Fries with that?

Know what makes McDonald's fries smell so good? Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (349.10973Sch396f) tells us that for decades, McDonald's cooked its french fries in a mixture of about 7 percent cottonseed oil and 93 percent beef tallow - which gave the fries more saturated beef fat per ounce than a McDonald's hamburger. Thought I'd better write an entry about this book before it gets checked out again. One of the truths about being part of the University Library community is that our books often circulate widely to folks on campus and never get to be seen here. This book is one such hot item. Schlosser explores all the implications of the fast food industry and makes significant charges against it: "Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism abroad." Whew. It also produces guys who look like this:



Written in 1991, Fast Food Nation pre-dates Super Size Me, and focuses on a wider variety of topics. Did you know that out of every $1.50 spent on a large order of fries at a fast food place, around 2 cents goes to the farmer who grew the potatoes?

P.S. McDonalds now uses all vegetable oil with "natural flavorings."