Name:
Date:
Chew on This Quiz
Nonfiction Reading and Reflection
Complete after reading “Meat”
Directions: Below, you see articles that feature commentary from author and journalist Eric Schlosser. Each
article highlights some of the issues that you’ve encountered in Chew on This. For today’s reading
comprehension and reflection quiz, please do the following:
1. Read the articles carefully. In each, please:
a. annotate the text (15 POINTS) , marking—
i. arguments that are LOGOS, ETHOS, and PATHOS (2 of each)
ii. main idea statements (3 examples)
iii. “loaded” language and diction that is “slanted” or “biased” (3 examples)
iv. anecdotes –in your notes, identify the purpose of the anecdote (2 examples)
v. vivid imagery and details (3 examples)
vi. arguments that convey a particular “TONE” (identify the tone) (2 examples)
2. Then, complete the multiple choice and the fill-in-the-blank questions. Choose only one answer and
write your work neatly for credit. (11 POINTS)
3. Next, complete the reflection questions. Please compose 4 sentences for each. (12 POINTS)
4. Lastly, please write a short-answer length reflection, using Chew on This as your textual reference.
Please use direct information from Chew on This, including proper citations for credit. (10 POINTS)
Numbers 2,3 and 4 appear after the articles in this document
TOTAL POINTS POSSIBLE: 48
Article #1
American Fry
New York Times Upfront, May 14, 2001 by Peter Vilbig
At Montgomery Mall in suburban Bethesda, Maryland, crowds from nearby high schools flood the food court, piling their
trays high with burgers, fries, pizza slices, and chicken nuggets.
For Adam Specter, 18, chowing with a group of friends, this is lunch--nearly every day. The reason is simple. "Fast food,"
he says, "is everywhere."
In urban Pittsburgh, J.J. Stanko, 17, calls McDonald's or Burger King "the last-ditch choice" among a cornucopia of ethnic
restaurants. Yet he finds himself sneaking into McDonald's regularly after the mom and pop restaurants in his
neighborhood are shuttered for the night.
In rural Milton, North Carolina, Joseph Dawson, 15, has to drive two towns over to find a fast-food joint. Yet television
ads invade his living room, lifting him out of his chair and onto the road for a burger. "They'll be showing that flaming
burger," he says, "and you just sort of want to go on and get up and get you one."
From city to suburb to wide-open rural countryside, fast food has become a common denominator of teen life, circa 2001.
The equation runs like this: fast-paced life plus fast-food outlets equal teens packing away burgers and fries or some other
fast food at an average rate of three times a week. With annual earnings of $110 billion in the U.S. alone--nearly a third
more than Americans spend on higher education--the fast-food industry quite simply has planted its arches and brilliantly
glowing signs in every corner of America. Yet few Americans have any idea how those prepackaged burgers and chicken
tenders wind up on the tray in front of them, or what dangers to their health might be lurking there.
UNHAPPY MEALS
That blissful ignorance may be coming to an end. With the publication this spring of his best-selling book, Fast Food
Nation, journalist Eric Schlosser has systematically peeled the pop-top off the nation's fast-food industry for a peek inside.
Schlosser warns that a lack of safety standards exposes Americans to the risk of serious illnesses from contaminated food.
He says that high-calorie fast-food meals are turning Americans into a tribe of overweight doughboys and doughgirls.
And he says that fast-food companies are targeting teens, luring them with ads inside and outside school to eat ever more
fast food, while hiring them by the thousands to work in unsafe conditions for minimum wage in fast-food outlets.
Schlosser says he didn't set out to take on the fast-food industry--especially since his favorite meal is the hamburger. "I'd
eaten an enormous amount of fast food," he says. "And I have two kids and they've eaten their share of Happy Meals. I
didn't set out to write something about the dark side of the all-American meal." But he says the dangers he uncovered in
his research have caused him to swear off fast food for life.
