Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal will make the Golden Arches seem sinister and make you think twice before ever “supersizing” another meal. Schlosser mixes readable prose with anecdotes to create a book that is engaging without being overbearing. He focuses on how advertising is geared toward the impressionable minds of America's youth and the effects of the global fast-food market.

This book is really an eye-opener. I don't know what I found more appalling, the fact that more children worldwide recognize Ronald McDonald than Santa Claus, or that until recently McDonald's sold French fries cooked with beef tallow and yet told the public that their fries were cooked in 100% vegetable oil.

This exposé is reminiscent of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle in that it reveals the unsanitary and dangerous environments in which meat is processed. Schlosser spends a good portion of the book talking about “what's in the meat” and the answers aren't always appetizing. For example, in a 1996 food test, the USDA found that 7.5% of ground beef samples taken at processing plants were infected with salmonella.

Fast Food Nation makes it hard to pick up that next Big Mac in blissful ignorance.