FAST FOOD NATION

"On any day in the United States about one quarter of the adult population visits a fast food restaurant"
"A fast food kitchen is merely the final stage in a vast and highly complex system of mass production. Foods that may look familiar have in fact been completely reformulated. What we eat has changed more in the last forty years than in the previous forty thousand".
"The US average adult consumption of fast food is 3 hamburguers and 4 french fries dishes a week".
"In 1970 Americans spend about 6 million on fast food. In 2001, they spent more than 110 million"
"Every day in the US roughly 200,000 people are sickened by a foodborne disease, 900 are hospitalized and fourteen die. According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than a quarter of the American population suffers a bout of food poisoning each year. Most of these cases are never reported to the authorities or properly diagnosed...there is a strong evidence not only the that the incidence of food-related illness has risen in the past few decades but also that the lasting health consequences of such illnesses are far more serious than was previously believed."

FAST FOOD NATION - What the All-American Meal is doing to the world (Eric Schlosser)