Dishing Up Facts and Opinions on Fast Food

Don't read this book over breakfast . . . or lunch . . . or dinner. And really, really don't read this book while downing a meal from a fast-food restaurant.

This book asks questions about food, questions that may have never occurred to you. What do you eat every day? Why do you eat it? Do you ever think about where that food came from or how it got to your table?

Just because a book is nonfiction, as this one is, doesn't mean that it's all facts. There are lots of opinions in this book, which tells about the history of the fast-food industry and looks at how companies target kids for their products, whether they're cheeseburgers or sugary sodas. It will be up to you as a reader to decide how to respond to the positions the authors take.

But some of the facts in the book may really surprise you:

-- A can of soda contains about 10 teaspoons of sugar.

-- Thirty years ago, teenage boys in the United States drank twice as much milk as soda. Now they drink twice as much soda as milk.

-- About 9 billion chickens are killed for food each year in the United States. That's almost 30 chickens for every person.

As you read, you can decide if you think the companies behind fast food and sugary sodas are as greedy and evil as the authors make them out to be. Are they cleverly encouraging people to eat things that are bad for them? Or are they just serving up what people want to eat?

Either way, this book is definitely food for thought.

-- Tracy Grant