesses in general. You talk about me. This issue has not a thing to do with me.

As for blaming, I do blame the yank cultural influence that is being forced upon us by economical situation and an economical system. As you know, I do not agree with it. I do not agree with culture being sacrificed over profit. Then again, if McD´s was a better and more civilised thing I would not be so hostile against it, but it is not. But this argument that I make is not really about playing the blame game, it is about scrutinising this situation and the morality of it. As it is this company that does these things, it is clear that it holds the logical moral responsibility. You say that "it is the people that go to McD´s" but that is a logically delusional argument because it does not justify the phenomenon. Morality is not a democracy of the consumer.

>>1279040
I'm not saying I disagree with you about any of America's socio-economic problems. I'm just saying that McD's has had the same corporate attitude since 1948 when they introduced "speedee service". They have pretty much always been about producing a very cheap, mediocre product, with the only concern being a low price point, to attract consumers, and a way to pass as many people through checkout as possible.

Ray Kroc Opened the first actual franchise in 1955, and aggressively pushed the business model that they use today. McDonalds was an evil juggernaut long before 1989, when H.W Bush took office.

>>1279056

>>1279024

i mean, with that data, are you trying to convince a policy maker to regulate american diets? because i feel it's more of an ideological thing rather than something the government can actually legislate- except for maybe reducing corn subsidies or something.

optimistically, i think it's only a matter of time before the slow food/localvore/organic food movements to hit the mainstream in turn changing the business practices of corporations like McDonalds to offer better food/products.

Besides, any hard data we could get would be from some current/future long term epidemiological that would take forever to be finished. I think comparing diets amongst other cultures and nations is faster approach.

>>1279013

a well known marketing technique which is why a lot of McDonald's advertising is aimed at the young.

And those Golden Arches of the McDonald's logo is suppose to represent your mother's bosoms. or something like that

>>1279064
Get them into it when they are young, then they will keep it up as adults. Yes, even 3 your old kids know who Ronald McDonald is. As they are virtually brainwashed with constant advertising.

And then there is this 30% child obesity rate. Now, let's blame the parents because they are obvious responsible. Because they can obviously have such huge control over what McD´s does in society and how it is promoted to kids even in schools. Yes, let's boil this whole thing down to personal responsibility because in libertarian frame of mind companies and corporations can do anything and get away with it because it is for the profit but it is the individual who takes the blame. Convenient isn't it. Convenient and the reality that you have 30% child obesity rates in USA.

>>1278607ask me anything.

Were you born this way or were you dropped as a child? Is your whole family like that?

>>1279072
See, the problem isn't that we don't want to hold the company responsible. The problem is that we really don't like the government having that kind of control. We argue for personal accountability, because those of us that are in decent shape, may want to enjoy a big mac once in awhile. Yes, it is junk food, but in moderation, it can be quite alright. Yes, we should have full disclosure of nutritional information. Yes, we should be taught how to deal with such information in school. But what we do with knowledge of any type, is up to us.

>>1279083
lol logic

>>1279083
Yes, I know, you have the grossly over portrayed ideals of individual liberty. Sadly, they are just ideals and majority of people in reality cannot live up to them. People in general, are not intelligent, they do not make conscious choices, they can be manipulated easily, they can be abused easily, and they will personally abuse their supposed freedom eagerly because they do not understand that in life freedom is only meant for those that can handle its responsibility. And this is what yank land is. Businesses have total freedom of just about anything, no moral and barely legal restrictions. And no sense of responsibility. But then you blame the average guy if he behaves like an average human being in these situations that companies create.

>>1279099
So you essentially want to reduce my liberties because some trailer park trash can't make a decent decision? I'll pass thanks. I'm for truth in advertising. If people can look at the facts, and still order a 3000 calorie meal, then I'm happy to let them get heart disease. Just so long as medicine isn't socialized. As soon as I start paying their insurance bill for them, I expect them to be held to account for what health problems they bring upon themselves.

In the current system, screw them, I'll take liberty, and if they want to suicide via cheeseburger, that's their right.

>>1279099

No, YOU! have "grossly over portrayed ideals of individual liberty". If this was before the Cold war ended, you'd be dragged out of your bed by those floppy tits of yours and taken in a cattle car to Siberia...

So many brave, outspoken, opinionated foolosiphers out of the Eastern bloc now that the wall is down aren't there?

>>1279099

Should I eat this?