The fast-food industry responds that by staying away from fast-food restaurants, Schlosser will miss out on some of the
safest and most nutritious food in America. Janet Riley of the American Meat Institute in Washington, D.C., which
represents the meatpacking industry, says that he has "vilified the industry in a way that is very unfair."
Walt Riker, a McDonald's spokesman, issued a press release: "[Schlosser's] opinion," it reads, "is outvoted 45 million to 1
every single day, because that's how many customers around the world choose to come to McDonald's for our menu of
variety, value, and quality."
Industry officials say that food poisoning linked to fast-food meals is rare, with only three cases attracting national
attention in the last two decades--one at McDonald's restaurants in Michigan and Oregon in 1982, another at Jack in the
Box outlets in Western states in 1993, and one at Sizzler restaurants in Wisconsin last summer.
But critics say food poisonings, which can be caused by a long list of organisms, often don't get linked to a particular
restaurant because they can take days to develop. In fact, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the
agency that monitors national health issues, says that 200,000 Americans come down with a food-borne illness each day,
900 of them requiring hospitalization. Of those, 14 die. More than a quarter of the American population comes down with
a food-related ailment at one time or another every year.
Some food poisoning in fast-food restaurants has led to deaths and serious illness. In the 1993 Jack in the Box case, 700
people became ill and 4 died, including a 6-year-old girl, after eating Jack in the Box hamburgers tainted with a tiny but
deadly microbe known as E. coli 0157:H7. In Milwaukee last summer, a 3-year-old girl died in a similar outbreak that
sickened 500 patrons of Sizzler restaurants.
The little bug, a variation of bacteria that we all have in our intestines to help digest food, can cause brain damage or
death. In his book, Schlosser describes the 1993 death of one 6-year-old boy who came down with cramps after eating
tainted hamburger meat. As the toxin liquefied his brain, doctors had to drill holes in his skull to relieve the pressure. He
died five days later.
IMPROVED METHODS
After the 1993 Jack in the Box outbreak, many fast-food chains began testing meat used in their restaurants more
frequently and improved food-preparation methods to prevent the spread of germs. For instance, simply making sure
burgers are cooked at 160 degrees will kill dangerous bacteria.
But Schlosser and other critics say not enough is being done to keep deadly microbes out of meat to begin with. They say
these bacteria contaminate beef on fast-moving assembly lines when underpaid, poorly trained workers--who often kill,
gut, and butcher several cattle per minute--inadvertently spill feces from cows' intestines onto the meat destined for
human consumption.
And critics contend that through political contributions to members of Congress, the meatpacking industry has avoided the
imposition of any serious penalties against plants that produce tainted meat.
"The fact of the matter," Schlosser says, "is that the federal government can order the recall of a stuffed animal that has a
glass eye that comes loose, but it doesn't have the power to recall tons of contaminated meat. The government can't fine
meatpacking companies that sell contaminated meat."
The meat industry, however, blames the food-poisoning outbreaks on poor food handling in restaurants and insufficient
cooking. Federal regulation, they argue, would only drive up costs by imposing needless testing. Schlosser, in response,
says that the entire safety program of Jack in the Box, put in place after the 1993 poisonings, adds only 1 cent per pound
to the cost of the company's ground beef.
But concern about beef safety is mounting. An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease this spring in Great Britain, France,
and Belgium made headlines, although the virus that causes the disorder has no effect on humans. But another epidemic,
mad cow disease, has killed 95 people in Great Britain over the last decade. The disease, which attacks the brain and is
always fatal, entered the food chain when cattle were fed the ground-up brains and spinal cords of slaughtered sheep and
other animals contaminated with the disease. The U.S. has banned such feed practices, and so far, no cases of mad cow
disease have been discovered in the U.S. But critics say current regulations still permit dead horses, pigs, and even poultry
to be cut up and fed to cattle--a practice they say could lead to mad cow cases here.
