Chew on This

Chew on This

by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson

Penguin, $105

Chinese anthropologists have noted that primary school children in Beijing immediately recognise the image of Ronald McDonald, that symbol of 'Americana and the promise of modernisation', according to Eric Schlosser and co-author Charles Wilson in Chew on This, a disturbing follow-up to Schlosser's 2001 best-seller Fast Food Nation - The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. British novelist James Meek described Schlosser's earlier book as a 'tool for understanding the nature of corporate capitalism in the 21st century'. Schlosser and Wilson take the story a step further. Chew on This is aimed at high-school students, and issues a clear warning of what the McDonald's machine promises them: poorly paying unskilled jobs, lax food safety and animal welfare controls, a devastated rural economy and an epidemic of obesity. There's a lot of new information here focused on children and the teenage consumer. And although the authors have written for a broad audience they haven't dumbed down the text for younger readers.