>>1279111
I don't see how an argument from intimidation is going to help. Yes, she plainly has different ideals than us, and yes, she often resorts to crude epithets and disinformation, but I don't see how stooping to her level is going to help bring us towards a greater understanding.

>>1279114
No. But, if you are at a healthy weight, and you will be performing activities that will negate the caloric intake, and getting the nutrients your body requires, then it could be an occasional treat.

Gasp, logics!

>>1279115

I see your point and will, "cease and desist" any further comments towards the troll who speaks what she doesn't truly know...

>>1279114

What is this I don't even

>>1279114

Ye gods, what manner of horrifying abomination is this?

>>1279145
>>1279150

This is last month for about a week...

>>1278643
oh hay, the vortex!

Damnit, I just wrote a long reply to all this stuff and it got deleted.

Listen, just read the book. I was just like all the naysayers and devil's advocates in this thread until I read the goddamn book. It's a very long and difficult read, but worth it.

The reason I said "ask me anything" is because I know how few people have read the book, so I figured I'd claer up misconceptions about it. I used to be the kind of guy who's see a book like this in the bookstore, "FFN" and say, "What a stupid book, waaah, I hate business waaaah"

Until I read the book.

>>1279303
Oh, and there's quite a good preview here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=yNFN1OpnkBkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=fast+food+nation&cl
ient=safari#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Individual liberty? How about individual responsibility?

"Mommy, I want a Happy Meal™!"
>"You already have a lunch packed, and we're having dinner at Jim and Tina's tonight, so no."
"But mom...."
>"I said no."
"You don't love me. I hate you."
>"We'll see about that the next time you get hungry."

The first step in fixing a problem is recognizing what you can do to FIX THE FUCKING PROBLEM. If you're out of toilet paper, you don't troll about the decline of western civilization on the internet. YOU BUY MORE TOILET PAPER!

Gee, that was hard.

I love how this thread is getting trolled by a single person who asks very simple questions.

>>1279159
I spy with my little eye someone who's been to Little 5 Points.

>>1279374
Wait, I'm confused. I thought we were trolling trolls while they trolled, and were getting trolled back, so its now just this great ball of angry trollage.

I read this book junior year in high school. It's been a good 5 years since and I've had mcdonalds a total of two times since. I cook at home more often now.

CHIPS

>>1278953
>chemically altered

Another stupid catchphrase that doesn't mean anything. Adding salt or pepper to food constitutes chemically altering it.

>>1279402

Have you stopped eating fatty foods altogether? Or have you just stopped eating fatty foods from McDonald's?

YOU SHOULD READ "IN DEFENSE OF FOOD"

and watch Food, Inc and the Future of Food

>>1279107

>Just so long as medicine isn't socialized.

Fuck off. It's the government's responsibility to ensure everyone has adequate health care. Every other developed country realizes this. It's only the American people who are stupid enough to be conned into advocating against their own interests.

>>1279583
>It's the government's responsibility to ensure everyone has adequate health care.
No it isn't.

>>1279575

Adding salt or pepper is something that we have over 6,000 years of experimental history attesting to safety about. But flavor compounds made in Jersey are untested, and we have no idea about the long term effects.

>>1279588
this. I think the fact that a single corporation changed the way humans eat food more drastically in 50 YEARS than the previous HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS is scary. If you disagree, I fee sorry for you.

One of the main points of the book is that while the PRICE of fast food is quite low, the COST of fast food is quite high.

>>1279599
>I think the fact that we've improved life expectancy more in the last 50 years than in the last thousand years is scary.
>Progress is bad.

>>1279588

Bitches don't know about my FDA

Don't Eat This Book by Morgan Spurlock is way better.

The great thing about the book is that in the end, everything is tied together, as long a you know a little something about history and sociology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aid_Highway_Act_of_1956

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMansion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_sprawl

>>1279603

You're falsely equating proven medical advances with unproven food experimentation. Technology is not an all or nothing thing.

>>1279604
The book is EXTREMELY critical of the FDA, in the chapter ABOUT those Jersey flavour factories.

>>1279607
No it's not, that book is about the health consequences of fast food. The argument is flawed because EVERYONE knows fast food is unhealthy.

>>1279603
What's your point? One is clearly a good change and the other is a bad change.

>>1279610

Fast food is proven to be quick, cheap, and delicious. That's all its ever set out to be.

>>1279604

The FDA is almost totally ineffective at this point.

The problem with ALL regulatory bodies is this: the industry they regulate will always have far more interest in them than the public they're supposed to be acting for will. So over time the FDA has become more and more focused to and run by the food and drug industries, which are becoming more and more intertwined themselves.

