Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know about Fast Food

Kids love fast food. And the fast food industry definitely loves kids. It couldn’t survive without them. Did you know that the biggest toy company in the world is McDonald’s? It’s true. In fact, one out of every three toys given to a child in the United States each year is from a fast food restaurant.

Not only has fast food reached into the toy industry, it’s moving into our schools. One out of every five public schools in the United States now serves brand name fast food. But do kids know what they’re eating? Where do fast food hamburgers come from? And what makes those fries taste so good?

When Eric Schlosser’s best-selling book, Fast Food Nation, was published for adults in 2001, many called for his groundbreaking insight to be shared with young people. Now Schlosser, along with co-writer Charles Wilson, has investigated the subject further, uncovering new facts children need to know.

In Chew On This, they share with kids the fascinating and sometimes frightening truth about what lurks between those sesame seed buns, what a chicken ‘nugget’ really is, and how the fast food industry has been feeding off children for generations.

Featuring cover art by M. Wartella.

Charles Wilson grew up in West Virginia and has written for several newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. He has worked on the staff of The New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine and has rounded up beef cattle on horseback at his uncle’s ranch.

Eric Schlosser is a correspondent for the Atlantic. His work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, the Nation, and The New Yorker. He has received a National Magazine Award and a Sidney Hillman Foundation Award for reporting. In 1998 Schlosser wrote an investigative piece on the fast food industry for Rolling Stone. What began as a two-part article for the magazine turned into the New York Times bestseller Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. His other books include Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market and Chew on This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food, a children’s book he cowrote with Charles Wilson.