Recommend "The Best American Nonrequired Reading" edited by David Eggers, who created McSweeneys, in addition to his novels.

Warning! Do not read these essays while eating junk food. Or if you just gotta munch, avoid "Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good."
Because after you read it, you'll avoid them and a lot of other stuff.
I knew about the beef tallow thing, it's what McDonald's potato strings were fried in (7 % cottonseed oil and 93% beef tallow)--
that's more saturated beef fat per ounce than a McDonald's hamburger.
Around 1990, after getting sued, they started using vegetable oil.
But, to continue that "good taste" the fries now have "natural flavor" added.
What the "natural flavor" is, is, of course, secret.
Supposedly, the Americans consume over 80 pounds of fresh and frozen potatoes a year!
Since I eat few, that means you are eating more than your share!

To settle the "beef," McDonald's issued an apology and agreed to pay $10 million - 60 percent to vegetarian groups, 20 percent to Hindu and/or Sikh organizations, 10 percent to children's nutrition and hunger relief efforts and 10 percent to those promoting the understanding of Kosher foods and dietary practices.

Now McDonald's flavors the fries with a flavor from "an animal source" probably beef, but they're not telling.
Also, their Chicken McNuggets contain beef extracts, as does Wendy's Grilled Chicken sandwich.
Take that non-red meat eaters!!
And Burger King's BK Broiler Chicken patty is flavored with "natural smoke flavor" that is derived by
charring sawdust and capturing the aroma chemical released into the air. Yum!
Natural flavors can now be chemically created to taste and smell like anything we know:
fresh cherries, an olive, sauteed onions, shrimp, fresh mowed grass, apples, marshmallows, anything!

And before you go running to the 'fridge for that Strawberry Dannon yogurt,
it and many other foods gets its cheery color from carmine.
Carmine is cochineal extract, and for us non-science majors, is
made from the desiccated bodies of female insects harvested mainly in Peru and the Canary Islands.
The insects (are you STILL eating?) are collected, dried and ground into a pigment.

If you've decided to quit eating, give up most cosmetics, too, as they contain coloring made with many chemicals.

About 90 percent of the money Americans now spend on food goes to by processed food.
Yikes! I'm on my way to the natural foods co-op.

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