>>1279614

Cheap to who? The medical costs of obesity aren't cheap, yet it's not reflected in either the price or the profit of the franchisers. Their business model rests upon the automobile, which is supported by highway subsidies and a large military to ensure oil to run those cars. That's neither cheap nor easy.

>>1279603
How we define "progess" is another theme in the book. In one episode, the author asks the owner of Carls Jr. if he misses the old LA. The owner replies, no. The author assumes he misunderstood the question, and clarifies, asking about how LA used to have orange groves. No, he says, I believe in progess. The man had understood the question perfectly.

But are parking lots and fast food restaurants and sprawl and low-density REALLY progess? Progress used to mean building UP, because urban land was so expensive. But shouldn't all land be expensive? After all, nothing else is more scarce in the world. Society since the 1950s prefers more horizontal space, but at what cost, and when is it going to be enough?

>>1279614
But HOW do they keep it so cheap, quick and delicious? And what are the costs of these methods?

The thread about grass feed beef or milk just reminded me another theme of the book. America's relationship to the West, and Cows.

I'm a film buff, and my favourite western is the one I consider the most American, the Western. Cowboys and Indians. It's also the most passe genre, especially in America. Most people don't like westerns anymore.

Westerns are all about the conquering of the wild into an american civilization. one of the main character types in westerns in the cowboy, or literally, cattle ranchers. America has the western cowboy ingrained in its DNA. And the hamburger is the all-american meal, right? it's the cornerstone of fast food.

so in the chapter about globalization, he notes that western culture is only popular in europe, especially germany for some reason. the idea is that our american western cowboy indentity has been shipped out to europeans who appreciate it as something foreign and exotic. it's been exported and packaged as cool. meanwhile, in america, we treat real cowboys and beef ranchers like shit. the myth of the cowboy or the local farmer is just that, a myth. the meatpacking corporations run everything and screw real farmers out of their livelihood. It's an american tragedy.

But we still love our beef, even if it kills us.

>>1279616

Our health is not their concern, and every single business is dependent on government services. That's just the way it works.

>>1279618

The owner of Carls Jr is evil because he doesn't miss orange groves? Call the fucking national guard, he's clearly a m-m-m-monster!

Progress used to mean one thing and now it means another. You know what that's called? Yeah. Progress.

who the fuck eats at mcdonalds, its expensive and tastes like shit. also the burgers dont look like on the pictures

>>1279576
Bascially I used to eat fast food 3-4 times a week. Now it's maybe once a month at most.

>>1279637
You've missed the point. Carl is portrayed as a GOOD man. He's one of the businessmen the book portrays in a sympathetic life. He was screwed out of his company by fucking wall street fucks.

Also, if their health is not our concern, who do you think is paying for their medical costs? All of us!

>>1279637

>and every single business is dependent on government services. That's just the way it works.

Not in the same way fast food does - without those subsidies it just wouldn't be able to operate at all.

I live in Brooklyn right now, and it's amazing how few fast food joints are here. Because this city was developed before cars it's very dense, and that means there's few cars, so it's quite easy to go somewhere else. There's also not the cheap land that fast food requires to keep their food cheap.

>>1279644
this. It's a pre-LA city. It doesn't have a car culture.

Suburbia = fast food housing.

It all ties together, doesn't it.

>>1279621

99 cents for a double, at least in my market. The value menu is actually a way better deal than combo meals.

>>1279636

eastern culture is only popular in america, especially the USA for some reason. the idea is that Japanese Eastern samurai indentity has been shipped out to americans who appreciate it as something foreign and exotic. it's been exported and packaged as cool. meanwhile, in Japan, we treat real samurai and ninja like shit. the myth of the samurai is just that, a myth. the gun sellers run everything and shoot real samurai in the face. It's a Japanese tragedy.

Protip: the life of a cowboy is alot like the life of a knight, or an outlaw, or a pirate, or anything else we think was awesome: largely shit, and inevitably doomed to be bulldozed by the march of progress.

In ten years we'll be hearing this same argument about TV... how its a cornerstone of american culture and the Internet is shamelessly destroying it.

>>1279657
What the fuck are you talking about? Samurai and knights are historical figures. Beef ranchers still fucking exist.

Pic related.

Here's the Carl anecdote. It's so bittersweet.

This is a list of the chemicals used to create strawberry milkshake flavouring.

