An Inconvenient Truth

This weekend, I visited my cousin's house for his birthday. As my Dad drove us to their house, we passed fast food place after fast food place. My mind, however, was not on the disgusting manner in which the food in these places was acquired, it was on the tunes on the radio. As lunchtime approached, however, these fast food places began to become more and more appetizing. We ended up stopping at a Friendly's. Without thinking, I ordered a burger, and my dad ordered the Sirloin Salad. The second my Dad and I had a break in our conversation, I noticed how disgusting the place was. The waitresses were all obese, and the kitchen was coated in burnt grease. whe our burgers came out, all i could think of was how true Fast Food Nation was. I couldn't stop thinking about how unsanitary the food processing was, and now how unsanitary its preparation had been. As i bit into the ground beef, i couldn't stop remembering scenes from Food Inc. (which Schlosser participated in); how ground beef is not limited to one cow, but multiple cows. i looked at my dad's sirloin tips and remembered that the cows (and meat, after they were slaughtered) had been covered in manure. The scene in Food Inc. where the cow, whose legs had broken because it outgrew its bones, was being beaten so that it would move into the slaughterhouse, kept playing in my mind, over and over. after my fries, burger, and double-thick milkshake i realized that i had probably eaten more calories in one meal than i should eat in one day. When we got the bill, i was even more surprised; it was almost forty dollars for two entrees, a milkshake, and a small ice-cream. Schlosser points out in Fast Food Nation that Americans spend a lot of money on fast food, and that that amount is increasing rapidly. It is an inconvenient truth, but it is one that must be realized in order for us to do something about this problem. we can impose on our government to pass legislature in order to regulate and punish big businesses that favor quantity over quality. Businesses who serve us illusions of good food that, when one looks behind the curtain, should be inedible.