As a peaceful warrior, I would choose when, where and how I would behave.
With that commitment, I began to live the life of a warrior.
~Dan Millman

Wednesday, March 28, 2007


Well, it won't win any awards for best drama, but drama you will find in this film. It's out and creating a stir. Stomach turning, thought provoking, take off your rose colored glasses moments. Some of you may be down right shocked at what you see in this movie. It screams WAKE UP! Let me give you a clue, one of the lines was about having too much fecal matter in the meat patties. Yikes!!
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If you want to get down and dirty with the real details on this topic, I highly recommend the book version written by Eric Schlosser in the late 90's. It really drills down into the specifics. They took the basics and created a story for an audience to follow without it being a documentary.
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'On any given day, one out of four Americans opts for a quick and cheap meal at a fast-food restaurant, without giving either its speed or its thriftiness a second thought. Fast food is so ubiquitous that it now seems as American, and harmless, as apple pie. But the industry's drive for consolidation, homogenization, and speed has radically transformed America's diet, landscape, economy, and workforce, often in insidiously destructive ways.
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Eric Schlosser, an award-winning journalist, opens his ambitious and ultimately devastating exposé with an introduction to the iconoclasts and high school dropouts, such as Harlan Sanders and the McDonald brothers, who first applied the principles of a factory assembly line to a commercial kitchen. Quickly, however, he moves behind the counter with the overworked and underpaid teenage workers, onto the factory farms where the potatoes and beef are grown, and into the slaughterhouses run by giant meatpacking corporations. Schlosser wants you to know why those French fries taste so good (with a visit to the world's largest flavor company) and "what really lurks between those sesame-seed buns." Eater beware: forget your concerns about cholesterol, there is--literally--feces in your meat.
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Schlosser's investigation reaches its frightening peak in the meatpacking plants as he reveals the almost complete lack of federal oversight of a seemingly lawless industry. His searing portrayal of the industry is disturbingly similar to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, written in 1906: nightmare working conditions, union busting, and unsanitary practices that introduce E. coli and other pathogens into restaurants, public schools, and homes. Almost as disturbing is his description of how the industry "both feeds and feeds off the young," insinuating itself into all aspects of children's lives, even the pages of their school books, while leaving them prone to obesity and disease. '
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But for those of you who prefer the view to curling up with a book, go for it. It still has great impact. There is a dynamic cast of characters...Bruce Willis, Greg Kinnear, Patricia Arquette, Wilmar Valderrama, Kris Kristofferson...
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Get real...this is as real as it gets. ~j

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