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Fast Food Nation Attacked

What do you get when a best-selling critique of fast food gets turned into a Hollywood feature? Best Food Nation, an industry website (BestFoodNation.com) critquing the critique.

It is a tour-de-force of PR insanity. My two favorite sections on the site are "Ingredients" and "What Critics Say." Ingredients is actually only one ingredient: High Fructose Corn Syrup - a substance that makes everything it touches unhealthy. It's like an energy advocacy group including a link for "Waste dumped in rivers."

What Critics Say follows a by now familiar formula:

Critics say X
We say, "Nuh-uh!"

They don't even bother to address the charges. Fast Food Nation demonstrated that the meatpacking companies discouraged reporting injuries and falsified OSHA records. BFN claims ...  OSHA records show low injury rates! Fast Food Nation claims that the food industry is the subject of antitrust claims for illegal price fixing. BFN claims ... we don't fix prices; it would be illegal! Par for the course, of course. These are the same people who sued Oprah (to disastrous results) for daring to express fear of mad cow disease.

But perhaps we should just shut up and encourage you all to try making fast food yourself. It's actually kinda fun until you realize that this is why you already decided not to work for a major corporation in a suit or a paper hat.