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Fast Food Nation, Backwards Hamburger & the Meatrix

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[img_assist|fid=2494|thumb=1|alt=Fast Food Nation|caption=Banner from Backwards Hamburger.]

Fast Food Nation. Read the book. Haven't seen the movie yet. Have you? Honestly, I was deterred by my all-knowing movie source, Rotten Tomatoes. They gave it 48% tomatoes. You need 60% to be fresh. Too bad, 'cause the book is great.

My pals at Free Range Studios, together with Sustainable Table and Participate.net have put together two online animated videos to promote the film: The Meatrix II 1/2 and Backwards Hamburger.

The Meatrix II 1/2 is the third in The Meatrix series, a spoof on The Matrix, where Moopheus, Leo, and Chickity fight factory farming evil-doers. In this episode, Leo and Chickity rush to save Moopheus from a processing facility where they witness dangerous working conditions and feces from processed cows' intestines falling into hamburger meat. Blech.

Backwards Hamburger takes us backwards from hamburger to cow with lots of facts and stats mixed in like:

  • Fast food leads the US in low pay jobs while fighting any minimum wage increase.
  • The average fast food meal is shipped 1500 miles. Lots of artificial preservatives keep it ‘fresh.’
  • A typical burger may contain pieces of 1,000 different cows and a little serving of manure.
  • Meatpacking is some of the most dangerous work in America, but pays 24% less than an average factory job.
  • Rushed slaughter means animals are sometimes conscious while being processed.

If you go to the film, consider being part of Participate.net's Dinner and a Movie campaign. You can download invitations to your organic, locally grown dinner from the site, along with discussion questions to chat about after the film.

BlogHer Contributing Editor, Britt Bravo, also blogs at Have Fun * Do Good, NetSquared and World Changing San Francisco.

Banner from Backwards Hamburger.



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Britt Bravo 5 pts

Wasn't that amazing in the DVD extras when he put the different kinds of burgers and a box of fries under glass and watched to see how long it would take for them to rot? What was it like, 10 weeks, and the fries hadn't changed at all. Scary.

Britt Bravo
Blogher Contributing Editor: Nonprofits & NGOs ( http://www.blogher.com/topic/non-profits-ngos )
NetSquared Community Builder ( http://www.netsquared.org )
Big Vision Career & Project ( http://www.brittbravo.com )

harleylilithnoir 5 pts

"SuperSize Me" is a film I am still trying to get my family to watch. Two of my sister's best friends work for MacDonalds, and still they eat there. "SuperSize Me" put me off of french fries completely. Until seeing that film I still ate fast food fries but not any more.

Britt Bravo 5 pts

Hi McEwen,

I haven't seen the movie Fast Food Nation, but I've read the book and it is as good as Supersize Me. In fact, if you rent Supersize Me on DVD, there is an interview with Morgan Spurlock and Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation, in the extras.

Britt Bravo
Blogher Contributing Editor: Nonprofits & NGOs ( http://www.blogher.com/topic/non-profits-ngos )
NetSquared Community Builder ( http://www.netsquared.org )
Big Vision Career & Project ( http://www.brittbravo.com )

mcewen 5 pts

Is it as 'good' as Supersize me?
Best wishes

McEwen Whitterer on Autism
http://whitterer-autism.blogspot.com
e-mail; m.mcewen-asker@att.net

Elisa Camahort 5 pts

Will definitely use that next time I'm overseas.

Elisa Camahort
BlogHer and Worker Bees
elisa@blogher.org/elisa@workerbees.biz

Elisa Camahort 5 pts

I make that "than" "that" typo all the time myself.

Oh, and you're right it's so much easier today. I can easily get veg*n fare at Safeway across the street. And overseas travel is a bitch. I survived in Paris on cheese...not sure what I would do now as a vegan.

Elisa Camahort
BlogHer and Worker Bees
elisa@blogher.org/elisa@workerbees.biz

bobafifi 5 pts

Hi Elisa,

I was a hard-core vegan for over ten years. It was much harder back in the early 90s than it is today to even find vegan faire, especially when I traveled in Europe. A few years ago, I started eating salmon and have kept that and some other fish in my diet. For whatever the reasons, I do feel better with the salmon in my diet than without.

On another note, I checked out your blog on VOX - nice. Unless I'm misreading it, I think there's a typo on the VOX "Faster" page:

It takes less time to create a beautiful post that it does to send an email.

http://www.sixapart.com/vox/tour/faster.html

Shouldn't that read "...than it does to send an email." ?

anyhow...

Thanks,

-Bob
bobafifi.com ( http://www.bobafifi.com )

guitarbazaar.com ( http://www.guitarbazaar.com )

fluteplayer.net ( http://www.fluteplayer.net )

Elisa Camahort 5 pts

I've been vegetarian for 17 years, but never successfully went vegan, which philosophically I always believed was right for me. So uI decided to give it another shot after reading Meat Market by Erik Marcus. It's been 11 weeks so far, and I'm chronicling it here ( http://elisac.vox.com ).

I'm not sure I can stomach Fast Food Nation. After all, I'm already converted, so why put myself through it?

Elisa Camahort
BlogHer and Worker Bees
elisa@blogher.org/elisa@workerbees.biz

Zandria 5 pts

Reading "Fast Food Nation" had a lot to do with my decision to go vegetarian about four years ago. About a year later I started eating seafood again, but I haven't eaten red meat or chicken since. And I'm currently in the midst of a vegan experiment ( http://www.zandria.us/archives/000900.html ).

Keep Up With Me ( http://www.zandria.us )

harleylilithnoir 5 pts

You just made me, that much more glad that I am a vegetarian. Putting on my movie list of "must see" and my "must read" book list too.

kperfetto 5 pts

Haven't seen the movie yet, but I loved the book too. I went veggie after reading John Robbins's Diet For a New America about ten years ago, so I was already aware of the dangers of eating meat, but not so much the economic factors.

Five Dollar Camera ( http://www.fivedollarcamera.com/blog/ )

bobafifi 5 pts

What I did before I took off to Europe back in '94 was have a friend of mine (she was originally from China) write me a note in Chinese that described what kind of food I could eat (no pork, chicken broth, etc.). That way, I could just walk into a Chinese restaurant, hand the note to the waiter and voila - vegan meal. I used the same strategy for other cuisines by asking the locals if they spoke English (a lot do!) and then asking them to write a similar note in their language. Worked surprisingly well.

Thanks Elisa,

-Bob
bobafifi.com ( http://www.bobafifi.com )

guitarbazaar.com ( http://www.guitarbazaar.com )

fluteplayer.net ( http://www.fluteplayer.net )