>>1279665

Yes numbnuts, but between being historical figures and being the rock stars of their day, there was a period where they were being pushed out by somebody who does things better, faster, or cheaper. Free range cattle being driven across the plains is giving way to the feed lot run by an international conglomerate. That's just how the modern world works.

>>1279681
I don't think you understand how modern beef ranching works.

Unrelated, but this is a list of things they feed animals.

"The medical literature on the causes of food poisoning is full euphemisms and dry scientific terms: coliform levels, aerobic plate counts, sorbitol, MacConkey agar, and so on. Behind them lies a simple explanation for why eating a hamburger can now make you seriously ill: There is shit in the meat." Actual shit.

The USDA in a 1996 study found that at meat processing plants, "78.6 percent of the ground beef contained microbes ... spread primarily by fecal material." There is real shit, not figurative, but real mammal made shit in that burger. This statistic alone made me give up fast food.

Before reading this book, I had spent a hellish week traveling across the country in a deteriorating UHaul, living off the regular roadside attractions: McDonalds, Taco Bell, KFC, and Burger King. It was cheap, there, and I knew exactly what I was getting. But I didn't know about the shit, or that those sweet tasting McDonalds fries gained there flavor not from potato's, but from chemicals harvested in New Jersey. I didn't know cattle and chicken ranchers had become sharecroppers; and that more fast food workers were killed in 1998 than police officers. I didn't know that our government -- the ones who brought you the nuclear bomb, the internet, and the space shuttle -- don't have the legal power to recall meat that could kill people. I knew about the cultural decimation; just driving through the Midwest or through any suburb, that I passed the same restaurant and same gas station continuously from Ohio to Anaheim, is enough proof of our cultural impotence. But I didn't know why it ended up like this, and that it didn't have to.

>>1279657

after reading a couple of your posts now, how can you seriously equate OMG PROGRESS with MCDONALDS. You actually think that there's a continuum where food has been getting better and better throughout human history and the fast food industry is the penultimate incarnation of cuisine?

and that burger is 99 cents because of: government subsidies of corn (which created monoculture), subsidies for the cars and highway system (dependence on oil), cheap labor (abuse of workers in slaughterhouses and creating deadend low skill jobs in their restaurants), high volumes of sales (marketing techniques like hook them while their young combined with the addictive quality of food magnified by taste science).

Yeah it might only cost YOU 99 cents for the burger (for now, the average american will be paying more due to medical costs associated with a diet of fast food) but to produce that product at that scale for that price costs much more.


Oh, and farmers have historically always been shafted by the middlemen.

>>1279681

yes, and now the pendulum is swinging the other way when enough investigation and research is proving industrial feed lots are terrible ecologically and unsustainable, even if their production yields are high which is only the case because the cheap energy afforded by fossil fuels.

>>1279730
The only way it'll change quicker is if everyone makes a pact to stop buying beef that isn't grass fed and free range. I don't give a shit about the life of a cow, but that's what cows are designed to eat. not cats and dogs and cow shit and other cows.

>>1279735
Right on. http://www.realmilk.com/

>>1279678
That's misleading. Good artificial flavors need to have a lot of ingredients, because that's what real food is like. It's easy to make something like that look evil solely through the length of the ingredient list, but how many of the ingredients are really chemicals that have been found to cause harm?

>>1279746
The point is chemicals are there to mask the shitty quality of fast and/or processed food. Without those flavoring chemicals it tastes like shit, and obviously with or without them is just horrible nutrition. We are conned every time we eat processed or fast food.

>>1279730
Those corps have lobbies and shills sitting on the FDA panels. It's futile, really.

Everyone that's reading this thread should go to westonaprice.org right now and read nutritional and agriculture articles.

call me ignorant, but i gathered a couple friends and went straight to mcdonalds right after i finished the book.

>>1279781
Artificial flavouring can be applied to healthy, delicious food as easily as unhealthy, disgusting food. Don't draw those types of spurious conclusions.

Also, don't falsely link health and taste together. Delicious food can be quite bad for you, and healthy food can be quite tasteless.

Even if you arguments against artificial flavourings weren't fallacious, they would apply equally to spices, the supposed difference being price. But some spices are cheaper than some artificial alternatives, and vice versa. Yet spices are considered "better" and "higher quality", and I doubt you will advocate giving up herbs and spices.

So admit it. Your "health awareness" is just fashion, and ignorance. "Artificial" is not a bad word, and "natural" is not a panacea.

>>1279806
Please... Fast and processed food is just terrible nutrition. It's designed for profit, not health.