W5 More Fast Food Nation

     I am going to reflect on the chapters we read in Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. The sections about McDonald’s chicken nuggets have officially made the McNuggets dead to me. When you choose chicken over beef, you automatically think that you are making the "healthier" choice. This is not always the case, and especially when it comes to the McNugget. According to Fast Food Nation, the Mcdonald's McNugget actually resembles beef more than it does poultry! Okay, I thought we were buying "chicken" nuggets. These chicken nuggets also contain twice as much fat per ounce as a hamburger! The sad part is that parents let their kids eat these fatty processed chicken nuggets that have absolutely no health value.

     Fast Food Nation enhanced my awareness of how our Country relies heavily on fast food and how it lacks the whole point of nutrition we need for our bodies. Fast food comes from processed foods that contain so many chemicals that we don't know half of the real ingredients. Americans spend ninety percent of their money on processed foods, and it is the flavor industry in America that is responsible for this. In almost all of the food products we buy contain the words of either "artificial flavor" or "natural flavor." Surprisingly, natural flavor is no better than artificial flavor. These flavor compounds contain actually more ingredients than the foods given their taste. This is shocking to me, because I had no idea that processed foods contained chemicals we didn’t even know about!

    I have been ignorant of all the details shown in Fast Food Nation, so I am glad that I have more knowledge of what is actually going into my body. These readings make me wish for my own kitchen, because I know everything that I heat up in my dorm microwave is no good!  But then again our culture runs off of this kind of food so how can I escape it? If ten thousand new processed food products are entering the American market every year, then it makes it almost impossible for me to escape it. Sometimes I wish we could go back to the good old days and live off the land!