This is a good introduction into the investigation of what we eat. It pretty much describes the tip of the iceberg of the food industry's dark side. I have since changed my eating habits dramatically.
It's a great book and a really quick read. If this book is your introduction into the horror's of fast food-get it. However if you have been following this for sometime, you won't find anything new and the books 2004 copyright does make the info a bit dated. Overall though, I highly recommend it.

I've read Fast Food Nation and seen the Super Size Me movie - this book is a great follow-up. Well written and gives a lot of insight into the movie.

It's pretty gross what they do to our food.....

We're probably all familiar with Morgan Spurlock and the 30-day, all MacDonald's diet he went on in 2003. The idea was to publicize the health effects of America fast food life style and it was a smash. Spurlock practically destroyed his liver and circulatory system in the process, but he made his point. Don't Eat This Book" makes many of the same points that the movie did -- that the fast food industry sells us a high-fat, high-sugar and high-sodium diet; that it works hard to hook kids via toys, bright colors and animation; that its claims about the nutritive value of its products is fallacious; and that the industry is now exporting this harmful diet around the world.

Spurlock uses humor and an aw-shucks persona to deliver hard messages. Type II diabetes is becoming an epidemic in America, especially among kids. We are being relentlessly targeted by ads to buy food that is bad for us, and in super-enormous portions. And that there are alternatives -- eating local, organic food and gathering for dinner at home -- that make the food experience more satisfying and healthful. What was new in "Don't eat this book" was Spurlock's post-production experiences with the fast food industry. By direct attacks (press briefings and passing out flyers in movie theaters) and more subtle attacks using media outlets beholden to their corporate advertisers, MacDonald's tried to paint Spurlock as the bad guy for a creating a stunt that did not match the way their customers actually consume fast food. In the end, Spurlock wins the battle, but it appears that fast food is still winning the war. What will determine the contest is whether ordinary Americans will be persuaded by Spurlock, or just follow convenience to (if Spurlock is to be believed) the fast food yellow rainbow and an early grave.

I've ordered the book after a friend told me that she could not ever eat at McDonalds again (having repeated the experiment of leave-on-shelf-burger and was horrified at the excellent state of self-mummification of the sandwich...and thus all the preservatives and processed materials in it). I found it interesting and informative, but I admit I felt rather preached to for parts of it, and it was rather redundant--after the first 50 pages, one could predict pretty much most of what was going to be written. The information IS important and puts together a gathering of statistics and details that some of us might come across in passing but not in such an organized way. At the same time, it does seem to give the air of "me me me" and returnes to the movie almost as if this was a companion book to the movie (and a promotional book for it) rather than a documentary in of itself.
I did find that my friend was right... Not that I really ever ate at McDonalds myself (well, long car trips with the arches the only food option for miles notwithstanding, when a rubbery chicken breast sandwich had to stand in for nourishment in cases of emergency...), but I did find that I cannot buy regular chicken (or beef) anymore--the conditions of these poor animals' lives somehow reaching a critical point in my brain--I always knew that they were mistreated and pumped full of stuff, but I didn't know some details that I'll spare you (in case you are reading this with coffee and snack at hand), and which made me shudder. I've had animals in the backyard growing up, and I would never want them treated as sub-living things, or to feed them things they were not meant to consume... In any event, it is a good book if you can sieve the preach from the matter. And it has its hilarities. If it were less self-promotional (and self-congratulatory), it would've been more credible.

Morgan Spurlock is either a very good, honest, wholeheartedly courageous man, or he's just another fraud. I'd like to believe he is not the latter, because I'm so used to frauds nowadays. If anything, his book is nothing short of a masterpiece. That may seem rather dramatic a thing to say, but I truly think this book is one of THE most important books ever to be written in the history of modern mankind. Anyone who can argue with its points has to be evil in some ways; you just cannot justify all of these big companies who are influencing our nation (and children) to eat junky food without being evil. You also cannot justify the cruel "farming" or meat industries without having a touch of badness to you. As for the writing itself, Spurlock has a gift for words and sometimes occasional humour that is refreshing. I HIGHLY recommend this book!