PILING IT ON
Fast food's bad rap doesn't end with fears of beef contamination. Critics also tag all those sacks of burgers and fries with
helping to worsen another serious health problem: obesity. Currently, about 44 million American adults are obese; another
6 million are considered "super-obese"--more than 100 pounds overweight. The CDC found that in 1991, only 4 states had
obesity rates higher than 15 percent, but by last year the number had increased to 37 states. In every state, obesity was
increasing in all age categories. And today's teens, the agency says, are three times more likely to be overweight than
teens in the 1960’s.
Though no study has yet established a definitive link between fast food and obesity rates, the expansion of fast-food
chains seems to be accompanied by rising waves of fat. In China, the number of overweight teens tripled in the last
decade--during a time when fast food went on its own expansion binge. At the same time, similar weight increases
occurred in Japan and Great Britain as fast-food chains expanded in those countries.
Fast food promotes weight gain, critics say, because it lures people away from lower-fat diets through its constant
advertising messages. In addition, fast-food restaurants have been serving increasingly large portions of high-calorie food.
A large Coke in 1960 was 8 ounces; today it's 32. Today's Super Size Fries at McDonald's are three times the large size of
a generation ago.
DANGERS OF MCJOBS
Teens in a fast-food world are affected in another way: Without inexpensive teen labor, fast-food restaurants as we know
them could hardly exist.
Besides low pay and poor working conditions, where minor injuries abound, Schlosser says he found an unexpected
source of more serious danger for teens working behind the counter: armed robbery. No national statistics on fast-food
robberies exist, but Schlosser says statistics in Los Angeles and Omaha, Nebraska, reveal that fast-food restaurants have
become as popular a target for robbery as convenience stores. What are the times when danger is highest? "Kids should be
aware that the early-morning hours and late night puts you at risk," he says.
TARGET: YOU
And teens suffer another kind of fast-food assault. In recent years, school districts strapped for cash have made millions of
dollars by allowing advertising by fast-food places inside schools. In some schools, the lunchroom has become a fast-food
court, with McDonald's and other companies selling food to students. In one case, when Coca-Cola sales fell below those
required in a contract with the Colorado Springs school system, a school administrator there sent a memo to principals,
urging them to allow students to drink Coke in class.
Criticism of such practices, though, may be making its point. Coca-Cola recently announced that it was scaling back its
marketing plans in schools and would start to include milk, juice, and water in school vending machines.
So will teens take heed of the perils of fast food? At Montgomery Mall on a recent lunch break, Nicole Greenbaum, 17,
says she's fully aware of fast food's pitfalls, yet she and her friends would have a hard time changing their habits. "You
don't get a lot of time for lunch," she says, "and it's fast, it's good, and it's cheap."
-----------------------------------------
A typical fast-food hamburger may contain meat
from hundreds of different cattle.
The meatpacking plants made famous by Upton
Sinclair's 1906 expose of their horrid conditions (see
page 18) slaughtered 50 cattle an hour. The
slaughterhouses that supply beef to McDonald's
today kill up to 400 cattle an hour.
Because intensive processing renders most fast food
tasteless, fast-food chains must add chemicals to
reflavor it. A million-dollar industry of chemical
plants in New Jersey creates these flavors.
Federal regulations allow ground beef to contain up
to 30 percent fat.
Federal law requires slaughterhouses to treat animals
humanely and stun them before they're killed. But
animals often beaten, dragged, scalded in boiling
water, skinned, and cut apart--all while still alive and
conscious.
The golden arches are more widely recognized than
the Christian cross. Children often recognize the
McDonald's logo before they recognize their own
names.
To prevent them from pecking each other to death in
severely overcrowded conditions, many chickens
destined for fast-food restaurants have their beaks
clipped off with a hot blade while they're alive and
conscious.
Every day, one out of every four Americans--about 67
million people--eats fast food. The typical American
eats approximately three hamburgers and four orders
of fries per week.
The typical teenage boy in the U.S. now gets about
10 percent of his daily calories from soda.
