Chew On This

The book "Chew on This" is a investigative journalistic novel based around the fast-food industry. From the beginning it starts to tell the origins of fast-food itself, which is something I really like. It goes with the old saying from Sun Tzu, "Know your enemy...". Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson understood that for people to truly understand why fast food is bad, they had to go into its origins.

What I like about this method though is that the book keeps it interesting by going into the personal lives of fast food employees. It shows how their lives have been affected by their jobs and how lowly they are respected for them. For example, a 16-year employe named Sadi worked from eight o'clock in the morning until 11 o'clock at night, due to a lack of helping hands and different managers coming in to ask for her help. She was then asked to help close the restaurant and left at three o'clock in the morning. The next day, her manager gave her a thank-you gift for working nineteen hours and a half with only a half-hour break: a bag of candy. 

The book keeps sticking to its side of the argument, which is another thing that I found very important. It doesn't completely bore the reader with just facts on how fast-food came to be, but how these innovations affected the economy. It even goes as far to tell how these corporations have targeted children as their marketing and outside help. Although, the book can be inspiring as to show how many of these entrepreneurs started off as total failures and high school dropouts, then came to be millionaires. It was only by trial-and-error that they managed to succeed.

Sadly, I haven't managed to finish the book, but I still find that it is very informative and interesting.