Food, glorious food.... (from the musical "Oliver!")

I had assumed that my colleague D. was a committed carnivore in the same way M. positively licks his lips at the mention of the word 'steak'. To my surprise, I found that he has been supplying the two other vegetarians on this floor vital ammunition in the form of the book, 'Fast food nation'.
"I don't need to read it, I know fast food is bad," I said.
"Yeah, but this book will give you the factual grounds for being against it," D. said.
So I spent the night up reading it.

Before I say anything, first off, I should point out that this book is not written by an apparent (or latent) vegetarian! Secondly, this author is not an alarmist or some sort of food police type. In fact, my only regret has been that I didn't really trust the author not to be so before and thus missed out on reading this book earlier.

I could launch into a diatribe against the U.S. meat industry, but that's going to be a waste of my breath and besides, the book does it much better. So all I'm going to say is the following:

1. If you are a meat-eating American, the only responsible way of dealing with food is to at least stop your children eating any form of meat (chicken, pork... the works).

2. Scandinavians have good reasons to be so smug about themselves. Darn.

3. Republicans need to be shot. And Clinton did do some good things after all, when he was not too preoccupied with unzipping his fly.

4. The UK government, past and present members who have ever even heard of the three letters 'BSE' or the noun 'Creuzfeldt-Jakob', needs to be shot. (But then, I didn't need to read the book to know that).

5. Boycotting Maccie D's is a great idea, and I'm glad some other people out there think so, too. So don't be a depressed cynic, just do it, for a change. It works.

If you want to know why, you should really read the book! Or be prepared to listen to me yammering on...