Why Students Should Read Fast Food Nation by Eric Shlosser by Katelyn

Why Students Should Read Fast Food Nation by Eric Shlosser by Katelyn - February 2015 Scholarship Essay

I feel that one book that all students should read before they graduate from high school is Fast Food Nation by Eric Shlosser. The reasoning behind this is because people need to learn where their food comes from, and how it's made. They need to know how to go about eating more healthy things, and how to avoid the diseases that can be associated with eggs, meat, and other foods. Another big thing that they need to do is see what goes into their food when they go to McDonalds, Burger King, etc, and where the fast food industry came from.

Starting with where the food comes from that we consume. I feel that most high school graduates have no idea where there food comes from. Yes, we all know that beef is cow, pork is pig, and chicken is chicken, but do they know where and how we get the meat from them? Or the eggs? Most of them, no they don't. The importance of knowing where it comes from is knowing what we are putting into our bodies. Millions of people die from salmonella, and e-coli every year, and the thing is, all meat/eggs can contain it. Today, people just walk into stores and buy the food without checking recalls. It's hit and miss with these types of diseases because nobody pays attention to the things around them. We need to be educated.

Speaking of being educated, we need to know where our food truly comes from. Most of our meat comes from animals that have been treated with steroids, or been fed foods that will cause diseases. Now, as stated in Fast Food Nation, e-coli is spread among cows through feces. If one cow gets it, the rest of the cows in the area get it. The first cow gets it from an upset stomach from eating corn, because they are made to eat grass. So adding to that, cows can get e-coli a lot, now it just makes them have an upset stomach, but once it spreads, all the cows get it and then they get slaughtered and their infected meat is packages and put on shelves. E-coli isn't something that will go away by cooking it, you have to cook it at a specific temperature for a specific time. This leads into eating more healthy.

Eating healthy doesn't just mean picking healthy foods, it also means cooking your food until it is done. You shouldn't eat red meat unless it's cooked for the specified times and at the specified temperature, or else you can get e-coli or other infectious germs. Along with that, say you buy organic beef (where the cow eats grass rather corn), and you eat it all the time for years, you could get allergies to grass from indirectly eating it. Same with any other animal and any other feed.