A fast-food soda that sells for $1.29 costs the
restaurant about 10 cents, a markup of about 1,200
percent.
The rate of obesity among American children has
doubled since the late 19070s.
American children now get about one quarter of
their total vegetable servings in the form of potato
chips or french fries.
This year, American will spend more than $110
billion on fast food--more than on movies, books,
magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music
combined.
SOURCES: FAST FOOD NATION, BY ERIC SCHLOSSER; USDA;
PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT OF ANIMALS; AND
GAIL EISNITZ, AUTHOR OF SLAUGHTERHOUSE COMPILED
BY PATRICIA SMITH.
Article #2
Checklist: “Fast Facts about
America’s Food”
FAST-FOOD JOBS LOSE THEIR GLAMOUR FOR SUBURBAN TEENS
His friends were at the movies and the mall, or at home playing video games. But Dave Neuzil was at work, piling lettuce
and tomatoes on submarine sandwiches. It is a job, he says, that his friends would not be caught dead doing.
"It's not considered cool, working at a fast* food place," says Dave, a lanky 16-year-old from suburban Chicago, dressed
in a green Subway shirt. "Their parents just give them everything. But I need to make some money."
In these prosperous times, with young people so keenly aware of status and image, Dave Neuzil has become something of
a vanishing breed: a suburban upper-middle-class teenager who is willing to work at a cheap restaurant.
With so many jobs going begging, well-heeled teenagers are turning up their noses at jobs at fast-food restaurants, places
that once relied mostly on high school students for help.
"Some kids will give you heat for working in a place like this," says Jim LaRose, 21, a Subway manager in the western
suburbs of Chicago. "They'll say, `What are you working at a fast-food place for?' And when they come in to order, some
of these kids are very arrogant"
It can be humbling for 8 teenager, outfitted in a franchise uniform, to wait on peers who drive up in fancy cars and give
orders. Dave, the son of a police officer and a grammar school principal, says he just shrugs it off. But the hierarchy of
jobs is clear to most teenagers, with places like Starbucks or Gap at the top, and franchises like McDonald's and Burger
King at the bottom.
"The term `flipping burgers' has entered the popular culture to mean the lowest kind of unskilled work," says Albert
Hunter, a sociologist at Northwestern University. "And teenagers are aware of all the negative connotations that go with
it."
NO SLACKING ZONE
But the unwillingness of suburban teens to flip burgers does not mean that they're spending their spare time shopping and
slacking. On the contrary, school counselors say, many ambitious high school students are so busy studying and doing
community service-often to build a resume for college admission--that they simply do not have time for a part-time job.
"There's not a whole lot of lying around going on," says Ray Jamiolkowski, the director of guidance at Naperville
(Illinois) Central High School. "If anything, they're doing too much, and they're stressed."
Dani Newcombe, a high school senior in Evanston, Illinois, is among those too busy to work. Her activities? Just soccer,
cross country, basketball, the yearbook, and the school newspaper. Sometimes she does not get home from after-school
activities until 11 p.m. And then she does her homework.
"I have some friends who are up until 1 a.m. studying almost every night," she says. "I can't do that. I need some sleep."
Article #3
(PRETTY MISERABLE, ACTUALLY ...)
McDonald's fries may ace most taste tests, but like most fast food they bomb big time when it comes to nutrition.
Fast food--especially, popular items like cheeseburgers, french fries, and fried chicken--tends to be high in calories and
loaded with saturated fat, which clogs arteries and may lead to heart disease. The problem isn't just the bad stuff in fast
food, but also the good stuff that's missing: fiber, complex carbohydrates, and calcium, which is particularly important for
teenagers, who add almost half of their bone mass in those years.
Nutritionists point to another problem: Large portion sizes and special promotions often lead to overeating. Most fast-food
portions are two or three times larger than nutritionists advise. A government-recommended serving size of french fries is
just 10 fries, but a medium order of McDonald's fries comes with about 60.
