fast food

Read "Chew On This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food" and very much alike to the title, I discovered most of the things they (fast food restaurants) don't tell.Read and very much alike to the title, I discovered most of the things they (fast food restaurants) don't tell.

1. Eat more crispy chicken & your aorta will be 'crispy' too - This was I think in one of those Dr. Oz episodes. He used to be in the Oprah Show but I think he got has own program now. It was in one of his episodes where he showed the organs of recently dead people, a gruesome contrast of healthy vs. not healthy. It starts with the brain to the heart and in between, there's the aorta. In case you don't know, it's an important vein carrying something to the heart or something like that. You just need to know that it's important - if it's clogged, you'll be having a heart attack. Okay, the healthy one is a bit springy and the unhealthy one is hardened and sort of crispy. This is the summary (comes w. pics) of the episode, Inside The Human Body.

2. Love the 'pop' - You've probably heard of the slaughterhouse workers smacking chicken on walls or stepping on them to make them die but you might not know why. It's because the demand for chicken went up, and so did the queue in the slaughterhouses. And the only way to ease the queue is to do it manually meaning you kill the chickens yourself. So there goes the smacking, jumping. But this is even worse: a worker said that he/she likes to hear the 'popping' sound when the you jump on it. That's why he/she did it..... creepy.

3. Not only animals - The cruel treatment of animals got much publicity but not that of slaughterhouse workers. They work in a very dangerous environment and are paid very little - imagine taking risking the probability of being one of those beef/meat everyday at work. And it says in the book (which quoted from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair) that "a man fell into a vat an got turned into lard. The plant kept running, and the lard was sold to the public." That book was written quite long ago (published in 1906) and I'm not sure whether it's still like that now. But the point is when people heard about the facts in this book, they noticed the cruelty of animals, but not the slaughterhouse workers' welfare. Why? Because the chicken is the food that they'll eat, not the people. These workers used to have labour unions, which fought for better wages. But after the fast-food industry took off, the companies moved to places where labour unions are weak and exploit the workers. But, if slaughterhouses increased the wages, they'll go bust. And then our chicken prices will skyrocket. It seems like a change made by man is impossible.

There are many other facts but these 3 are the ones that struck me hard. There're sooo many stuff that is just.. out there. But if you're not lucky, you would live in oblivion. If I didn't go to the library, (I was 'dragged' there cos my bro went to the lib & forgot to bring his lib card) I wouldn't have seen this book and I will not have boycotted fast-food. & yeah, I'm not going to eat fast food from now onwards. I hope I won't give in to the temptation of the oil-soaked white meat.