Anyone read this? I've been picking away at it in my scant free time, and it's pretty incredible. Traces the origins of America's processed food/fast food industry to the present concentrating on the safety of the food we eat and how people are getting rich off it.

I actually sold a copy of FFN on Half.com a few weeks ago. I used to think it was a great book, very Upton Sinclairish. But, I've heard a number of bad things about FFN -- things that have made me question the ethics of the man who wrote it.

For instance, the meat packing plant he basically uses to show the entire meat processing industry are nothing more than a pack of feces eating ghouls -- shut down because of health code violations. It was the worst offender in the nation.

Now, the author tired to make it seem as if the packing plant previously mentioned was the standard in the industry, rather than the exception. If it was the standard, then holy Solent Green, Batman, I need to go vegan. But if it's not the standard, if it's an extreme case of poop packaging gone horribly wrong, then how much of the rest of the book has been hyperbolized?

Anyway, still a great book, be it fiction or non-fiction.

What'd you think of the suicide part?

Suicide? Clearly, I'm not there yet. In fact, it's already back to the library, but once the semester is over with, I'm going to buy a copy and digest the fucker for real.

About the sensationalizing by the author, I've never heard that before but wouldn't doubt it. I once read a scathing essay lamenting the lack of culture in American <insert subject>, and the guy admitted that he constructed his argument and examples were filled with holes. The point was that he was only trying to communicate his opinion about this issue, not present an objective discussion. So, maybe the lesson here is that anything presented as truth--with an agenda--should be taken with a grain of salt.

Question authority.