Fast Food Nation, Ten Years Later

Some weeks ago, the Daily Beast ran an excerpt from Eric Schlosser’s Afterword to the 2012 edition of his book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All American Meal.

Even though, in some ways, little has changed since the book was first published a decade ago, Schlosser is hopeful that there is real change afoot–that ten years from now the book might actually be outdated:

“Everything that I’ve learned since Fast Food Nation was published has made me more, not less, optimistic about the possibilities for change. I believe, more than ever before, that nothing about our current food system was inevitable. And when things aren’t inevitable, that means things don’t have to be the way they are. I hope that 10 years from now this book really is irrelevant—and that the world it describes, so full of greed and lacking in compassion, is just a bad memory.”

If you’ve never read this book, it’s really worth reading–or, at the very least, seeing the cheezy film based on it (yeah, it’s a propo piece, but the information’s good, and watching the film takes less time than reading the book.)

Or, at the very, very least, read Eric Schlosser’s piece. Do it!