The Fast Food Industry Beneath the Surface

Hi, everyone! I read the book, Chew On This by Eric Schlosser & Charles Wilson. Reading this book makes me really proud to be a vegetarian. It was about the works that go into making your burger and fries... And the not-so-secret little secrets that fast food industries don’t want you to know.

This book was really informative and surprisingly gripping considering that it was a non-fiction book. This kept my interest for the entire book because I wanted to learn more about the fast food industry. I learned that it is powered and run entirely by greedy, cash-hungry people that care more about the profit of their companies than the well-being of their clients and customers.

This book was much like the movies, Food Inc. and Supersize Me in concept.

You may think that you already know all there is to know about fast food, but it is most likely that you don’t even know the half of it… This book was written specifically for you to know all the facts and to clarify and/or put to rest all of the hazey rumors. It was also written to help you know what the fast food you eat does to your body, how the animals and raw food is treated before the industry gets to it, and how it even alters our children’s minds.

Overall, this book was very on point with the information it gave and I strongly suggest you give it a chance… I’m sure you’ll like it!

                        

Ray Kroc, Corporate Owner of McDonalds

McDonald's Big Mac with Fries and a 32 oz. Coke

 

The Book About Blood by HP Newquist

The book that I read is called The Book About Blood By HP Newquist. It is a book that explores some fascinating ancient tales and history about blood. Scientists began to understand this fluid only one hundred years ago: how it's microscopic components flourish our whole body. Blood is spread so much all throughout your body, that if you poke a needle through your skin, you are drawing blood.  This is because blood travels through a network made up of 100,000 miles of veins, arteries and capillaries.While it is in your body,  blood is always red. It is never blue but some people think it is. This is because some veins look blue under skin. Oxygen that is rich with blood is red, and when blood cells give up oxygen, they lose their brightness. Blood turns dark red as it travels through you, before lightening again when it absorbs air. Your veins aren’t blue either. They appear that way because of the way light interacts with the layers of your skin, letting the area around your veins take on a different color.

During the 1300’s, Europe had little to no education so they believed many superstitions such as the plagues. This period condoned ideas about witches and warlocks, werewolves and vampires. People would believe almost anyone who had a “good” explanation for what was going on around them. Into this confusion came the strangest doctors to ever practice medicine: barbers.  During the Dark Ages, many barbers learned how to become surgeons. This was because of two things. The first was that many real surgeons died during plagues because  they had been infected by the people they were treating. The second was because barbers knew how to use razors, and this was an important skill when you needed to cut someone or something open. The easiest medical procedure for barbers was bloodletting. Around this time, it was called phlebotomy. It became one of the most common ways to treating various illnesses all over Europe.     Bloodletting did continue. These barbers, and the doctors after, had to be very careful when performing phlebotomy because they could easily cut open a vein and let a person bleed to death.                                                                                                                                             
Blood is created in the spongy marrow. Blood flows from your heart to your lungs and back to the  heart to bring oxygen inside your body. Blood pressure is a measure of how hard your blood is pressing against your blood vessels. This is very important because it tells doctors if your heart is beating at an appropriate strength and if there are any problems with your arteries.
The circulatory system is the highway in which your blood reaches every part of your body.  More blood goes to your brain, than to any part of your body. The Circle of Willis ensures that blood gets to the brain by a number of different ways. Everything that you put into your mouth ends up in your blood and these are the organs that play a very important role in helping blood do its job. The liver is your blood system's biggest filter. Your spleen is small, but it acts as a blood reservoir in times of emergency.
All in all, blood is very important, so try to keep it in your body!

Twinkie, Deconstructed

The Book Cover

I read the book Twinkie, Deconstructed by Steve Ettlinger. After I finished the book my overall opinion was that the book wasn't that interesting and it was hard to understand. I expected the book to be about what the ingredients were, but it was mostly where the ingredients came from.
   
 Steve Ettlinger wrote this book because one day when he was at the beach having ice cream with his daughter, she asked him where polysorbate 60 came from. He had no idea what to tell her. After that he decided to find out where polysorbate 60 came from along with all the other ingredients in a twinkie.
     
The main idea of the book is to inform people about what they are eating and where the unknown ingredients come from. I think that Mr. Ettlinger did this because most people just shove things like twinkies in their mouths not thinking about where they come from.

This book might be better for older readers. It was pretty hard to understand and my parents had to help me with some of the chapters. I would give this book 3 out of 5 stars because even though the book was hard to read and a bit complicated, it still had great information.