This is a highly affecting book, not just emotionally, but behaviourally as well. Like many people I have had the ocassional burger or KFC, but not since reading Fast Food Nation about two years ago. Eric Schlosser's book is a piece of very thorough piece of investigative journalism on the working practices of the fast food business. Schlosser writes in quite a controlled, scientific manner and isn't dogged by some of the more excitable hyperbole of Michael Moore for instance, so you feel you are getting a balanced picture. But neither does he shy away from the more outrageous aspects of fast food production, such as cattle faeces entering the meat production, the employment of illegal immigrants and the regular loss of limbs on the production line.

What I came to realise in reading this book is what McDonald's or KFC or Taco Bell might like to call food isn't actually food. The meat isn't meat, the bread isn't bread and the fries certainly aren't fries. As I said, this has had a profound affect on my eating habits, and I haven't touched fast food for over two years. Sometimes the convenience of picking up a Big Mac and fries when you are out is almost overwhelming, but several times I've gone hungry rather than break my promise to myself of staying away from this non-food.