"`Can I supersize that for you?' may be a cliché, but it's a big part of the problem," says Jeanne Goldberg, a professor of
nutrition and the director of the Center on Nutrition Education at Tufts University.
The good news, nutritionists say, is that fast food won't kill you--as long as you don't eat it all the time. The bad news?
Most teens do-more than three times a week on average.
"No one should be eating a Big Mac and fries every day," Goldberg says. "But occasionally, if it's what you really enjoy,
is OK. The key to good nutrition is variety."
--Patricia Smith
With reporting by REGINA SCHRAMBLING of The New York Times
MULTIPLE CHOICE: Choose the answer that best completes the statement or answers the question.
1. _______ What is the title of author Eric Schlosser's book about the fast-food industry? (a) Supersized
America; (b) Food Fight; (c) Fast Food Nation; (d) Want Fat With That?
2. ________About how many Americans experience food-related illness each year? (a) less than 5
percent; (b) more than 5 percent, but less than 10 percent; (c) more than 10 percent, but less than 25
percent; (d) more than 25 percent.
3. ________The deadly microbe E. coli contaminates beef when (a) cows eat garbage; (b) cows develop
tuberculosis; (c) animal feces are spilled on it; (d) beef is not stored below 30 [degrees] F.
4. ________Which beef-borne disease can kill humans? (a) mad cow disease; (b) foot-and-mouth
disease; (c) mange; (d) cowlick.
5. _______Critics of the U.S. meat industry are concerned about the fact that current regulations allow
cattle to be fed (a) raw sewage; (b) burned vegetation; (c) saturated fats; (d) dead horses, pigs, and
poultry.
6. _______Critics say increasing fast-food serving sizes help feed America's growing obesity problem.
One example: A serving of Super Size Fries at McDonald's was much larger than the large-size serving
of a generation ago. How much larger? (a) 25 percent; (b) 75 percent; (c) 100 percent; (d) 300 percent.
7. _______Critics of the burgers-and-fries diet say it lacks a key nutrient that teens need to help
strengthen their developing bones. What is this key nutrient? (a) calcium; (b) mineral oil; (c) selenium;
(d) zinc.
FILL IN THE BLANK: Write the correct answer on the line provided.
8. Federal regulations allow ground beef to contain up to __________ percent fat.
9. American children get about one-quarter of their ________________servings from potato chips or
french fries.
10. Congress initially refused to regulate the meat-packing industry because of pressure from
________________.
11. In 1906, Congress passed the_____________ Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act, establishing federal
regulations governing the operations of food and drug producers.
Reflective Responses: In response to questions 12-15, write thoughtful, developed answers that are FOUR
sentences in length. You may use the pronoun “I” and pose questions, or challenge ideas you’ve noticed in the
articles, but you need to REFERENCE the articles for credit.
…..
12. Make one argument supporting and one argument opposing the 1,200 percent markup on fast-food soda.
13. Federal laws allow processed food labels to avoid mentioning items that can cause allergic reactions--such
as peanuts--that may accidentally be mixed with food during processing. What do you think accounts for this
loophole in government regulations?
14. Debate--should schools allow fast-food restaurants to advertise on school grounds? Why or why not?
REFLECTION: SHORT ANSWER (please write six thoughtful sentences in A PARAGRAPH—not
bulleted points!) You need to directly reference Chew on This “Meat,” “Big,” or “Your Way” for
credit.
15. Schlosser writes, --“Nobody in the United States is forced to buy fast food. The first step toward meaningful
change is by far the easiest: stop buying it. The executives who run the fast food industry are not bad men . . .
They will sell whatever sells at a profit.”
What is your interpretation of this statement?
Ultimately, (in Schlosser’s opinion) who holds the power in the “fast food” industry?
What is his main idea behind mentioning that “the executives” who are behind the fast food industry
are not “bad men?”
How does his statement about executives seem to contradict facts that were present in his book, Chew
on This?<--be very specific here, with details from Meat, Big, or Your Way chapters, please!