Zsuzsi Gartner of The Globe and Mail reports on the book Chew on This: Everything you don’t want to know about fast food, by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson
Until just a few years ago, this was the monthly fix: Big Mac, Filet o’ Fish, small fries, carton of milk. It was a guilty pleasure I never felt all that guilty about. Then along came Eric Schlosser in 2001, with one of the most important books of the past decade. Fast Food Nation, for the two Globe readers who may not have heard of it, is the 21st century’s The Jungle, the 1906 Upton Sinclair novel that led Teddy Roosevelt to investigate the brutal and unsanitary conditions in Chicago’s meat-packing plants. Fast Food Nation detailed the power that the greed-a-licious players in the fast-food industry have over the way food (mainly potatoes, beef and chicken) is grown, packaged, marketed and sold to North American (and worldwide) consumers.Continue Reading Want fries with this?

Niki Sullivan of the Associated Press reports that a weight problem caused by too much fast food would no longer be potential grounds for a lawsuit under a bill on its way to Gov. Ted Kulongoski.
The Senate unanimously passed a bill Thursday that prohibits lawsuits against restaurants and fast-food companies by consumers who develop health problems — including obesity — after eating the food over a long period.
State officials say no one in Oregon has ever filed such a lawsuit, but supporters of the bill say it would protect those businesses from frivolous litigation.Continue Reading Senate passes bill to restrict fast-food lawsuits